How new tactics have driven a spike in book ban attempts

by Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech | Jul. 09, 2023

Story at a glance

The number of book challenges in the United States doubled between 2021 and 2022, according to the American Library Association.

That spike is partially the result of changing tactics used by those seeking to remove titles from schools.

Parent groups are organizing online and going directly to school districts to demand that lists of books be taken off of shelves.

More than 1,200 book challenges were compiled by the American Library Association last year, the most the organization has recorded since it began keeping records 20 years ago.

That marks a 50 percent increase from 2021, when 729 book challenges were recorded.

The spike in book ban attempts has in part been driven by changing tactics in how works are challenged.

Gone are the days of an individual parent requesting that a book be reviewed by a school. Now, parent groups are thronging school board meetings and organizing over social media to demand that lists of books be removed from school libraries — and some like-minded elected officials are throwing their weight behind efforts to limit what titles students can read, as well.

A group effort

In the past, book challenges typically came in the form of a single parent complaining to a teacher or school if they did not approve of their child reading a certain book, censorship experts explain.

“There might even be a group of parents who would get together in one school and complain directly to the teacher or the principal,” said Ann David, a member of the National Council of Teachers for English.

But, she said, “it really tended to be localized.”

In recent years, however, that has changed.

Conservative parent-led groups like Florida Citizens Alliance, No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty, which take issue with topics of race and sexuality being taught in schools and have distributed lists of books with “graphic or explicit” materials, began to pop up.

It has also become more common for people challenging books to go directly to school superintendents or to school board meetings demanding that lists of books be removed from school libraries, according to David.

“It’s far more public and far more contentious,” she said.

The power of social media

The growing group efforts to challenge lists of books have been bolstered by social media.

Over the past three years, there has been a shift toward “far more organized and purposeful challenges that are being organized in online spaces,” said David.

And there is no question that social media has played a major role in how conservative parent groups communicate regarding books they want to remove from school libraries, according to Christopher Finan, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship.

PEN America, which keeps track of book challenges, has noted that Facebook is one of the primary platforms where lists of to-be-challenged books are shared.

A particularly popular group of Facebook pages that circulate such lists are called “Mary in the Library.”

Different pages under that name appear to have been created for different states. Each one features the same profile picture of a stern-looking older woman with horn-rimmed glasses, presumably Mary, and the same two–sentence intro:“Mary has a dirty little secret. She collects naughty children’s books!”

“Mary in the Library Indiana” is filled with images of books accompanied by ratings and excerpts of what users characterize as “obscene or objectionable content” from those works.

Many of those reviews, according to PEN America, look as if they have been directly lifted from a site called BookLooks.org, which writes and collects “easy to understand book content reviews” centered on “objectionable content” like profanity, nudity and sexual content.

BookLooks claims it is not affiliated with any other organization like Moms for Liberty and instead is merely trying to make its reviews “available to all parents so they can make informed decisions.”

The pages are also filled with discussion on current book bans and titles that users say should be considered for future ones.

That exchange of information between Facebook users results in the same books being challenged in school districts across the country, according to PEN America.

“What we are seeing is a book that gets challenged in Florida tends to show up on list in Missouri and California and Indiana and Virginia,” said Kasey Meehan, freedom to read program director at PEN America. “There’s this kind of network across states, as well as across districts within a state, that are challenging similar books.”

Caldwell-Stone, of the American Library Association, added that members of the organization and similar groups are concerned social media is making conservative parent groups more powerful by increasing their visibility and promoting their viewpoints to the point that they could exert influence on elected officials.

“That’s a big concern, that these groups are encouraging elected officials to promote their views of books belonging in libraries and putting that into legislation,” she said.

Powerful supporters

Some conservative elected officials have followed the same list sharing tactic employed by parent groups to promote the removal of books from school libraries.

Former Texas state Representative Matt Krause (R), for instance, is viewed by book ban critics as the reason why the Lone Star State is home to the most book challenges.

In 2021, Krause, who was thenchair of the state House’s General Investigating Committee, issued a book query to determine how many Texas school districts had in their libraries books related to topics that might make students feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress,” because of race or sex, according to the Texas Tribune. Krause later asked school districts to report how many copies of the books on a list of 850 titles they had.

“Some schools ignored him, some schools pulled the books,” said David, of the National Council of Teachers for English. “That really is the first large instance of this passing around of a list.”

David added that some parent groups pulled book titles from Krause’s massive list, while others were inspired by his actions to make lists of their own.

Some states have also passed laws that restrict what kinds of books can be in schools or change the process for adding titles to school libraries.

In Florida, for example, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) enacted three state laws last year limiting reading and educational materials.

Such laws have “supercharged” book banning in schools, according to PEN America.