Banned Books Week is starting, but the book banners never stop

Just in time for Banned Books Week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law banning book bans under certain circumstances. But that’s not going to stop the very dedicated forces of censorship, one of whom The Washington Post profiled this week.

Last spring, a Post analysis found that 11 people in the entire United States account for 60% of the formal requests filed to remove specific books from schools. Jennifer Petersen is one of them. She’s a Virginia woman who has, over the past year, challenged 71 books in the Spotsylvania County Public Schools.

All of Petersen’s challenges are based on sexual content, which she painstakingly documents in books she reads for the purposes of getting them banned. She follows lists of books facing banning efforts, reads them, virtually always concludes they are offensive—those 71 books she’s challenged are out of 73 total she’s read for this purpose—and goes to the school board to complain. Since the Spotsylvania school board made news in 2021 when two members called for book-burning, she has a sympathetic audience.