PEN recorded nearly 12,000 instances of book banning affecting 7,370 unique titles across 114 U.S. school districts during the 2025–26 academic year, a record high since PEN began tracking literary censorship in American public schools in 2021.
Gross.
We read Huck Finn aloud in class my freshman year (highschool). OUT LOUD. I don’t think that would happen like that today. To be fair, our teacher explained the book and how a certain word was in it repeatedly, and if anyone objected to it in the class, we would read it on our own….. (The poor kid who landed on it first.. hahaha.)
Wow, Huck Finn is a stretch for me even as an adult and I’m not talking about the racist word. Do you remember how you felt about the book?