{"id":131398,"date":"2025-10-19T04:46:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/131398\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T04:46:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:46:22","slug":"stephen-king-tops-list-of-censored-authors-in-us-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/131398\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen King tops list of censored authors in US schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A new report on book bans in U.S. schools finds Stephen King<\/a> as the author most likely to be censored and the country divided between states actively restricting works and those attempting to limit or eliminate bans.<\/p>\n

PEN America\u2019s<\/a> \u201cBanned in the USA,\u201d released Wednesday, tracks more than 6,800 instances of books being temporarily or permanently pulled for the 2024-2025 school year. The new number is down from more than 10,000 in 2023-24, but still far above the levels of a few years ago, when PEN didn\u2019t even see the need to compile a report.<\/p>\n

Some 80% of those bans originated in just three states that have enacted or attempted to enact laws calling for removal of books deemed objectionable \u2014 Florida, Texas and Tennessee. Meanwhile, PEN found little or no instances of removals in several other states, with Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey<\/a> among those with laws that limit the authority of school and public libraries to pull books.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is increasingly a story of two countries,\u201d says Kasey Meehan, director of PEN\u2019s Freedom to Read program and an author of Wednesday\u2019s report. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not just a story of red states and blue states. In Florida, not all of the school districts responded to the calls for banning books. You can find differences from county to county.\u201d<\/p>\n

King\u2019s books were censored 206 times, according to PEN, with \u201cCarrie\u201d and \u201cThe Stand\u201d among the 87 of his works affected. The most banned work of any author was Anthony Burgess\u2019 Dystopian classic from the 1960s, \u201cA Clockwork Orange,\u201d for which PEN found 23 removals. Other books and authors facing extensive restrictions included Patricia McCormick\u2019s \u201cSold,\u201d Judy Blume\u2019s<\/a> \u201cForever\u201d and Jennifer Niven\u2019s \u201cBreathless,\u201d and numerous works by Sarah J. Maas and Jodi Picoult.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: Stephen King is the most banned author in US schools, PEN report says\n <\/p>\n

AP correspondent Donna Warder reports on the most banned books in the USA.<\/p>\n

Reasons often cited for pulling a book include LGBTQ+ themes, depictions of race and passages with violence and sexual violence. An ongoing trend that PEN finds has only intensified: Thousands of books were taken off shelves in anticipation of community, political or legal pressure rather than in response to a direct threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis functions as a form of \u2018obeying in advance,\u2019\u201d the report reads, \u201crooted in fear or simply a desire to avoid topics that might be deemed controversial.\u201d<\/p>\n

The PEN report comes amid ongoing censorship efforts not just from states and conservative activists, but from the federal government. The Department of Education ended an initiative by the Biden administration to investigate the legality of bans and has called the whole issue a \u201choax.\u201d<\/a> PEN\u2019s numbers include the Department of Defense\u2019s removal of hundreds of books<\/a> from K-12 school libraries for military families as part of an overall campaign against DEI initiatives and \u201cun-American\u201d thinking.<\/p>\n

In Florida, where more than 2,000 books were banned or restricted, a handful of counties were responsible for many of the King removals: Dozens were pulled last year as a part of a review for whether they were in compliance with state laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis books are often removed from shelves when \u2018adult\u2019 titles or books with \u2018sex content\u2019 are targeted for removal \u2014 these prohibitions overwhelmingly ban LGBTQ+ content and books on race, racism, and people of color \u2014 but also affect titles like Stephen King\u2019s books,\u201d Meehan says. \u201cSome districts \u2014 in being overly cautious or fearful of punishment \u2014 will sweep so wide they end up removing Stephen King from access, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

PEN\u2019s methodology differs from that of the American Library Association<\/a>, which also issues annual reports on bans and challenges. PEN\u2019s numbers are much higher in part because the free expression organization counts any books removed or restricted for any length of time, while the ALA only counts permanent removals or restrictions.<\/p>\n

Both organizations have acknowledged that because they largely rely on media reports and information that they receive directly, their numbers are far from comprehensive. Stephana Ferrell, director of Research & Insight at the Florida Freedom to Read Project, wrote in an email this week that total bans are \u201clikely much higher\u201d than in PEN\u2019s snapshot analysis, based on the Project\u2019s ongoing public records requests.<\/p>\n

The PEN report includes no banning data from Ohio, Oklahoma, Arkansas and other \u201cred\u201d states because researchers could not find adequate documentation. Meehan adds that PEN also doesn\u2019t know the full impact of statewide laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s become harder and harder to quantify the scope of the book banning crisis,\u201d Meehan says. \u201cIn a state where a banning law is passed, we don\u2019t have the data to know whether every school in that state had the books affected. Our data is snapshot. It\u2019s what we were able to collect through what\u2019s publicly reported or on websites or what journalists have uncovered.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP writer Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A new report on book bans in U.S. schools finds Stephen King as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[71140,78848,359,5914,2597,18,117,8269,2129,3334,19,17,78845,8263,34186,10160,78847,1678,3521,39298,10269,78846,7539,917,2461,71142,16697,4077],"class_list":{"0":"post-131398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-american-library-association","9":"tag-anthony-burgess","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-censorship","12":"tag-education","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-fl-state-wire","16":"tag-florida","17":"tag-general-news","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jennifer-niven","21":"tag-jodi-picoult","22":"tag-judy-blume","23":"tag-jwd-evergreen","24":"tag-kasey-meehan","25":"tag-lgbtq","26":"tag-lifestyle","27":"tag-maryland","28":"tag-new-jersey","29":"tag-patricia-mccormick","30":"tag-stephen-king","31":"tag-tennessee","32":"tag-texas","33":"tag-tn-state-wire","34":"tag-tx-state-wire","35":"tag-u-s-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}