Banned and Challenged Children's Books: What the Data Actually Shows
March 8, 2026
22,810 book bans in US schools in two years. Here's what challenged children's books actually contain, and how to look up any title before it reaches your child.
Between July 2021 and June 2023, PEN America documented 22,810 book bans in US schools. That number covers removals from school libraries, classroom collections, and curriculum reading lists across dozens of states.
It is a large number. It is also, for many parents, an abstract one. What were those books? What was in them? What prompted each removal?
Those questions matter regardless of where a parent stands on whether books should be removed. Parents who support the challenges want to know what content triggered them. Parents who oppose the removals want to understand what books their children may no longer be able to access. Both need the same underlying information: what is actually in these books?
"Challenged" vs. "Banned": What the Terms Mean
These two words are often used interchangeably, but they describe different things.
A challenge is a formal request. A parent, community member, school board member, or organization submits a written complaint asking that a specific book be removed from a school library, classroom, or district reading list. The book is still on the shelf while the challenge is under review.
A ban is the outcome. When a school board or administrator decides to remove the book, it is banned. Not all challenges result in bans. Some challenges are reviewed and dismissed. The book stays.
The American Library Association tracks challenged books annually and publishes its Most Challenged Books list. The ALA's data goes back decades and provides a consistent record of which titles are receiving formal complaints each year and why.
When PEN America reports 22,810 bans, it is counting instances where books were actually removed, not just challenged. A single title removed from five schools in the same district counts as five separate bans in that data.
The Scale: Which States, How Many Books
Book challenges and removals are not evenly distributed across the country. PEN America's 2021-2023 data found that a small number of states accounted for the majority of documented bans.
Florida, Texas, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina were among the states with the highest totals during that period. In several of these states, legislative action expanded the formal process for challenging books, which contributed to the spike in documented removals.
The titles involved are not obscure. Many are widely taught, award-winning, or long-established in school curricula. Several appear on AP English reading lists. Others are picture books aimed at early elementary readers. The range is wide.
What they have in common is that each one prompted a formal objection, usually citing specific content that the objecting party found inappropriate for the school setting.
The Content Themes That Prompt Challenges
Formal challenges typically cite specific content categories as the basis for the objection. Looking at ALA data and the PEN America documentation, a clear pattern emerges across the most commonly challenged titles.
The content categories most frequently cited as reasons for challenges include:
Sexual content. Explicit or suggestive scenes, sexual language, or detailed depictions of sexual activity. This is among the most commonly cited reasons across all challenge data.
LGBTQ themes. Characters who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender; same-sex relationships; gender identity as a subject of the narrative. This category has appeared with increasing frequency in challenge data over the past five years.
Violence. Graphic depictions of assault, abuse, war, or harm. In some cases, this includes books about historical violence, such as accounts of slavery or genocide, where the violence is documented rather than fictional.
Profanity. Strong language, slurs, or sexual language in dialogue.
Religious viewpoint. Content that conflicts with the religious values of the objecting party, or content that promotes or critiques a specific religious tradition.
Racial themes. Books that address racism, racial identity, or racial history in ways the objecting party finds inappropriate for the age group or setting.
These are not mutually exclusive. A single book may be challenged for multiple reasons. Gender Queer, which topped the ALA Most Challenged list multiple times in recent years, drew objections citing both sexual content and LGBTQ themes. The Kite Runner has been challenged for sexual violence, language, and religious themes.
The Most Challenged Books of Recent Years
The ALA publishes its Most Challenged Books list annually. The titles that have appeared most frequently in recent years include:
- Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe -- cited for sexual content and LGBTQ themes
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky -- cited for sexual content, profanity, and drug use
- All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson -- cited for sexual content and LGBTQ themes
- Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez -- cited for sexual content and language
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini -- cited for sexual violence, language, and religious content
- Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison -- cited for sexual content and LGBTQ themes
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie -- cited for profanity, sexual references, and racial content
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews -- cited for sexual content and language
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison -- cited for sexual content and racial themes
- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson -- cited for sexual content and depictions of assault
Each of these books has been removed from at least some school libraries or reading lists in at least some districts. Each has also been defended, by other school boards, librarians, educators, and parents, as appropriate or valuable for the age group.
