04/23/2026
A 20-year-old book was the most challenged book in America last year. Not a new release. Not a viral sensation. A young adult novel published in 2006 -- Patricia McCormick's "Sold" -- which tells the story of a 13-year-old girl from an impoverished Nepalese family who is sold into s*x trafficking and her fight to survive. It was a National Book Award finalist. It has been taught in schools for nearly two decades. And in 2025, it was the number one target of book ban efforts across the country.
How a book like that ends up at the top of the list tells you everything you need to know about how book banning has actually been working in America. According to the ALA's new State of America's Libraries Report, 92 percent of book challenges in 2025 were initiated by partisan pressure groups and government officials. Less than 3 percent came from individual parents.
These aren't concerned moms and dads discovering something on their child's nightstand. These are coordinated campaigns -- nationally circulated lists of targeted titles, submitted in bulk to school districts across the country, often by people who don't even have children in the schools.
"We're not seeing an individual read a book and raise a concern," explained Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom. "We're seeing organized groups go to school boards... demanding the removal of dozens, if not hundreds, of books at a time."
In King George County, Virginia, one individual who had no children in the district submitted challenges to dozens of books -- copy-and-pasted from a pro-censorship book rating site. "Sold" was among them. A local pastor began showing up at board meetings to call the books "wicked" and "vile."
Review committees read the books and recommended keeping them. The principal agreed. But the books were restricted anyway -- placed under lock and key at the middle school and behind the librarian's desk at the high school. "Sold" had been checked out twice in four years.
In 2025, 5,668 books were banned from American libraries and an additional 920 were restricted -- the highest number of titles censored in a single year on record. In total, 4,235 unique titles were challenged, just five short of the all-time high of 4,240 set in 2023.
The challenges are escalating at the state level too -- Texas passed SB 13, which mandates school board approval of library books and is now using AI tools to flag titles with potentially objectionable language. Utah and South Carolina have created statewide "no read" lists that ban specific books from every public school in the state. And at the federal level, H.R. 7661 -- which would block federal funding for any material deemed "s*xually oriented," under a definition broad enough to cover a mention of nudity -- advanced out of committee last month.
But the fight over school boards and book bans is producing real grassroots resistance to what Caldwell-Stone calls "a movement of partisans who seek to limit our freedom to read." Moms for Liberty -- the organization classified as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose co-founder says the group is now "working hand-in-hand" with the White House -- has been getting crushed at the ballot box.
In 2023, the majority of Moms for Liberty-endorsed school board candidates lost nationwide, including every single endorsed candidate in Minnesota, Kansas, North Carolina, and Washington. In Texas in May 2025, 38 out of 51 pro-censorship candidates were defeated. Just two weeks ago, anti-ban candidates swept school board races in Wisconsin, Missouri, Alaska, and Oklahoma.
And when new board members take power, things change. In Pennsylvania's Central Bucks School District -- which had made national news for banning books, censoring teachers, and targeting LGBTQ students -- Democrats swept all five seats in 2023, flipping the board. The new board president, Karen Smith, was sworn in on a stack of banned books, including Elie Wiesel's "Night" and Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye." The board immediately began reversing the book ban policies.
Smith, who has served on the Central Bucks board for three terms and fought book bans from the beginning, put it simply: "Five years ago, I would never have dreamed the freedom to read would be under attack in our country. When the challenges began in our district, I knew it was a hill I would die on, kicking and screaming, to protect books for all students."
To learn more about the acclaimed novel "Sold," for ages 14 and up, visit https://www.amightygirl.com/sold
To stand up against book banning in your community, you can find many resources at Unite Against Book Bans (https://uniteagainstbookbans.org) and PEN America (https://pen.org/)
To see the American Library Association's top 10 challenged books of 2025, visit https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10
To read the new ALA report on book banning in the U.S. at https://www.ala.org/news/state-americas-libraries-report-2026
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For an uplifting book about elementary school children standing up against book banning in their school, we recommend "The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale" for ages 6 and up at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780884489672 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/4vHNXKH (Amazon)
For two inspiring books about girls fighting against censorship in schools - both for ages 9 to 12 - we recommend "Ban This Book" (https://www.amightygirl.com/ban-this-book) and "Property of the Rebel Librarian" (https://www.amightygirl.com/property-of-the-rebel-librarian)
For several excellent books about Mighty Girls who find hope by reading forbidden books - for ages 13 and up - we recommend "Banned Book Club" (https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781945820427), "Voices" (https://www.amightygirl.com/voices), and "The Book Thief" (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-book-thief)
For a thought-provoking young adult novel exploring censorship, we recommend "Suggested Reading" for ages 14 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/suggested-reading
For books for tweens and teens about girls living in real-life oppressive societies with little respect for freedom of expression, visit our blog post "The Fragility of Freedom: Mighty Girl Books About Life Under Authoritarianism" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=32426
Thanks to School Library Journal for sharing this image.
