More Than 100 Classic and Acclaimed Works of Literature Removed from Texas Schools Last Year

{This post was originally published on Texas Freedom to Read Project cofounder, Frank Strong's, independent Substack: Anger & Clarity. It is re-published here, with permission.}

Texas Freedom to Read Project is compiling information on book removals in the state of Texas in the 2025-2026 school year. It’s the most comprehensive attempt to track the statewide effects of book-banning bills—especially Senate Bill 12 and Senate Bill 13—that were passed in the state’s 2025 legislative session. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who made both of those bills a priority, has charged the Senate Education Committee with monitoring the implementation of SB12 and SB13, and making “recommendations for any legislation needed to improve, enhance, or complete implementation” of those laws.

We have a ton of information on how the implementation of those bills has played out, and we are going to make sure the Education Committee hears it.

One phenomenon we have seen repeatedly is the removal from schools of classic, acclaimed, and award-winning literature. We’ve compiled this spreadsheet of more than 100 of the noteworthy books we’ve seen pulled off the shelves in districts around the state. The list includes Nobel prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, and some of the books—like The Canterbury Tales and the Decameron—that form the foundations of Western culture.

And while Texas Freedom to Read Project is tracking both removals and restrictions, we want to be absolutely clear: These books have been removed from these districts. They are gone from the libraries, no longer accessible to students in the named districts.

Some classic and well-regarded novels have always been controversial, of course: The Bluest Eye, for example, and Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s bad enough that those books have been removed from many Texas districts. But the removals we’ve documented this year go beyond frequently challenged titles to include books that have been on high school reading lists for generations without controversy, books without which the teaching of literature is necessarily incomplete.

Why is this happening?

Whenever Texas Freedom to Read Project posts about the banning of classic books, people always ask Why did this happen? Did someone really think An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser, was sexually explicit?

And we usually answer: No.

These book removals often result from overly broad restrictions created in response to laws like SB13, or pressure from groups like Moms for Liberty, or the overall climate of fear about library books that has pervaded schools for the last five years. (1)

For example, New Braunfels ISD, Pilot Point ISD, Brazosport ISD, and several other districts have prohibited, even from their high schools, books that were written for adults—which includes most serious fiction, non-fiction, and memoirs. Montgomery ISD has told librarians that books are to be “free from controversial content.”

Screenshot from Montgomery ISD’s directives to its librarians.

As you can imagine, restrictions like those catch lots of undeserving books. The growing use of artificial intelligence in district decision-making compounds the problem; we’ve seen prompts that ask AI bots to search for books that have been challenged or removed in other districts, meaning that bad decisions in one district get repeated in many others.

But also: book banners are targeting classic books

But we want to make this absolutely clear, too: classic books are being removed because book banners are targeting classic books.

Too often we treat the removal of classic books from Texas schools as collateral damage, an unexpected side effect of book banners’ attempts to remove other books. But it keeps happening because the people behind these laws knew some of these books would be removed as a result of their actions and either didn’t care or wanted it to happen.

No, not every book on our spreadsheet has been specifically targeted. Yes, the people behind these book banning laws will act like the removal of some of these books was the last thing they intended.

But consider this: Citizens Defending Freedom, one of the organizations at the heart of just about every attempt to ban books in Texas, circulates a list of 700 “explicit titles in schools” that includes Lonesome Dove, Native Son, Elie Wiesel’s Night, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse-Five, The House on Mango Street, The Color Purple, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Love in the Time of Cholera. Another prominent book-banning group has demanded that districts remove books from a list that includes The Bell Jar, The Handmaid’s Tale, Like Water for Chocolate, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

If you’re a librarian being hounded by activists demanding that you remove The House on Mango Street and Love in the Time of Cholera, and the AI program your boss forces you to use says A Streetcar Named Desire is a risky book, what grounds do you have to defend it?

You can’t go back to classics when you’re banning classics

The irony is that these removals come as Texas politicians promote a return to what they’re calling “classical” education, including canonical literature of the very sort their laws are getting removed from schools. State Representative Brad Buckley, who sponsored SB13 in the Texas House, wrote to the State Board of Education about the importance of ensuring “that students are reading classical and canonical works that push their ability to read, comprehend, and think critically.”

And GOP official Christin Bentley, who championed SB13 and SB12 through the legislative process last session, has written that “good education” means that “classical texts are used to build curiosity, understanding and deeper learning.”

Buckley and Bentley, of course, are as responsible for the removal of The Canterbury Tales as anybody in the state. You can’t lock arms with the people calling librarians “groomers” for shelving Brave New World and The Picture of Dorian Gray, or pass the laws that give those people everything they want, and then act shocked when canonical texts get removed from schools.

If Texas lawmakers really care about literature—whether it be classical, canonical, or contemporary—they’ll stop passing overly broad laws that terrorize educators. And when the next legislative session begins in January, they’ll get to work undoing the damage they’ve caused.

(1) “… the climate of fear around library books …” Yes, I realize how absurd this phrase sounds as I type it.

About Frank Strong

Frank Strong is one of the three co-directors and founders of Texas Freedom to Read Project. Frank is a parent, writer, and English teacher in Austin, Texas. He does this work for his students, for his love of literature, and so that his daughter can have what he got from his Texas schools growing up: teachers and school libraries that opened up worlds for him that he’s still exploring today. 

Subscribe to Frank Strong's Substack: Anger & Clarity, here.