Throwing the Book at Librarians

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

 

Here’s the entry for the verb form of “ban” over at Dictionary.com: “to prohibit, forbid, or bar; interdict. to ban nuclear weapons.” Examples include: “The dictator banned all newspapers and books that criticized his regime.”

 

And here’s the definition of “ban” as a noun: “the act of prohibiting by law; interdiction.”

 

Now, here are some recent headlines:

 

“Book bans and attempted bans remain at record highs, with ‘Sold’ topping the list” (the Washington Post); “Book bans mired at record high” (The Hill); Book Bans in U.S. Hit Record Levels (Daily Beast); “Book bans hit 4,235 titles in 2025 as group warns censorship is near record highs” (CBS affiliate KOMO). Lots of these, and many more, are based on the AP story about the Monday release of the American Library Association’s annual list of “Banned and Challenged Books.”

 

Some articles are more nuanced than others about the ALA’s methodology and definitions. A banned book is a book that is removed from a library. A book has been “challenged” if someone or some group merely complained about it. The complaints vary. Some challenges are simply about whether the work is age-appropriate and should therefore require parental approval or only be available upon request. Others request or demand outright removal from the library’s collection. The ALA is not very helpful in breaking down these distinctions.

 

Still, I’ll be clear up front: I think some of the challenges are silly, overwrought, or bigoted. If I were a librarian, I’d be pissed if I were told A Clockwork Orange should be removed because some activists think it’s icky.

 

But let’s look at the most challenged book of 2025, Sold by Patricia McCormick. I haven’t read it, but from the reviews and Amazon page it sounds like a good, albeit disturbing, book. It’s received awards and made many “best of” lists. What’s it about? A 13-year-old girl who is sold into prostitution. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “hard-hitting” and says that “the author beautifully balances the harshness of brothel life with the poignant relationships among its residents.” In a starred review, Booklist calls it, “An unforgettable account of sexual slavery as it exists now.” It was a National Book Award finalist. (At least that’s what the Amazon page tells me).

 

It has also sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide and is available at thousands of libraries and pretty much every bookseller in America. First published 20 years ago, it is currently the No. 1 book bestseller in Amazon’s category of “Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Sexual Abuse.” Though, as is often the case, charges that a book has been “banned” tend to boost sales.

 

But, come on. Sold hasn’t been banned anywhere in the United States. Indeed, the Supreme Court basically banned book banning more than 50 years ago. The last serious attempt to ban a category of books—ones intended to influence elections—came from the Obama administration, which argued in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the government could prohibit the publication of books (and other media, like documentaries) that might influence voter decisions near elections.

 

In the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, mere possession, never mind sale or publication, of banned books was a crime. I’m not up to speed on the rules in modern China or Iran, but from what I’ve read, book bans in these countries mean, at minimum, that it is illegal to import, publish, sell, or distribute them, and I’m going to just guess that possessing them is not the safest thing to do either. I’m pretty comfortable saying that book bans in North Korea have teeth as well.

 

So, just talking about the plain meaning of words, it is journalistic malpractice to talk about “book bans” in the way that many news outlets do on a regular basis.

 

Let’s provide some more context.

 

There are roughly 9,000 public library systems in the U.S., with about 17,000 outlets. There are another 3,700 or so academic libraries. And, according to the ALA’s own statistics, there are between 90,000 and 98,506 public school libraries in America.

 

And how many times was Sold challenged—again, not banned—in 2025?

 

Thirty-six.

 

The ALA doesn’t tell us if any of the challenges resulted in having the book removed from the shelves. But let’s assume for argument’s sake that in all 36 cases it was removed.

 

That would mean that out of some 120,000 libraries (give or take), Sold was removed from .03 percent of libraries.

 

The horror.

 

Look, I am stipulating that it’s a good book. I am also happy to concede that libraries should carry it, all things being equal. But is it so outrageous to think an “unforgettable account of sexual slavery as it exists now” shouldn’t be readily available to third-graders? I’m asking sincerely. I’m fine with my 23-year-old daughter reading it. Would I want her to read it at age 10? Probably not. Would I want my kid’s grade school to require parental permission before she could take it out, or even take it down from a shelf? Yes, yes, I would. I certainly wouldn’t have bought it for her until she was older. That doesn’t make me a character out of Fahrenheit 451 or 1984.

 

It’s very strange that in a world where trigger warnings are a thing for grown-ups, people set their hair on fire about others wanting to restrict access to tales of forced prostitution and brothel life to very young children. (And let’s be clear: Sold is by no means the most controversial or offensive book being challenged out there). I mean, I can’t listen to NPR or watch a news broadcast about sex abuse without the host or anchor warning the audience that “mature themes” or “disturbing images” are coming up. But the equivalent for books is nightmare fuel for many progressives and journalists.

 

Almost every day I catch one of the ACLU fundraising ads featuring authors Judy Blume and Jason Reynolds freaking people out about the rising tide of book-banning in America. Book banning in America “is worse than I’ve ever seen,” Blume tells us. “It’s people in power who want to control everything. Well, I say ‘no’ to censorship.”

 

“We all have a First Amendment right to read and learn different viewpoints,” Reynolds says. “That’s why every book belongs on the shelf.”

