Banning books? That’s so 1984. But banning books is on the rise (still). In response to the banning occurring across the country and in celebration of the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week theme for 2025, “Censorship Is So 1984: Read for Your Rights,” we are encouraging our patrons to read whatever they please.
Why Are Books Being Banned?
In 2025 as well as in previous years, books have been targeted for including diverse perspectives. According to PEN America, books banned from the 2023-2024 school year “overwhelmingly featured stories with people or characters of color and/or LGBTQ+ people.” Also, likely due to the targeting of sexual content, books on recent removal lists often feature romance, women’s sexual experiences, and address rape and sexual abuse. An example of one such ban is the removal of the graphic novel version of The Diary of a Young Girl, which includes sections omitted on its first publication that feature Anne Frank’s discussion and exploration of her sexuality. Contrary to what many might assume, these current demands to rid school shelves of books are coming from state-sponsored organizations more often than concerned parents. In fact, in the state of Florida where book bans have been particularly aggressive, the state’s own board of education has been pressuring school districts to comply or face legal action.
What’s At Stake When Books Are Banned?
Whenever Banned Books Week comes around, I remember the day I walked into my high school library—a library located in a smalltown in the Ohio River Valley and that I visited seldomly since it contained few interesting books—and found our school librarian setting aside items for discard. While “weeding” or pulling books in poor shape and/or that no longer hold interest to patrons is a regular practice in a library, this felt different. I don’t recall a stack as much as a garbage can full of books. Either way, among the heap was Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, another like Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Beloved to find itself yet again in the book banning spotlight. Strangely, the more I reflect on this memory, the more it morphs—had I gone to the card catalog looking for my favorite author, found an entry for one of his classics, and then inquired with the librarian when it was missing from the shelves? Was it that she responded that she had thrown it out?
Although it’s difficult to be sure of the particulars, I remember how I felt knowing my school librarian had tossed out one of my favorites. This was a book I would argue shaped who I am and how I think, an author whom I began reading in the fifth or sixth grade upon finding a yellowed, dogeared paperback of Cat’s Cradle in a dusty box among my mother’s storage boxes, an author I checked out regularly at the public library (after the librarians there, concerned by my reading such “mature” material, spoke to my father and—thank goodness—he told them I could check out and read whatever I wanted).
That day, in high school, I either clutched that copy of Slaughterhouse-Five tight in my hand or, at least, my heart and uttered only one word, “Why?” This librarian’s answer was not that it was old and grimy but that nobody read it. And do I remember a haughty lifting of her head, a scowl even? The only thing I remember beyond that is that a newer copy of that classic of the 20th century, a book regularly assigned in other high school and college courses, was never ordered. In my school, Slaughterhouse-Five stayed in the trash for nobody else ever to find.
In Honor of Banned Books Week 2025
The good news is that many librarians do not fit the outdated, harmful stereotype of the “evil” librarian who shushes everyone and polices what may or may not be read. Instead, they celebrate access to information. In that spirit, here are some staff-created book lists from some of your local librarians. These lists focus on banned classic and newer literature. Predictably, the first includes Kurt Vonnegut’s science-fictional, anti-war, semi-autobiographical Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, which has been banned “because of its use of obscene language, depictions of sexual acts, lack of patriotism, and mentions of homosexuality” and championed for its exploration of the nature of free will, time, trauma, and war. Go ahead and check it out if you’d like. The American Library Association and our librarians know it’s your right to do so.
Challenged Books by Black Authors
Banned and Challenged Book Ideas
Contributed by Sarah Broderick, Community Library Specialist
Sources
https://www.ala.org/bbooks/banned
https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10
https://www.ala.org/tools/challengesupport/selectionpolicytoolkit/weeding
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/16/florida-new-book-bans
https://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/slaughterhouse-five-1969-by-kurt-vonnegut/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/book-bans-pen-america-censorship
https://jweekly.com/2023/06/14/a-new-version-of-anne-franks-diary-is-being-called-pornography-and-getting-banned-from-schools/
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-kurt-vonneguts-slaughterhouse-five-tells-us-now
https://pen.org/banned-books-week/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarians_in_popular_culture
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