{"id":19933,"date":"2025-12-06T22:26:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T06:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/social.coldstreams.com\/?p=19933"},"modified":"2025-12-12T10:02:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T18:02:06","slug":"europeans-claim-the-us-has-banned-23000-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2025\/12\/06\/europeans-claim-the-us-has-banned-23000-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Europeans claim U.S. has banned 23,000 books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The 23,000 “banned” books claim is false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the American Library Association, in 2024, 2,452 unique titles (not 23,000) were challenged for being carried in public schools. In 2023, 4,240 titles were challenged<\/em>. These were requests to not carry a title in a school – the ALA does not specify how many of these challenges were successful. (https:\/\/ala.org\/bbooks\/book-ban-data<\/a> and https:\/\/americanlibrariesmagazine.org\/2025\/10\/07\/by-the-numbers-banned-books-week-2025\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 23,000 figure came from a PEN America report that counts individual titles, multiple times. If 100 schools choose to not carry one title, that is counted as “100” bans – not 100 distinct books were banned. But in their broad definition, a “ban” does not mean the book is unavailable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PEN counts a book that is moved to less visibility, or permitted only to higher grades, or requires permission of a staff member as a “ban” even though the book is still available and is not banned.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“PEN America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by governmental officials, that leads to a book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See https:\/\/pen.org\/report\/the-normalization-of-book-banning\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The 23,000 figure comes from a cumulative count over several years – and is not a count of banned book titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of the books alleged to be banned in the U.S. are actually banned – they are readily available from book sellers too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But it is not true. Not even close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,26,352,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assertion","category-censorship","category-lies","category-misinformation","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}