It’s Banned Books Week. Florida schools removed nearly 3,200 last year.
Tampa Bay Times | By: Jeffrey S. Solochek | October 6, 2026
The big story: Florida no longer is No. 1 when it comes to school book bans.
For the first time in four years, Florida got knocked out of the top spot. Texas now holds the distinction, by a wide margin, according to the national anti-censorship organization PEN America.
The group recorded that Texas logged in nearly 8,100 book bans in public schools during 2025-26, with Florida a distant second at about 3,200. Texas had a new state law removing wide categories of books, the organization stated, paired with the use of artificial intelligence to identify and pull materials.
The young-adult novel “Sold” by author Patricia McCormick was the most frequently banned book listed by PEN America, which released its report to mark Banned Books Week. “Sold” is about a Nepalese teenager who is sold into sexual slavery.
“Mostly I feel angry on behalf of the women that I interviewed for the story: young women who’ve been sold into sexual slavery, who told their stories so the world could know what was going on,” McCormick said in a released statement. “To hear people, or book banners, say that their accounts are pornographic is so disrespectful to them.”
The group’s analysis found fiction and manga among the most removed genres.
Florida officials have encouraged schools to pull even more materials off their shelves. Education commissioner Henry Mack recently warned districts that they could face financial penalties if they do not actively look for and remove books that have what he called age-inappropriate content.
Some districts including Hillsborough moved quickly to comply, while others such as Orange said they would follow processes laid out in law regardless of the commissioner’s directives.
In related news, the Duval County school board is set to review four challenged books including novels by frequently banned authors Stephen King and Jodi Picoult, WTLV reports.
