When determining which children’s books are shelved in school libraries, Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing: National political groups should stay far away. According to an Ipsos poll, 89% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats agree that classrooms should be places for learning, not political battlegrounds.

National groups that politicize children’s classrooms are deeply harmful to the American body politic. They sow polarization, division, and hate, the worst consequence being that concerned parents and teachers are at loggerheads over which books should be available to young children.

In a healthy school environment, teachers and parents work together to maximize the educational potential of every single child. That means deciding which books are age-appropriate for a school library among themselves, not among the whole nation.

Both sides blame each other, but what are the real forces driving the politicization of children’s books? While book challenges have existed from time immemorial, highly organized groups, such as PEN America, are mobilizing to label concerned American parents as “book banners,” a recipe for political disaster.

The leftist media unfortunately have parroted these talking points, labeling parents groups such as Moms for Liberty as fascist book banners! Therein lies the problem: The media disproportionately focus on parental concerns to undermine them. In fact , Google trends show that Moms for Liberty garnered significantly more media coverage than PEN this past year, at one point in June generating 50 times the search interest.

This media coverage paints an inverse picture of the actual influence these groups wield. On one hand, PEN receives $29.1 million in revenue and has $36.8 million in assets, and on the other, Moms for Liberty has a paltry $370,000 in revenue and $207,000 in assets, all stats according to 2021 tax filings.

PEN is the Goliath to concerned parents’ David. With its extensive financial resources and powerful connections, PEN is deferred to as the children’s book authority, and its research is widely cited. It is generously called a “free speech association” by the press. Its report “Banned in the USA” drives the rhetorical battle to label parents as “book banners.”

PEN greatly exaggerates and mischaracterizes parents who simply want to moderate inappropriate content in their children’s school libraries. For instance, the 2022 version of “Banned in the USA” alleges that 2,532 books were “banned” from school libraries in the 2021-2022 school year.

Upon closer inspection, PEN considers a “ban” to be any book challenged by a parent for potentially inappropriate content. The report even considers books that were challenged, removed from library shelves for review, and then subsequently replaced to be “banned.” Research has found that 74% of PEN’s “banned books” are still available in school library catalogs today. As Mark Twain would say, there’s lies, damn lies, and PEN statistics.

Moreover, the books PEN defends, such as Gender Queer, All Boys Aren’t Blue, and Lawn Boy, contain wildly inappropriate depictions of explicit or vulgar pornography.

The burning question at the tip of every journalist’s tongue should be this: Why are activist groups such as PEN, massive publishers such as Penguin Random House, and giant lobbies such as the American Library Association all lining up to justify the dissemination of sexual material from public employees to children?

Back in real America, parents know the scope of book removals is greatly inflated by the media. Parents know that their demands for sexually inappropriate books to be removed from library shelves are not free speech violations. And parents certainly know they aren’t “book banners.”

A discussion that should be between parents and schools can become a rift that ripples across the country because of an organization based far away, mainly in New York, Los Angeles, or Washington, D.C. Recently, the Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing to get to the root of the problem. PEN’s director of free speech and education programs made one inadvertent, crucial admission: “Organized groups of activists and some politicians have launched a campaign to exert ideological control over public education, unprecedented in its scope, scale, and size.”

We agree. PEN America should stay away from school libraries.

Virginia Foxx is a U.S. representative for North Carolina and serves as the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Aaron Bean is a U.S. representative for Florida and serves as the chair of the Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee.