‘Rapid acceleration’ in US school book censorship leads to 2,500 bans in a year

Gender Queer: A Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, was the most banned book of the school year. Titles dealing with race and sexuality were among the most targeted. Photograph: Rick Bowmer/AP

There is a “rapid acceleration” of book censorship occurring across the US, with more than 2,500 different book bans taking place over the past school year, a new report has found.

A total of 1,648 individual book titles, many of them that mention issues relating to race or sexuality, were the subject of bans by school districts in 32 states in the last school year, according to the new analysis.