Book about book bans banned by Florida school board

A book about book bans has been banned in a Florida school district.

In a peculiar case of life imitating art, Jennifer Pippin, a parent in the coastal community, challenged the book.

Pippin is also the chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, a far-right organization that has been behind many of the book bans that have swept across the US in recent years. According to a 2023 PEN America report, 81% of school districts that banned books between July 2022 and June 2023 were within or adjoined a county with a local chapter of a group such as Moms for Liberty.

Besides Pippin, two of the school board members who voted in favor of banning the book, Jacqueline Rosario and Gene Posca, had support from Moms for Liberty during their campaigns.

Rosario and Posca did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to the Tallahassee Democrat, Gratz noted the irony of his book being banned.

Book bans have picked up steam in recent years and not shown any sign of slowing down. In fact, the American Library Association issued data earlier this year that noted there had been a massive uptick in the number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries in the US in 2023. The number of titles targeted for censorship increased by 92% over the previous year (2022), accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023.

The data also noted that there had been 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship, as well as 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials and resources in 2023.