


Picoult noted that one of her targeted books, The Storyteller, is a novel about the Holocaust that chronicles the growth of anti-Semitism and fascism in Nazi Germany. Send a letter to Martin County asking them to put books back on shelves. Complaints erroneously stated that all of Jodi Picoult’s books are “adult romance,” and alleged that former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds is “controversial.” John Green’s Looking for Alaska was targeted for being “depressing.” It appears that the majority of these books were removed in response to a single objector in the district, a local leader with the group Moms For Liberty, who filed forms indicating that she did not actually read any of the books in question. Some were removed from multiple locations, for a total of 92 book bans. Last week, Martin County, Florida, released a list of dozens of books it had removed from school libraries, including 20 books by Jodi Picoult, nine books from James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series, and two books by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison.

2023 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony.
