Jenna Bush Hager and Ann Patchett talk about banning books, which PEN America recently reported have increased by over 200% during the 2023-2024 school year.

On the October 31 episode of Bush Hager’s podcast, Open book with JennaPatchett, 60, recalled learning that two of her books had been banned in Cook County, Florida.

“What I didn’t know until that night I went and looked, there were over 700 banned books in Cook County, Florida from Madame Bovary and Paradise Lost to a thriller from the 70s called Coma by Robin Cook,” Patchett said.

“What happens is that a person who can’t have anything to do with the school, no child in the school, can just call and say, ‘I want this book banned,'” the author said. “And they put it on the list, and apparently a large number of books come from one person. And then if you want the book to be delisted, you have to really make a case and fight and work hard.”

“People ban books they don’t even read,” the author added.

Bush Hager, 42, talks about her passion for reading and also talked about her children’s love of books. In March, the Read with Jenna The book club host shared a photo of her daughter Mila, 11, reading the young adult novel The summer I became pretty by Jenny Han.

“My daughter loves Jenny Han, she loves all her books and so do I,” Bush Hager said. “Mila loves them and reads them, devours them.”

“I posted a picture and there was an uproar,” Bush Hager added. “And I just thought, ‘Okay, so I can let my daughter read a book, in our house, and she can come to me with questions about what’s going on.’

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Bush Hager also noted that books can be a way to connect with each other, as she did with her father, the former president. George W. Bush.

“I think what books do is start conversations,” Bush Hager said. “They start conversations between parents and children. I got a text from my dad today saying, “I’m reading All the Colors of Darkness. It is very interesting. do you know And I love that.”

“That’s how it got to me,” Bush Hager added. “That’s how we stay connected… I think that’s what we need more of, is really talking and listening.”

Patchett, whose new children’s book, The Verts: A Story of Introverts and Extrovertscame out in September, she recalled that she was late learning to read as a child because her family was constantly moving.

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“I was always showing up at a new school, not going to school as much as I should have, and then not being responsible,” Patchett said. “And so I didn’t learn to read. And when people say to me, “Why did you know you wanted to be a writer when you were so young?” Sometimes I think, ‘I just wanted to be able to write?'”