Nov. 1 (UPI) — More than 10,000 books were banned from public schools across the country during the 2023-2024 school year, marking a “dramatic” 200 percent increase from the previous year, PEN America said Friday.

About 43 percent of book bans, or 4,295 bans, were cases where the books were completely barred from access, ineligible for either review or availability with newly imposed restrictions, the free speech group found in his new report, Banned in the US: Beyond the Shelves.

Outright bans as a percentage of all textbook bans increased by 16 percentage points in 2023-24 (43%) compared to previous years (27%), the report said.

As of 2021, PEN America says it has counted nearly 16,000 cases of book bans in public schools.

“This crisis is tragic for young people who are hungry to understand the world they live in and see their identities and experiences reflected in books,” said the group’s Freedom to Read program director, Kasey Meehan. a statement.

“Time goes by very quickly when you’re in 6th or 11th grade – with a lot to learn,” he added “What students can read in schools provides the foundation for their lives, whether it’s critical thinking, empathy through difference. , personal well-being or long-term success.

“Defending the core principles of public education and the freedom to read, learn, and think is as necessary now as ever.”

Blaming what it called “individuals and groups who take extremely conservative views,” PEN America said the most targeted titles were those dealing with issues of race, sexuality and gender identity — similar to previous years.

A new emerging category of banned books are those that “describe topics that young people face in the real world,” such as substance abuse, suicide, depression, mental health issues and sexual violence, the group found.

Florida and Iowa led the nation in the number of textbook bans. Florida banned more than 4,500 titles, while Iowa banned more than 3,600. Across the country, 29 states and 220 public school districts issued documented bans during the 2023-2024 school year, according to the report.

The most frequently banned books were Nineteen minutes by bestselling author Jodi Picoult, Looking for Alaska by John Green, the perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Sold by Patricia McCormick and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher.

Nineteen minutes is a 2007 bestseller about a school shooting. Its author, Jodi Picoult, said the rapidly increasing number of book bans was “a wake-up call”.

“Nineteen minutes it’s banned not because it’s about a school shooting, but because of a single page that depicts a date rape and uses anatomically correct words for the human body,” she said. “It’s not gratuitous or salacious, and it’s not — as book banners state — porn.

“Actually, hundreds of kids have told me this reading Nineteen minutes stopped them from committing a school shooting or showed them that they are not alone in feeling isolated. My book, and the ten thousand others that have been pulled from school library shelves this year, give children a tool to deal with an increasingly divided and difficult world. These book banners are not helping the kids. I hurt them,” added Picoult.