Pen America has released its “Index of School Book Bans” and has reported that 11,982 books were banned during the 2025-2026 school year. That beats a previous high of 10,046 in 2023-24 and nearly double 2024-25’s 6,870. The amount of bans have increased almost 375% since the 2021-22 school year, the year that PEN America began tracking.

7,370 unique titles were banned in public schools impacting over 4,000 authors. Over 4,500 of the titles were not previously recorded in PEN America’s tracking. It was also a record number of school districts participating in banning in a single school year, 114.

“Young Adult” books made up 58% of the bans with “Adult” coming in second with 26%. Fiction was the vast majority of the bans accounting for 87%.

Texas led the states with between 8,001 and 9,000 bans with Florida coming in second with between 3,001 and 4,000 bans. The two states made up nearly the entirety of the bans.

Highlighted in the report is the continued trend of manga and graphic novels being targeted. From the report:

Much like books with diverse characters and identities, the sea change in manga’s popularity has been met with backlash from would-be book banners. And as with graphic novels and other illustrated texts, visual panels in manga books are often taken out of context with challenges often targeting visual depictions of sex, violence, and gender identity. “Context stripping,” or examining panels or images without any regard to the book as a whole, is a common tactic in misinformation campaigns against manga titles, with censorship advocates deeming them “inappropriate” or “explicit.”

Atsushi Ohkubo, Hajime Isayama, Rumiko Takahashi, and Yusei Matsui are some of the most commonly banned graphic novel/manga authors.

While there are some efforts to pushback on these bans, from our perspective, the actions don’t seem to be highlighted enough or pro-active enough across the board. Comic publishers, creators, and their defending organizations have a lot of work to do to get ahead of these efforts and defeat legislation before it’s passed and opposed candidates before they’re elected. As a whole, the pushback against this censorship has been asleep at the wheel and needs a renewed concerted effort so that next year’s report isn’t yet another record year.