 

I agree that all adults have a First Amendment right to read and learn different viewpoints (the usual caveats about obscenity laws and the like notwithstanding). But the idea that every book deserves to be on a library shelf is preposterous nonsense.

 

Indeed, if every library carried every book, why would we even need librarians? Part of their job is to curate what books they have in their collections. Why? Because there is a finite amount of space in any library.

 

I couldn’t find recent numbers on how many books are in the average public school library. But a 2009 report said that it caps out at just below 14,000 books. There are more than 1 million titles published in the United States (meaning they are currently available for purchase). Thanks to the explosion of self-publishing, some 4 million books were published in 2025 alone, though only 642,242 of them were released by traditional publishers, according to Publishers Weekly.

 

Look, I’m as confused as you probably are at how you can have just over a million active titles in print when we’re churning out 4 million (or 642,000) books in a single calendar year. But I’m told that it makes sense when you factor in how many books essentially evaporate upon publication. But any way you slice it, a library with room for 14,000 books in total—and room for a tiny fraction of new books—means librarians have a job to do in picking what books to carry and which ones not to carry. Indeed, for every new crop of books added to a library, it is a fact of logic that some will have to go.

 

And that’s what so grating about Blume’s saccharine populist prattle about “people in power who want to control everything.”

 

You know who has a lot of power over libraries? Librarians. And, not surprisingly, librarians and their trade association would like to keep it that way. That’s fine. That’s human. But their arguments are cynical and demagogic.

 

Again, I am sure I disagree with lots of angry parents or activist groups like Moms for Liberty about what books should be allowed in public libraries and schools. But I also know that I disagree with a lot of librarians, too. Disagreeing with librarians isn’t censorship. And winning an argument with a librarian about a specific title in a specific school is not book-banning.

 

Journalists notoriously show an inordinate amount of deference to trade associations and other “good” organizations they agree with. Lots of journalists take any statement of the Southern Poverty Law Center at face value, because they want a credentialled organization to lend heft to their worldview. Every year, the American Society of Civil Engineers gives America a bad grade on its “Infrastructure Report Card.” And every year, people who want to spend billions on our “crumbling infrastructure” cite it as dispositive evidence that we need to spend more, despite the fact that our infrastructure is not crumbling. That is why ASCE puts out the report card. The same journalists—or their editors—who swallow their findings uncritically become suddenly skeptical when some group raises similar warnings that conflict with the preferred narrative. Long before the Heritage Foundation became such a mess, it issued “report cards” on military readiness. Do you remember reading about them? Do you remember mainstream outlets uncritically amplifying them?

 

The ALA website is chock-a-block with self-congratulatory encomiums to the vital role libraries play in a democracy: “The freedom to read is essential to our democracy.” I agree with some of their arguments. Libraries are good things.

 

The group’s “Freedom to Read” statement says, “Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad.”

 

Well.

 

You know what else is a fundamental premise of our democracy? That children aren’t “ordinary individuals.” The biggest clue that I am right about that: Children aren’t allowed to vote. They’re also not allowed to ditch school, drive cars, fight in wars, or watch R-rated movies without a parent. But it’s antithetical to democracy to say they shouldn’t be allowed to read R-rated books without parental consent? Come on.

 

Also, given that librarians get to decide what tiny fraction of the total number of books to carry and which they shouldn’t, they are claiming an unquestionable monopoly to select “the good and reject the bad” when it comes to the books in their collections? That doesn’t sound very democratic to me.

 

Why do I say it’s unquestionable? Because if you question their decisions, you are guilty of pushing for the “suppression” of “the fundamental premise of democracy.” And pliant media outlets will describe you or your organization as a bunch of censors and book banners.

 

Who elected librarians to be the unassailable voice of democracy? At least school boards and politicians have been elected—which is an even bigger part of democracy than libraries.

 

The ALA sponsors a program called Everyday Democracy and something called the “Dialogue to Change” process, which “encourages diverse groups of people to come together, engage in inclusive and respectful dialogue, and find common solutions to community problems.” Of course, it “places a great deal of importance to using a ‘racial equity lens’ at every stage of the process …”

 

The ALA tells us that “Topics suited for this model” include “community issues such as racism, violence, regional sprawl, and more. Any issue where community members need to be part of crafting a solution.” I just wonder, what if—looking through a racial lens—a local community decided through lengthy change-dialoging, that the library shouldn’t carry the newsletter of the KKK or back issues of white supremacist publication Stormfront. What if crafting a solution to the problem of growing racism in the community was the prohibition of the regular meetings of the Nick Fuentes Book Club on library property? (I know what you’re thinking: “That’s ridiculous, those racist jabronis don’t read.” But still.)

 

That’s not the ALA’s preferred process, but would it be so outrageous for members of the racially sensitive, small-d democratic gathering to make the case? Not in my opinion. But fine, let’s imagine instead that the librarian insisted with Dr. Strangelovian “there’s no fighting in the war room!” irony, that library offerings are not suitable topics for “everyday democracy” powwows and required you to fill out all of the right forms consistent with the Library Bill of Rights, which the ALA says must “protect the rights of individuals to express their opinions about library resources and services.”

 

How Orwellian is it that following the democratic, First Amendment-faithful process prescribed by the American Library Association amounts to “censorship” or “book banning” whenever it’s successful?