By the Numbers: Banned Books Week 2025

Banned Books Week takes place October 5–11. This year’s theme is “Censorship Is So 1984. Read for Your Rights.”

1982
Year that ALA held its first Banned Books Week.

2,452
Total number of unique titles challenged in libraries in in 2024 that were documented by ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. While that number is a sharp decline from 2023’s record-high of 4,240 unique books challenged, it remains the third-highest number of reported unique books challenged since ALA began tracking in 1990.

16%
Percentage of documented book challenges initiated by parents in 2024. More than four times as many challenges—72% of the total—were instituted by organized pressure groups elected officials, board members, or administrators.

$113,000
Legal fees Crawford County (Ark.) Library System was ordered to pay after a federal judge ordered it to return children’s books featuring LGBTQ+ characters to the children’s section. The money covered the costs of the parents who sued the county  when the library moved those books to the adult section.

13
Number of states that have passed anti-book-ban laws. At least 19 more states have introduced anti-book-ban legislation since Illinois passed the first such law in 2023. (Since the American Libraries report in June, similar laws have been passed in Connecticut, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island.)

381
Number of books removed from the US Naval Academy Library in April after the Pentagon ordered all service academies to identify books for review on topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Ultimately, only 21 books were formally removed.

596
Number of books pulled this year from shelves in Department of Defense schools serving military children worldwide.

200+
People who read excerpts from their favorite banned books in the Big Chair at ALA’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia. Watch videos of some of the readers on the Banned Books Week YouTube channel.

1637
Year that Thomas Morton published New English Canaan. Puritans banned the book because of its critiques of their leadership and customs, in what is often considered the first example of book-banning in what is now the United States.

101
The room number of the re-education chamber in George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 where dissenters are tortured with their worst fears. Orwell took the number from a conference room at the BBC’s Broadcasting House, where he worked to broadcast British propaganda in India from 1941 to 1943.

739
Book résumés published by Unite Against Book Bans. These résumés detail the significance and educational value of often-challenged books, and are designed to help teachers, librarians, parents, and community members defend books against censorship.