Recently, the United States has seen a meteoric rise in book bans. PEN America has documented almost 6,000 book bans across the country in the past two years alone. At least 1,200 books have been permanently removed from school libraries. I find all of these bans to be extremely concerning. They stem from state-level, political meddling into what children can and can’t read and discover. This sets an exceedingly dangerous precedent. For one, book bans violate the American constitutional right to free speech, preventing people from freely digesting material. The current prohibitions we see seem to work around this by making…