Book bans and challenges: November 21, 2025

Here's the news on book bans, challenges, and other obstacles to literature and reading that we came across Friday, November 21, 2025.

• In a survey done by the University of Cambridge, 51 percent of published novelists said they believed artificial intelligence could eventually replace their work entirely (The Guardian). 

• Kelly Jensen provides a general look at anti-book ban/freedom to read legislation and specific looks at such bills in the works in Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania, in the opener to her weekly roundup of book ban and challenge news (Book Riot). 

• Martha White, a granddaughter and the literary executor of Charlotte's Web author E.B. White, sharply criticized federal immigration officials for naming one of their raids after the beloved children book, saying her grandfather "certainly didn’t believe in masked men, in unmarked cars, raiding people’s homes and workplaces without IDs or summons" (CNN).