Book Challenges Quadrupled in 2021, an Unprecedented Increase

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom is one organization that keeps track of formal book challenges and bans across the country. They have announced that their final count for number of challenges in 2021 was 729 challenges representing 1,597 individual books.

This is far from a complete picture: only some of the formal book challenges get submitted to the ALA, and the ALA itself estimates that 90% of book challenges are unreported. There are also many more books that aren’t formally challenged and instead see “quiet” or “soft” censorship: they are informally pulled off the shelves by administrators, teachers, and even librarians to prevent a possible challenge. That’s also not counting the teachers and librarians who choose not to order in or teach a book because they fear it will attract negative attention.