10 Actions to Fight Book Bans

The number of challenged and banned books in the United States has soared in recent years. According to Pen America, there were 22,810 instances of banned books in U.S. public schools from 2021 to 2025. Books have also been removed from libraries, museum shops, and even the United States Defense Department schools. The majority of titles that have been targeted contain themes about race, gender, or sexuality -- in effect erasing or decreasing access to important stories, identities, experiences, and history. We must fight this censorship! To help us all take action and make a difference, Just Us Books has created the Banned Books Pledge.

I Pledge To:

1. Read more banned children's books.

2. Introduce 5-10 different banned children's books to educators, librarians, bookstore managers and parents-anyone who has influence and/or power to help increase the number of these books within our body of children's literature. 

3. Donate banned children's books to youth organizations, literacy programs and youth community groups. 

4. Prioritize buying these books from independent publishers, independent bookstores and vendors. 

5. Support and get involved with organizations like the Banned Books Week Coalition, Authors Against Book Bans, The Kids' Right to Read Project and other efforts to fight censorship in kidlit. 

6. When visiting a bookstore or library, encourage managers to include more banned children's books. Take the initiative to purchase or borrow from the library at least one banned book to show my commitment to supporting these books. 

7. Encourage educators and administrators to include banned books among their classroom resources. 

8. Encourage book reviewers and bloggers to include banned books among the titles they spotlight. 

9. Publicly celebrate banned books, including sharing them on social media, book review sites and through personal recommendations.

10. Encourage others to take this pledge.

RESOURCES
PEN America Banned in the USA. The Normalization of Book Banning
AuthorsAgainstBookBans

BANNED BOOK LISTS

Jane Addams Peace Association
BooksandAuthors Freely We Read: Picture Books Middle Grade Books Young Adult

PEN America

HuffPo