BOULDER, Colo. — The books Katie Spoon wanted to find should have been on the shelves at the Boulder County Library's main branch. They're banned in some school districts across the country but not there.
"It's kind of hard to find books," the University of Colorado Ph.D. student said as she navigated the library's stacks.
Eventually, she found the five books she was looking for. All five were children's picture books. All five have been banned in some school districts in America.
"I didn't know much about banned books and kind of just assumed they were like the ones I had seen on the banned books shelves at bookstores or in the media," she said.
According to PEN America’s Banned in the USA report, more than 2,500 books were banned in U.S. schools during the 2021-22 school year.
Spoon’s study got underway that summer.
"So, we wanted to do a really comprehensive study of the first wave of banned books that happened recently," she said. "And so, the first thing we did was just collect as much information we could about the books."
She thought they’d find popular titles taking up most of the list, but that wasn’t the case.
"We found that most of the books didn't have any sales information and didn't have any searches, even before they were banned," she said. "They were just pretty low-interest books in general."
They also found children’s books made up the bulk of the book bans.
"So, we found that authors of color and especially women of color, were much more likely to be banned compared to white authors," she said. "I think that's because of the majority of books being children's books, and a lot of authors, especially of children's books, write about their identities."
Spoon said the findings were unsettling.
"Some of these bans are getting through, and there’s not an understanding of what content is actually being banned," she said.
Key findings
- Over half of all banned books during the 2021-2022 school year were children’s books about historical figures and those featuring diverse characters, including LGBTQ+ and people of color.
- Women of color were much more likely to be banned than white authors.
- Counties with a weakened Republican majority over the past two decades were more likely to ban books compared to those with a Republican stronghold.
They also looked at the communities where books were being banned. The number one indicator for whether a district would ban a book surprised her.
"The top thing that came out as predicting a book would be banned was the share of the Republican vote decreasing over time," Spoon said.
She said the study’s results are important because book banning is a slippery slope that could lead to censorship elsewhere.
"Especially in a democracy, knowledge and access to knowledge and information is really important," she said.