Banned Books in 2026: What's Being Pulled and How to Read Them

One book tops both of this year's big censorship counts. Sold is Patricia McCormick's 2006 novel in verse. It follows Lakshmi, a 13-year-old from Nepal whose stepfather sells her to a brothel in India.

It was a National Book Award finalist. Last school year, it was also the book US schools pulled most often.

Banned Books Week runs October 4 to 10 this year, under the theme "Let Books Be. Protect the Freedom to Read." Below are all 11 books on the American Library Association's most challenged list. Each one gets its own section.

You'll find what each book is about, why people object to it, and what to know before you start. After that comes the practical part: how to get hold of any of them.

Banned and challenged mean different things

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict a book. A ban is what happens when the challenge works. The book comes off the shelf, or moves behind a desk where you have to ask for it.

Two groups track this in the US, and they count different things. The American Library Association (ALA) logs challenges in public and school libraries across a calendar year. PEN America counts books removed from school libraries and classrooms over a school year.

Their totals never match, and they aren't meant to. Read together, they show how many books people try to remove and how many leave the shelves.

The numbers behind this year's lists

Both counts are close to their highest on record. The ALA's 2025 Most Challenged Books report came out in April. PEN America's 2025–26 school year report landed on October 5.

• ALA tracked 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025, its second-highest total ever.
• That's up from 2,452 titles in 2024, and far above the average of 273 a year from 2001 to 2020.
• Pressure groups and public officials started 92% of those challenges, up from 72% in 2024.
• PEN recorded 11,982 school book bans in 2025–26, the most since it began counting in 2021.
• Those bans covered 7,370 different titles, and more than 4,500 of them were new to PEN's index.
• Texas alone saw more than 8,100 bans after a 2025 state law took effect. Florida, the leader for the three years before, had about 3,200.

Sold led PEN's count too, pulled in 25 districts. Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak came next at 23, then Ellen Hopkins's Crank at 22.

There's also a newer driver. Some districts now ask AI chatbots to list titles with "indecent" or "profane" content. Publishers Weekly's summary of the PEN report says the bots suggest gray-area books as well. Whole manga series can come off a shelf at once.

The 11 most challenged books of 2025

Ties stretch the ALA's top 10 to 11 books this year. Here's the full list, with a section on each book below.

All 11 are also in a community list on Seekquel, Banned Books 2026. Follow it, vote for the ones that stayed with you, and add the challenged books you would read next.

The ALA didn't publish reasons alongside its 2025 list. Where a book also made the 2024 list, the reasons below come from that report. For the rest, each section describes what's on the page so you can judge for yourself.

1. Sold by Patricia McCormick

Lakshmi lives with her family in a mountain village in Nepal. When the monsoon ruins the harvest, her stepfather sells her. She believes she's going to work as a maid in the city. She ends up in a brothel in Kolkata called Happiness House.

The story comes in short, spare vignettes, many of them under a page. McCormick traveled to Nepal and India to research it and interviewed survivors of trafficking.

Why it's challenged: the ALA's 2024 report cited sexually explicit content and depictions of sexual assault. The abuse sits at the center of the story, and McCormick doesn't soften what Lakshmi goes through.

The book was a National Book Award finalist. It later became a film, with Emma Thompson as an executive producer. This year it topped both lists, and PEN counted it pulled in 25 school districts.

Before you read: it moves quickly, because the chapters are so short. The subject is heavy, so give yourself room for it.

2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Charlie is starting high school near Pittsburgh in the early 1990s. He writes letters to an unnamed "friend" about his first parties, his first crush, the mixtapes and the fights. Two seniors, Patrick and Sam, take him in.

The letters also circle something Charlie hasn't let himself remember. The book builds toward it slowly.

Why it's challenged: the 2024 report listed sexually explicit content, LGBTQIA+ content, sexual assault, drug use and profanity. Patrick is gay, and the book deals openly with drinking, drugs, abuse and suicide.

This is one of the most persistent names on these lists. It made the ALA's top 10 in 2004 and every year from 2006 to 2009. Chbosky directed the 2012 film himself, with Logan Lerman, Emma Watson and Ezra Miller.

Chbosky has said the challenges sadden him because he wrote the book to end the silence around these subjects.

Before you read: the letter format makes it fast and intimate. It takes depression and trauma seriously, which is a large part of why readers keep returning to it.

3. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Kobabe's graphic memoir runs from childhood through college and into adult life. It follows em working out what it means to feel like neither a girl nor a boy. Kobabe uses e/em/eir pronouns.

It also covers crushes, family, and the relief of finding words for a feeling you've had for years.

Why it's challenged: the 2024 report cited LGBTQIA+ content and sexually explicit content. Most complaints focus on a few illustrated panels rather than the book as a whole.

In 2020, the ALA gave it an Alex Award, which goes to adult books with strong appeal to teen readers. It also won a Stonewall Honor that year.

Then it became the most challenged book in the country three years running, from 2021 to 2023. It has now appeared on the list five years straight. Kobabe has said young readers wrote to say the book helped them talk to their parents.

Before you read: its publisher released it as an adult book. It reads quickly, and the art carries as much of the story as the words do.

4. Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas

This is the fifth main novel in the Throne of Glass series. Aelin Galathynius has reclaimed her name and her right to the throne of Terrasen. Now she needs allies and an army before the Valg king Erawan moves against her kingdom.

Why it's challenged: complaints about Maas's books usually cite sexual content, and this one has some of the series' most explicit scenes.

In August 2024, Utah removed it from every public school in the state. Five A Court of Thorns and Roses books went with it. In 2023, the ALA counted 324 challenges to 17 Maas titles, the most against one author in a single year.

The series began in 2012 with Throne of Glass, shelved as teen fantasy. It grew older along with its readers, and the later books read much more like adult fantasy.

Before you read: start with Throne of Glass. This book leans hard on four volumes of history between its characters.

5 (tie). Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

San Francisco, 1954. Lily Hu is 17, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and she's starting to understand that she likes girls. She and a classmate, Kath, begin sneaking out to the Telegraph Club. It's a lesbian bar with a male impersonator on its stage.

The McCarthy era hangs over all of it. If anyone finds out, Lily could lose her family, and fear of communism puts all of Chinatown under suspicion.

Why it's challenged: complaints point to its LGBTQIA+ content and one sexual scene between Lily and Kath.

It won the 2021 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. It was the first young adult book with a queer female lead to win it. It also took the 2022 Stonewall Book Award and a Printz Honor.

Before you read: it works as a love story and as a detailed portrait of 1950s Chinatown. A companion novel, A Scatter of Light, followed in 2022.

5 (tie). Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

Five teenagers, each pushed by a different kind of trouble, end up selling sex to survive. Their stories run in alternating sections of verse and eventually meet in Las Vegas.

Why it's challenged: the 2024 report listed it for sexually explicit content.

Hopkins writes young adult novels in verse about addiction, abuse and sex work. Her first, Crank, drew on her own daughter's addiction to crystal meth.

In 2010, a librarian and some parents objected to her books. A Texas school district then withdrew her invitation to its teen literature festival. Several other authors pulled out of the festival in protest.

Before you read: verse reads faster than its page count suggests. A sequel, Traffick, picks up the same characters.

7. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Feyre Archeron is 19 and hunts to keep her family fed. She kills a wolf in the woods, and it turns out to be a faerie in disguise. As payment, a High Fae lord named Tamlin takes her across the wall to his court.

The story borrows from Beauty and the Beast and the old ballad of Tam Lin.

Why it's challenged: sexual content, which grows more explicit as the series goes on. Utah's 2024 removal took out all five books in the series, along with Empire of Storms.

Bloomsbury first published it in 2015 as young adult fiction. Libraries now catalogue later editions as adult, and many shops shelve it with adult fantasy. Much of the argument over it comes down to which shelf it belongs on.

Before you read: it's the first of five books, and the one that brought a lot of readers to romantasy. The series turns noticeably steamier from book two.

8 (tie). A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Alex is 15 and leads a gang through nights of robbery, beatings and rape in a near-future England. He tells the story in Nadsat, a slang Burgess built largely from Russian.

After prison, the state "cures" him with the Ludovico Technique. The conditioning makes violence physically sickening to him. Burgess's real question is whether goodness forced on someone still counts as goodness.

Why it's challenged: the violence and sexual assault are explicit, and the narrator enjoys them.

Publishers have cut this book before. The first American edition dropped Burgess's final chapter, and US readers didn't get it until W. W. Norton restored it in 1986. Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film followed the shorter American version.

Kubrick later pulled the film from UK distribution himself. It stayed out of British cinemas until after his death in 1999.

Before you read: the slang looks hard for the first few pages. Most words come clear from context, and some editions include a glossary.

8 (tie). Identical by Ellen Hopkins

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are 16-year-old identical twins. Their father is a district court judge. Their mother is running for Congress.

From the outside, they look like a model family. Inside the house, their father has been abusing Kaeleigh since she was nine. Raeanne numbs herself with pills, alcohol and sex.

Why it's challenged: it depicts incest, sexual abuse and drug use directly, from inside the girls' heads.

Hopkins is one of two authors with two books on this year's list, alongside Maas. Her Crank also sat at number 8 in 2024.

Before you read: the twins take turns narrating, and the book has a late turn that changes how you read it. Keep it spoiler-free when you talk about it with friends.

