FCC Research Guides: Banned Books Resource Guide: Take Action

Report Censorship

Report Censorship to the American Library Association (ALA)
Reporting censorship and challenges to materials, resources, and services is vital to developing the best resources to defend library resources and to protect against challenges before they happen. Use the form at this link.
File a Discrimination Complaint with the Office for Civil Rights
OCR’s mission is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence through vigorous enforcement of civil rights in our nation’s schools.

Read Banned Books!

Banned Book Resumes (from United Against Book Bans)
Book Résumés help teachers, librarians, parents, and community members defend books from censorship. They detail each title’s significance and educational value and are easy to share with administrators, book review committees, elected officials, and board members.
Index of School Book Bans – 2021-2022 (PEN America)
From July 2021 to June 2022, PEN America found 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 unique book titles. The 2021-2022 banned book list is a searchable index of each documented book ban in the school year.
Queer Liberation Library
A free virtual library that gives anyone living in the US access to books about LGBTQIA+ information and narratives. It also includes many books on social justice and information related to race. Essentially, it is a growing resource to combat book banning and keep information accessible.
Reading with Pride: Resources for Educators
Discover an array of resources centered on historic and contemporary queer picture books, and explore scholarly essays on LGBTQ+ children’s literature that trace the shifting attitudes, norms, and realities of queer life over the last 50 years.
Recommended Banned Books (from Social Justice Books - A Teaching for Change Project)
The majority of banned books are written by and about Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian-American, and LGBTQ+ authors and characters whose stories speak powerful and important truths about history, identity, resilience, and imagination.
Shhhh! These Kid’s Books Have Been Banned or Challenged
A list of frequent challenged or banned books recommended by the Evanston (IL) Public Library.
Top 10 Most Challenged Books Lists, 2001-2021 (American Library Association)
The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2021. Of the 1597 books that were targeted, here are the most challenged, along with the reasons cited for censoring the books . . .
Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2022 (American Library Association))
ALA documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago.
Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books: 2010-2019 (American Library Association)
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has been documenting attempts to ban books in libraries and schools since 1990. OIF compiled this list of the most banned and challenged books from 2010-2019 . . .

Join a Banned Books Club

Velshi Banned Book Club
MSNBC’s Ali Velshi brings you the “Velshi Banned Book Club,” an act of resistance against the epidemic of book banning. In each episode, a different author of a banned book joins Ali to talk about why their work is being targeted and about the literature itself.
Banned Books Club (Digital Public Library of America)
The mission of the Banned Books Club is "to provide anyone who is in a library that has banned a book access to the digital version for free."

Explore Organizational Initiatives & Toolkits

56 Small Tasks to Be Proactive Against Book Censorship in 2025 [by Kelly Jensen for Book Riot]
". . . a massive list of ideas for things you can do to not only effectively fight against book censorship but that also will increase your own knowledge, vocabulary, and fluency in the world of censorship as it is right now."
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"Intended to be 52 tasks, one for each week; thanks to input and insight from several others working in the anti-book censorship space, there are a few more tasks than there are weeks in the year. This gives you the opportunity to choose one task per week with a few bonus tasks and/or gives you the chance to do more than one task a week when you have the capacity to do so. . .

One of the best ways we learn about our capacity to be agents of change is through reflection. To help a bit with this, as the list below can be overwhelming to take in as a whole, I’ve put every task below into a Google Spreadsheet for you to use in tracking, documenting, and including any notes that might help you along the way. The document is locked, so to edit it, you’ll need to go to File, then Make a Copy onto your own Google Drive." -Kelly Jensen
Book Bans – A Guide for Community Response and Action Toolkit (GLAAD)
GLAAD created this guide for communities to defeat book ban attempts, and send a powerful signal of welcome and acceptance.
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Book bans baselessly and disingenuously purport to be about protecting children and parents’ rights, when their true intent is aimed at limiting the rising visibility and acceptance of LGBTQ youth, and removing parents’ rights to make private health care decisions for their families, or determine what their own children can read.
Florida Freedom to Read Project
Started in January of 2022, the Florida Freedom to Read Project connects parent organizations across the state of Florida and focuses our energy on defending every student’s right to access information and ideas while at school.
Postcard Advocacy
Whether there are book bans or challenges taking place in your community or if you would like to show your support for a job well done, a postcard can be a great advocacy tool.
Unite Against Book Bans Action Toolkit
A small but vocal group is driving the current flood of book bans in school and public libraries across the country. It's important to counter those voices by uniting in support of the freedom to read in your local community.
What You Can Do (from Penguin Random House)
We’ve partnered with experts on the front lines – authors, teachers, librarians, parents, students, and booksellers – to highlight some of the most impactful ways you can get involved.