Book bans and challenges: October 3, 2025

Here's the latest news on book bans, challenges, and other literary obstacles — and efforts to fight back against them.

• Kelly Jensen analyzes the new PEN America report on book bans in the US in her opener to the weekly roundup of censorship news; the headlining fact is that the average age of the most-banned books is older than that of a high school senior — meaning that they were around when many banners were teens, yet didn't cause the societal ills that banners claim they will (Book Riot).

• Jensen also breaks down the depressing ruling from a Florida judge that allowed the removal of And Tango Makes Three — a book that tells the real-life story of two male penguins who bonded with each other and then raised a motherless chick — from a school library and notes what could be next in both this and other related cases (Book Riot).

• Katie McLain Horner reports on real-life instances of the US government violating the First Amendment, many of them directly involving literature (Book Riot).

• All Colorado residents will soon have free access to Anythink Libraries, which holds a digital collection of "roughly 300 banned and challenged titles and documents" (Literary Hub).

• The director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home resigned earlier this week, rather than be fired, because he resisted Melania Trump's request to give an original sword from the collection as a gift to King Charles III (CBS News).