Why not just ban all the books?
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Why not just ban all the books?
Keyword searches for "justice" and "pride" drive what ideas are being kept from kids
Published June 20, 2026 9:00AM (EDT)
Veronica Arreola found out that a children’s book she authored was among the most banned in the United States from an unlikely source: People magazine. “Someone I had a date with sent me a text of a screenshot and was like, ‘Is this you? And is your book banned?’ She sent me a link to the story in People, which was about the rise of nonfiction books being banned, and a link to a PEN America report that listed the top 29 books banned in the 2024–2025 school year. And my book was on that list. I was like, this is bizarre. It’s bizarre that it’s being banned, and this is a bizarre way of finding out.
No one thought Pete Hegseth was spending his time paging through a towering pile of books looking for subversive content; the DoD list was simply a result of challenging any book that mentioned justice, or activism, or rainbows.
Arreola’s book, “J Is for Justice! an Activism Alphabet,” was published in 2023 by Sunbird Books. The small, colorful board book isn’t the typical banned book, mostly because parents are usually either doing or directing the reading. It introduces simple, appropriate words for things associated with activism, but not only with activism; “Q is for quilt” pictures the AIDS Memorial Quilt, “F is for folding chair,” nods to Shirley Chisholm‘s quote “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” “I wanted this book to be a way that adults could have difficult conversations with kids. Kids see things, and they want to know why,” says Arreola, a Chicago activist (and, full disclosure, a longtime friend and colleague). “The example I’ve been using is that when my daughter was 5, she recognized that we........
