Florida Banned 700 Books in 2023

700

“Florida school districts axed about 700 books from school libraries in the 2023-2024 school year, according to a Florida Department of Education list,” the Washington Post reports. Some of the removed titles that are works of classic literature, including “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess, “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou.

Florida Democrats Are Using DeSantis’ Book-Banning Law to Ban His Book

If America doesn’t want Florida’s present reality to become America’s future reality, people need to know what it’s like here. … This is our way of fighting back, but also highlighting how ridiculous some of this becomes, right?

— Fentrice Driskell, the minority leader in the Florida House, who is leading an effort across 50 Florida counties to see if any of them might review or ban Gov. Ron DeSantis’ book based on his law’s vague and unwieldy criteria, reports The Daily Beast.

Florida Schools Have Banned 560 Books Over the Past Year

According to the Temple Terrace Patch, many of the books have been made into movies and TV shows.

More than 560 books were targeted by school districts in the Sunshine state over the past year, according to the report from PEN America, a New York-based literary and free expression nonprofit advocacy group. The report highlights how challenges to books have become a political issue nationwide. A majority of the targeted books focus on sexual identity, race and racism.

The report, “Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools,” said the majority of book bans weren’t “spontaneous, organic expressions” of concern by parents and citizens, but rather “reflect the work of a growing number of advocacy organizations that have made demanding censorship of certain books and ideas in schools part of their mission.”

Nobel Prize and Pulitzeer Prize winner Toni Morrison was a repeat offender with “The Bluest Eye” and “Beloved.”