PEN America and more than 20 banned authors and illustrators — including Lois Lowry, Roxane Gay, Juno Dawson, Maia Kobabe, Carmen Maria Machado, Rupi Kaur, among others — are asking Missouri schools to reverse their dangerous book bans.
Missouri has banned nearly 300 books this fall, including Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus, and graphic novel adaptations of George Orwell’s 1984, The Bible, and the Gettysburg Address.
These alarming book bans have been in response to a new Missouri law that contains a provision establishing a criminal penalty for providing “explicit sexual material” to students.
The bans represent a grave threat to the freedom to read and will affect students across the state. And they are just one example of a larger effort to censor books in schools across the US that continues to evolve, with mass removals of books, new legislative proposals targeting publishers, and the passage of restrictive school district policies.
Read more about the Missouri bans on PEN.org and sign your name to PEN America’s open letter asking Missouri schools to reverse these bans.