8 (tie). Looking for Alaska by John Green

Miles Halter is 16 and collects famous last words. He leaves Florida for an Alabama boarding school, Culver Creek, to seek what Rabelais called "a Great Perhaps."

There he meets Alaska Young: funny, reckless and impossible to read. Green splits the book into "before" and "after," counting down to an event the reader doesn't see coming.

Why it's challenged: the 2024 report listed it for sexually explicit content. In 2015 it was the ALA's most challenged book, for offensive language and sexually explicit descriptions.

Green's debut won the 2006 Printz Award. In 2008, parents in Depew, New York, objected to it on an 11th-grade reading list. The school board voted unanimously to keep it.

Green has argued that most challenges rest on a single page, read out of context. Hulu adapted it as a miniseries in 2019.

Before you read: it's about grief and guilt as much as first love. The second half is the part readers remember.

8 (tie). Storm and Fury by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Trinity Marrow is 18 and losing her sight to retinitis pigmentosa, the same eye disease Armentrout has. She can also see and talk to ghosts.

A dangerous secret has kept her hidden for years in a compound guarded by Wardens. They're gargoyle shapeshifters who protect humans from demons. Then a Warden named Zayne arrives, and staying hidden stops being an option.

Why it's challenged: it's a paranormal romance, and challenges to the genre usually cite sexual content.

It opens the Harbinger trilogy, followed by Rage and Ruin in 2020 and Grace and Glory in 2021. Next to two Maas books, its place on the list shows how far romantasy has become a target.

Before you read: you don't need to read Armentrout's Dark Elements series first, though Zayne first appears there.

What the list says about which books get targeted

Look across the 11 books and a few patterns stand out. According to the ALA, 40% of all challenged titles in 2025 tell the stories of LGBTQIA+ people or people of color.

Adult romantasy has also reached the list in force. Three of the 11 are fantasy romances, and two are by the same author.

Verse novels about abuse and addiction show up again too. Ellen Hopkins has two books here and a third in PEN's top three.

Classics aren't safe either. A Clockwork Orange is more than 60 years old, and PEN's index this year includes Jane Eyre.

The strangest case belongs to Fahrenheit 451, a novel about firemen who burn books. In 1967, its own publisher released a school edition with about 75 passages changed. The edits cut words like "hell" and "damn" and softened two whole scenes.

By 1973, that version was the only one Ballantine sold. Ray Bradbury found out in 1979 and demanded his original back. He also wrote a short "Coda" about censorship, which later editions still carry.

Why readers seek these books out

Most challenges cite the same few reasons: sexual content, LGBTQIA+ characters, profanity, and scenes of abuse or drug use. Many of these books deal with exactly those subjects, often for teenage readers.

That's also why people go looking for them. A teen who has lived through something hard can find it on the page in Speak, Identical or Sold.

A content warning does part of what a challenge claims to do. It tells you what's in a book before you open it. The difference is that you make the call, for yourself, instead of someone making it for a whole district.

How to read a banned book where you live

A school removal rarely reaches every copy. Here are the ways in:

• Start at your public library: a book pulled from a school is often still on the public library's shelves, and most libraries lend ebooks and audiobooks through an app.
• Request what's missing: if your library doesn't carry a title, put in a purchase request. Requests are one way libraries decide what to buy.
• Get a free digital card if you're a teen or young adult: Books Unbanned, run by Brooklyn Public Library with partners such as Seattle and Boston, gives young readers anywhere in the US access to its ebook collection. Over 51,000 readers from all 50 states had signed up by October 2025.
• Buy from an independent bookstore: many run Banned Books Week displays and can order anything still in print.
• Read it with someone: these books tend to start conversations, and a buddy read or a book club gives you people to have them with.
• Look a book up before a board meeting: Unite Against Book Bans keeps book résumés with reviews and awards for challenged titles.
• Report a challenge: if a book is under challenge in your area, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom collects reports and offers support.

Keeping track of what you read in Seekquel

Reading through a list like this one works best with a record of what you've finished and what's next. Seekquel gives you a few ways to keep one.

Make a custom shelf called "Banned books" and add titles as you go. Each shelf has its own public or private setting, so you decide who sees it.

Seekquel shows content warnings on books. You set a personal filter for the ones you'd rather know about up front.

Reading Identical or Looking for Alaska with a friend? A buddy read hides spoilers until each of you reaches the same milestone. Nobody gets the late turn early.

If you would rather start from a list than build one, follow Banned Books 2026. Every book in this post is on it, and readers can add more.

Seekquel runs no ads and promotes no books or authors. What you read and how you rate it stays your call.

If you want one place to start this week, pick up Sold. The chapters are short, some only a page long. It reads fast, even when the story is hard.