Inside the Florida Freedom to Read Project

Banned Books Week, the annual celebration of the freedom to read, typically falls in late September or early October, and with the sharp rise in book bans across the country, it’s needed now more than ever. Though public opinion is clear that the majority of people do not support book bans, that has not stopped the small yet vocal minority from pushing a censorship agenda.

Things have escalated to the point where the Florida State Board of Education threatened Hillsborough County Superintendent Van Ayres with criminal prosecution if he did not immediately remove numerous titles from school libraries, despite a lack of formal objections from parents and bypassing an official review of the books. Florida has seen particularly extreme measures to remove books from libraries in recent years, which is why the Florida Freedom to Read Project was founded.

About the Florida Freedom to Read Project

The Florida Freedom to Read Project is an anti-censorship advocacy organization. Stephana Ferrell, the director of research and insight for the project, says its mission is, “[to bring] together parent-led groups across Florida to protect every child’s freedom to read and right to a comprehensive, unbiased education. Through evidence-based research, advocacy, and policy engagement, we work to protect access to diverse books and educational resources and defend the constitutional rights of Florida’s students and families.”

The project was founded by Ferrell and Raegan Miller, two people from different backgrounds who came together to fight coordinated book challenges. Both are parents of children in Florida’s public schools and care deeply about their education. Miller had more advocacy experience at first, having previously worked with her local PTA, but Ferrell was willing to dig into the official records and ask questions.

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How It All Started

“In the early months of the 2021–22 school year,” Ferrell says, “we realized that the same special interests that had attacked our school boards over basic COVID safety precautions were shifting their focus to library books and curriculum in districts across the state.”

As books like Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer and George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue started being challenged, Ferrell and Miller fought these efforts in whatever ways they could. They spoke out at board meetings, filed FOIA requests to learn how their district was responding to them, and reached out to national organizations and the media.

“We started using social media to share the information we were receiving via public records requests,” Ferrell says. “At first, we tried to personally fund those requests, but as the number of districts experiencing attacks grew and three education bills were filed in the legislature . . . we knew it was time to become a formal organization.”

Parents Fighting for Their Children’s Freedom to Read

ALA has found that it is mostly special interest groups and government officials who have been pushing book challenges. In Ferrell’s experience over the past several years, she has seen fewer than one hundred actual public school parents file objections, and most of those parents objected based on information from special interest groups rather than on seeing their kids bring home offensive materials.

Those groups have, unfortunately, gained more power over time. Ferrell notes that since 2025, “we have seen most of the removals and restrictions actually happening without a local, formal objection, and instead, school boards and school administrators have responded to state pressure campaigns to remove and restrict access,” such as the above-mentioned campaign against Hillsborough County Superintendent Van Ayres.

The Florida Freedom to Read Project was founded by parents for parents, representing what everyday Floridians want to see for their children’s future as well as their own. Despite the rise in book challenges and pressure campaigns to circumvent official reviews, the project is still going strong.

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The organization has allies across the country, including ALA, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and EveryLibrary. “From the beginning, EveryLibrary has helped us to organize our efforts using the NationBuilder platform [for our website], and they have boosted our messaging to their larger audience,” Ferrell explains. “We appreciate the opportunity to be in coalition with them.”

Being able to reach a larger audience is one of the most useful tools in advocacy work. When asked what the project’s greatest accomplishments so far have been, Ferrell says,

“I cannot underscore enough the importance of public awareness when laws are intentionally written to use vague threats and intimidation tactics to encourage the kind of self-censorship that would otherwise be unconstitutional to put directly into law. Florida is a very big state, and it has maintained a single-party supermajority in both chambers for as long as my children have been in public education. State leaders have enormous power to shape the narrative from the bully pulpit, which makes it especially important to have public records at our disposal to track the real-world impacts of bad legislation. That access to information has been critical to exposing what these laws actually do and stopping further attempts to expand the censorship they allow. Legislators know that book banning, generally speaking, is not a winning issue for them. Public awareness, and the data to back it up, helps make sure they have to answer for the consequences of these policies.”

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What You Can Do to Help

Book bans are occurring across the country in record numbers, but you can help fight them. The Florida Freedom to Read Project and the Texas Freedom to Read Project put together a guide, Turning the Page: an Advocate’s Guide to the Freedom to Read, for people who want to organize their own groups to fight book bans.

The Freedom to Read website, where the guide can be found, also publishes weekly articles to help advocates stay up to date on the latest developments. To support the Florida Freedom to Read Project directly, you can donate or sign the petition to fight book bans. Protect our freedom to read today!

Visit www.everylibrary.org to learn more about our work on behalf of libraries. 

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