Let Books Be. Protect the Freedom to Read.
Florida schools banned 3,212 titles during the 2025-26 school year — second only to Texas, out of nearly 12,000 bans nationwide. Many of those books were targeted not for explicit content, but for including LGBTQ+ characters and relationships. Here’s what that censorship costs students, and what you can do about it.
October 12, 2026
This October, we marked Banned Books Week — a time to celebrate our freedom to read and to educate ourselves about the censorship happening around us. The scale is not abstract. According to PEN America’s latest Index of School Book Bans, Florida schools banned 3,212 titles during the 2025-26 school year, part of nearly 12,000 bans nationwide. Florida led the country in book bans for three consecutive years before being overtaken by Texas this year. These removals have a major effect on education, limiting the information, knowledge, and critical thinking that are vital to students, while making teachers’ jobs harder by restricting what can be taught and discussed. Given how many books are affected, one might assume the titles are explicit, inappropriate, or overly adult — but that isn’t the case.
A large portion of banned books are targeted because they include LGBTQ+ identities and relationships, based on the belief that these subjects are inappropriate to present openly to children and young people. In doing so, these bans hide the truth from young LGBTQ+ individuals, keeping them in the dark about themes and topics they might relate to. Obscuring these subjects only delays and suppresses entire communities of people who have done no harm, under the assumption that their way of life disrupts the process of growing up. It paints a false picture of the queer community — one of vitriol and debauchery rather than an open-minded, joyful group of people.
Now more than ever, it’s important to be active in your local community: visit your nearest library, engage with it, and support the services it offers. In times like these, we need to expand our own boundaries and those of the people around us in order to become more thoughtful and inclusive. Visit ala.org to learn more about how you can support the cause and take part in Banned Books Week.
Sources:
1. https://www.ala.org
2. https://pen.org/book-bans/
3. https://www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2023/september/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-book-bans-sweeping-the-us/
4. https://pen.org/pride-month-a-banned-book-reading-list/
October 12, 2026
