by Roz Brown for Public News Service
Book bans are not making daily headlines in New Mexico but those tracking them said there were nearly 12,000 such moves in public schools nationwide during the previous school year, the largest number in a single year.
The advocacy group PEN America, through its Freedom to Read program, has been watching the issue closely.
Kasey Meehan, director of the program, said new state censorship laws accounted for much of the increase, coupled with the use of artificial intelligence to remove books in one fell swoop.
"When book bans first started, we were getting kind of headline front page but now book bans have become a little bit more normalized, certainly in certain parts of the country, certainly in certain districts, even though people continue to be outraged and mobilized against it," Meehan explained.
Beyond public schools, Meehan noted challenges to public library books have increased by 92% since 2020. She noted some argue a book is not truly banned if it is available elsewhere but she pointed out not all kids have access to a public library or have money to spend at a bookstore or online.
The nonprofit's tracking showed Texas, Florida and Tennessee are responsible for the vast majority of book removals in public schools and libraries. New Mexico has only experienced scattered efforts to ban books.
Meehan stressed the majority of books parents or pressure groups want removed from libraries contain two themes.
"Most of the books that are banned across the country do have LGBTQ+ representation or themes within them. We also see almost an equal proportion are books that have characters of color, talk about race and racism," Meehan observed.
Congress is currently considering competing legislation around banned books. Meehan pointed out one bill would require federally funded public and school libraries to maintain diverse book collections. A second would withhold federal education funds from public schools unless certain books are removed, action backers said is needed to protect children.
"The language in the legislation is explicitly anti-trans. The language in the legislation calls for more patriotic and kind of Christian education," Meehan underscored.
According to PEN America, Patricia McCormick’s 2006 award-winning young adult novel "Sold," about a Nepali teenager sold into sexual slavery, was first among the most frequently banned books last year, while Stephen King was the most banned author for the second year in a row.
Support for this reporting was provided by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, formerly Carnegie Corporation of New York.