When Pine-Richland parents packed a school board meeting last fall to argue over whether 14 novels should stay in district libraries, it wasn’t just a local fight. It was part of a nationwide surge in book challenges and bans.

During the 2024-25 school year, there were 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts, according to a report from PEN America, a free-expression advocacy organization. That’s 22,800 cases of book bans across 45 states and 451 districts since 2021 when a national book ban campaign began, the report found.

What that shows, Sabrina Baêta, senior program manager of PEN America’s Freedom to Read initiative, told the Post-Gazette, is that book bans are becoming normalized.

“Teachers and educators are now preparing themselves for inevita

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