Book bans surge. A Clockwork Orange tops list

PEN America counted 6,870 instances of books removed from K‑12 school shelves in 2024–2025.

Those removals covered 3,752 unique book titles reported across 23 states and 87 public school districts.

Since 2021 PEN has recorded roughly 22,810 instances across 45 states and 451 public school districts.

Florida recorded 2,304 removals in 2024–2025. Texas recorded 1,781. Tennessee recorded 1,622.

PEN documents that many removals were made preemptively 'to avoid controversy' rather than as direct enforcement of a single, specific statute.

On Jan. 24, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights announced it had closed 11 complaints related to book removals and that OCR would end the book‑ban coordinator role.