Banned books in Texas schools

141 titles reported as removed, restricted, or formally challenged by at least one Texas school district. This is a state-aggregated view; the specific district and policy vary per title. See each book’s page for its full citation history.

Sources

PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans and the ALA most-challenged list. New Braunfels ISD 2025–26 removal lists via the Texas Freedom to Read Project and KSAT (26 March 2026). Texas Department of Education: tea.texas.gov.

Best-documented removal in Texas

What Girls Are Made Of

Elana K. Arnold · 9 districts · removed

See price on AmazonView on AmazonAbout this book

Affiliate link: as an Amazon Associate, ReadingList earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Try it on audio — free. Kids who struggle with the print versions often finish the assigned books by listening.

Listen free on Audiblestarts instantly

New members only · many assigned titles are included with the membership. As an Amazon Associate, ReadingList earns from qualifying purchases and membership trials at no extra cost to you.

Each title below shows how far its removal actually reached. Most are decided by a single district and many are still under review, which is not the same as a statewide ban. For 65 of these 141 titles our source copy records the challenge but not the district detail; those are marked “district detail not recorded” rather than left blank, because a missing label is not evidence of a narrower ban.

Show all 141 titles

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

How book challenges work in Texas

Texas Senate Bill 13, signed on 20 June 2025, tightened school-library standards and parental oversight, and the largest documented district response so far is New Braunfels ISD's 2025–26 collection review. The district's own published action logs list 621 high-school rows (505 titles weeded under SB 13 and 64 moved to an AP Literature restricted section), 795 middle-school titles re-placed into high-school collections, and 43 elementary titles removed. ReadingList matched those logs against its catalogue on 11 September 2026 and tagged the 58 matching titles on this page; the many removed titles not in the catalogue, including memoirs by Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, are not listed here. Sources: the district's removal lists as published by the Texas Freedom to Read Project, KSAT's 26 March 2026 records report, and the San Antonio Current's 23 March 2026 report.

Texas has 141 titles on file as banned, restricted, or formally challenged by at least one Texas public-school district in the public sources ReadingList aggregates from (PEN America's Index of School Book Bans and the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom most-challenged list). These tracked numbers represent FORMAL challenges that reached district board minutes, ALA OIF reporting, or PEN America's quarterly index — quieter classroom-level removals that never reached those national trackers are not captured here, so the actual scope of restriction in Texas is plausibly larger than this list reflects.

Book challenges in Texas typically follow a layered process: a parent, board member, or community member files a written request for reconsideration of an assigned title with a specific school or district; the district convenes a review committee (usually comprising teachers, librarians, administrators, and sometimes parent representatives); the committee reads the book, evaluates it against the district's selection criteria and against Texas ELA standards, holds at least one public comment session, and votes to retain, restrict (e.g., grade-level limits or parental consent), or remove the title from the approved curriculum. Decisions are typically appealable to the state board of education within a defined window.

Common challenge bases across the 141 Texas titles tracked here mirror the national pattern: sexual content (most common), LGBTQ+ themes, race and racism, profanity or violence, religion and political content, and depictions of substance abuse. Tracked titles include: What Girls Are Made Of; The Bluest Eye; The Handmaid's Tale. Each title's detail page lists the specific Texas district that initiated the challenge, the date, and (when published) the formal challenge basis recorded in district minutes. For deeper context on national patterns, the linked PEN America and ALA pages publish quarterly and annual reports.

For parents, teachers, librarians, and students in Texas navigating this landscape: the practical paths forward depend on role. Parents who object to a specific assigned title can typically request an alternative assignment from the teacher directly without initiating a formal challenge — most Texas districts have informal opt-out paths well before the formal reconsideration process kicks in. Librarians and teachers facing pressure to remove a title can document the formal selection criteria the book met, gather student-reader testimonials (with FERPA-compliant consent), and align with the National Coalition Against Censorship for advisory support. Students directly affected by a book removal can speak at the school board meeting where the decision is reviewed — public comment is open to all Texas district residents. Texas's Department of Education publishes the formal procedural framework — the source link is in the sources block above.

This page aggregates titles reported across multiple Texasdistricts. A statewide ban is rare; most removals are at the district or individual-school level, and many challenged books remain available elsewhere in the state. Cite the primary source on each title’s page for classroom use.
Know a parent or teacher who needs this? Share it:FacebookPinterest

Was this page helpful?

Browse by another angle

Find ReadingList in your Google results more often: