By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer<\/p>\n
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Nearly 12,000 bans took place in public schools over the past year, according to a new study from PEN America<\/a>, the highest total since the free expression organization began tracking removals five years ago. For the second straight year, Stephen King<\/a> was the author most likely to have his work withdrawn.<\/p>\n Many of the bans took place in Florida and Texas, where restrictive laws have been passed and both politicians and conservative activists have pushed for removals. PEN has also found that school district administrators rely increasingly on AI to determine which books should be pulled.<\/p>\n Themes of race, racism, sexuality and gender identity remain the most common reasons books are challenged.<\/p>\n \u201cSchool libraries make knowledge and ideas available, ensure books remain available for all regardless of personal or political ideologies, and open gateways to stories that inform, challenge, and reflect the realities of the world back to readers,\u201d the PEN report, titled \u201cBanned in the USA,\u201d reads in part. \u201cBook bans impede the freedom to read, cutting students\u2019 access to a diversity of views, voices, perspectives, and literature they deserve to encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n In all, PEN found 11,982 cases of bans, affecting 7,370 individual works. Over 4,500 were on the list for the first time, ranging from the 19th century classic \u201cJane Eyre\u201d to Sui Ishida\u2019s \u201cTokyo Ghoul\u201d manga series. Monday\u2019s report arrives during \u201cBanned Books Week,\u201d during which events at schools and libraries and other locations nationwide call attention to censorship efforts.<\/p>\n King\u2019s books were pulled 312 times, with \u201cThe Shining\u201d and \u201cThe Green Mile\u201d among those impacted. Meanwhile, the most banned individual title was Patrick McCormick\u2019s novel about a girl sold into sexual slavery in India, \u201cSold,\u201d for which PEN found 25 removals. Other books commonly targeted include Margaret Atwood\u2019s<\/a> dystopian \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u201d; Laurie Halse Anderson\u2019s \u201cSpeak,\u201d her prize-winning novel about a teenager who falls silent after being raped; and Ellen Hopkins\u2019 novel about drug addiction, \u201cCrank.\u201d<\/p>\n PEN America and the American Library Association have both reported historic surges in bans since the early 2020s, although their methodologies differ. PEN counts books removed even for a short time as a ban, while the ALA only includes books that have been permanently pulled. According to the library association\u2019s most recent report<\/a>, published in April, some 5,600 instances of bans took place during the previous year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Nearly 12,000 bans took place in public schools…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[189941,74,76,75,189940,189942],"class_list":["post-485938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-book-bans","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-school-book-bans","tag-what-type-of-people-ban-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}