This spring marks five years of escalating attacks on books and libraries in America. Throughout 2026, organizations across the spectrum will be marking this anniversary, both to emphasize how long and complex this battle has been and to champion and celebrate the work being done to protect equitable access to books and libraries. Let’s begin, though, with what we can count and track most easily: banned books from between 2021 and 2026. There are currently four authoritative lists of banned book titles. These are books we know have been banned based on reported and/or published data, as well as because they’re on a state-sponsored list of banned titles. Most of the books banned in America go undocumented , so what we know from these lists represents but a fraction of how widespread the practice of literary censorship is. PEN America reports that since the 2021 school year, about 23,000 books have been banned based on documentation.…