The disagreement is real. The content in each book is also real. Both things are true simultaneously.
How ParentsPick Data Maps to Challenged Book Themes
The ParentsPick database covers 9,496 children's books analyzed across nine content themes. The themes the database tracks map almost directly to the content categories most commonly cited in book challenges.
Here is how the nine ParentsPick categories break down across the full database:
| Theme | Books flagged | Share of database |
|---|---|---|
| Violence | 2,158 | 23% |
| LGBTQ | 868 | 9.1% |
| Race | 792 | 8.3% |
| Sexual | 766 | 8.1% |
| Scary | 674 | 7.1% |
| Gender roles | 429 | 4.5% |
| Religious | 402 | 4.2% |
| Profanity | 301 | 3.2% |
| Climate | 68 | 0.7% |
Violence is the most prevalent theme across the database by a wide margin. LGBTQ themes appear in 9.1% of titles -- more often than racial themes, sexual content, or religious content. Sexual content appears in 8.1% of analyzed titles.
These numbers reflect what is in books that are actively in circulation. They are not predictions or estimates. They are the results of content analysis applied title by title.
Why Both Sides of This Debate Need Content Information
The conversation about challenged books often gets framed as two opposing camps: parents who want books removed and parents who oppose removals. The framing is accurate as a description of the conflict. It obscures something important, though.
Parents on both sides of this debate are trying to answer the same underlying question: what is in this book, and is it appropriate for my child?
A parent who has concerns about sexual content in a school library book and wants it reviewed is asking that question. A parent who opposes removal and believes the book should be accessible to high school students is also asking it -- and reaching a different conclusion about the answer. Both need accurate content information to make a coherent argument or a coherent decision.
What typically drives the sharpest conflicts is not that parents have seen the content and disagree about it. It is that most parents have not read the challenged book and are working from secondhand descriptions, media coverage, or advocacy materials from one side or the other.
Content analysis does not resolve the disagreement. But it provides a common factual basis for it.
How to Look Up Any Challenged Book
The ParentsPick database covers thousands of titles, including many of the books that have appeared most frequently on challenged and removed lists.
For any book in the database, the app shows:
- Which of the nine content themes are present
- How prominently each theme appears (not just whether it is there, but how central it is)
- The confidence level of the analysis
This means a parent can look up The Kite Runner and see exactly which content themes the analysis found, rather than relying on a summary from a school board meeting or a headline. It means a parent looking up Gender Queer can see what the content analysis captured across sexual content and LGBTQ themes before deciding how they feel about whether it belongs in a school library.
The app does not offer an opinion about whether any of these books should be challenged or removed. That is not what it is for. It answers the factual question: here is what this book contains. What a parent does with that information is their call.
To look up a book, scan its ISBN with the app or search by title. Books that have appeared on challenged lists are included in the database where analysis has been completed with high confidence.
What "High Confidence" Means for Challenged Titles
ParentsPick uses a confidence threshold to separate clear findings from uncertain ones. For a book to appear in the statistics cited above, the content analysis has to have a strong factual basis, not just an ambiguous signal.
This matters for challenged books specifically because the debates around them sometimes involve disagreements about what content is actually present. Someone might argue that a book contains explicit sexual content; someone else might argue the scenes in question are not explicit. The analysis applies a consistent standard across all titles.
For any specific book, the app shows the confidence level alongside the finding. Parents can see not just what the analysis found but how certain that finding is.
Related Content
The themes that most commonly prompt book challenges each have their own detailed post in the ParentsPick blog series:
- LGBTQ Themes in Children's Books: What the Data Shows -- how 9.1% of books contain LGBTQ themes, what types of content that includes, and how to use the data
- Violence in Children's Books: What the Data Shows -- why 23% of books contain violence, what that spectrum looks like, and how to evaluate it
- Racial Themes in Children's Books: What the Data Shows -- what 8.3% prevalence of racial themes actually covers, from history to identity
Each post uses the same approach: data first, no opinion, full range of uses explained for parents who arrive from different directions.
ParentsPick analyzes 9,496 children's books across 9 content themes. Search any title or scan an ISBN to see exactly what prompted a challenge — before your child brings the book home.