Florida, Iowa top states protecting kids with book restrictions 

Florida and Iowa are the most likely to ban inappropriate or controversial books in schools, according to a report from PEN America. 

The liberal group, which paints book restrictions in a negative light, says it found “more than 10,000 book bans in public schools” in the 2023-2024 school year, up three times from the year before. 

Of the books banned, 37% had “characters of color or themes of race and racism. 36% had LGBTQ+ characters or themes,” PEN America says. Among the three most targeted books are Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, according to another PEN report. 

Florida led the way with 4,561 bans spread across 33 school districts. Iowa was next with 3,671 bans across 117 districts. Nationally, book bans are present in 41 states and 247 public school districts, according to PEN. 

Florida and Iowa both have Republican governors and are leaders in universal school choice, offering all students the chance to use public funds to attend private school or the school parents deem best. 

Conservatives have long argued book restrictions protect children from unsuitable graphic and sexual content by requiring parental consent for such materials. 

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, the most banned book according to PEN, contains detailed description of a date rape. Other commonly restricted titles include The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and Looking for Alaska by John Green.  

Many banned books contain “images of people engaged in sex acts or graphic descriptions of those acts,” writes Adam Kissel, a former deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs at the U.S. Department of Education. “The material is so graphic, in fact, that it’s censored on broadcasts to avoid Federal Communications Commission fines.” 

Kissel points out that the books aren’t technically “banned.” Students can bring their own copies to school or buy them from a bookseller. 

Additionally, the Supreme Court has a 40-year history of finding legitimate reasons to remove books from school libraries. 

“Those reasons include when a book is obscene in general or is obscene as to minors, and when a book is inappropriate for the age, grade, or developmental level of students,” Kissel writes. “When a book is inappropriate for the curriculum, it also can be removed from classrooms.” 

Time Magazine notes: “Those in favor of bans argue that books depicting LGBTQ+ characters, gender diversity, sexuality, and racism are unsuitable for children. Working together, conservative pressure groups and politicians have successfully banned a historic number of books across the nation. The number is expected to increase in 2025. 

“In July alone, Utah enacted a bill to create a “no-read list” across the state, while Florida enacted a sweeping bill giving parents the power to veto books in public schools and libraries. More recently, a large county school board in Tennessee voted to ban six books from public libraries, including Beloved by Toni Morrison.” 

The article credits groups such as Moms for Liberty with inspiring the book bans.  

Kissel cites other Supreme Court cases that permitted censoring speech in schools as grounds for parents establishing safeguards around what their children are exposed to.  

“Adults really do, it turns out, have a role in determining what expression is acceptable for kids at school,” he says. 

“For those critics of ‘book bans’ who are unwilling to admit that even one book could ever be bad enough to remove from a school library, it’s time to mature and acknowledge that unlike the printed page, life is not black and white,” he concludes. “Then we can have the important discussion of how to properly protect kids.”