The Most Banned Picture Books of the 2023-24 School Year

To borrow a point from Roger Sutton, I still think there’s a lot of confusion about banned vs. challenged books. The list that ALA puts out every year is a ranking of the most challenged books. A challenge doesn’t mean the book was taken off the shelf (note: it also doesn’t mean it wasn’t taken off the shelf).

So I was interested (and saddened) to see PEN America’s 23 Most Banned Picture Books of the 2023-2024 School Year for a few reasons: 1) It’s books that have been banned and removed. 2) It focuses on picture books (which make up about 2% of total book bans in the US last year). 3) It’s taking data from public schools.

The books on the list seem to fall into two camps: nudity (for example, David’s butt in No David!), or gender and family (for example, Todd Parr’s The Family Book).

Click here to read the list

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