(NewsNation) — Efforts to ban or remove books from school libraries skyrocketed last year, catapulted by prominent political figures advocating for parental choice in education.

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracks challenges issued to remove books. It found that in the first three months of the 2021 school year alone, more than 330 unique cases of challenges were reported. That’s twice the number of challenges filed in all of 2020. By the year’s end, the association tracked 1,597 total challenges, more than half of which were reported at schools and school libraries.

“I would say in most of the past few years, until about the middle of 2021, the most common report is to have one or two books being challenged at the same time,” said Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at the non-profit PEN America. “Fast forward to today — now the reports most often have, I would say, at least five books being challenged at once, if not 24 or 100, or 282 in one district.”

Challenging books — that is, filing a complaint to have the book removed or banned — isn’t a new concept. But increasingly, challenges aren’t following traditional protocol, according to research from PEN America. Challenges overall are happening more frequently, too, often against books with LGBTQ, racial or sexual content. ...