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Book challenges are not new, but they are on the rise, and the way books are being targeted is changing.
Pre-pandemic, most book challenges were initiated by a single family looking to remove or restrict one book. This is no longer the case.
Organized censorship groups are now compiling and distributing lists of books they believe should be removed from libraries and classrooms. Some censorship groups have held In 2022, 40% of recorded book challenges were targeting more than one hundred books. Groups like "Clean Up Samuels" in Warren County, Virginia, have held events to encourage small but vocal groups of community members to swamp local public libraries with requests to remove hundreds of books.
This collected activism toward censoring books and other materials has led to a rapid increase in the number of documented challenges. The number of unique titles challenged in 2023 was 65% higher than in 2022, at 4,240 unique book titles. Almost half of the challenged titles represented the experiences and voices of LGBT+ or BIPOC individuals.
Attempts to censor books in public and school libraries happen across the US. In 2023, Illinois was one of seventeen states where a group or individual demanded the censorship of more than 100 titles
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