Jodi Picoult Says ‘Books Are On The Ballot’ After Her Book Nineteen Minutes’ was the Most-Banned Book Last Year

Jodi Picoult is voting for books this election season.

The bestselling author teamed up with PEN America, a nonprofit organization championing writers and books, to encourage readers to consider what’s at stake for books on election day.

In an Instagram Reel shared on Oct. 28, Picoult, 58, says that her 2008 novel, Nineteen Minutes was the most banned book during the 2023-2024 school year, in 98 school districts across the country. The book is about a school shooting, which Picoult notes is “something that our kids, unfortunately, do not need a book to learn about.”

“In fact, hundreds of students have told me Nineteen Minutes stopped them from committing a school shooting or showed them they were not alone in feeling isolated,” she continues. “The book did not harm them. It gave them tools to deal with an increasingly divided and different world.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

“That’s what books do,” Picoult notes, in the video. “They help kids see themselves in a different way. They help kids see the world in a different way.”

The author explains that the reason the book is usually banned is because of a “date rape scene” and because it uses “anatomically correct words for the human body.”

“It is not a gratuitous scene,” Picoult says. “It is not salacious. Yet it has been challenged as porn.”

Book banners have used porn “as an excuse for banning more than 10,000 books in public schools in the last school year,” she continues, pointing out that many of these books are written by BIPOC and LGTBQ+ authors.

“And spoiler alert: they’re not porn,” Picoult adds, before explaining that laws have been passed in states across the U.S. that have made it increasingly easy to ban books.

“We know from history that a way you control a nation is by controlling what its citizens read,” Picoult adds, telling followers that she’s “voting for books” this November.

According to the American Library Association, from 2022 to 2023 there was a 65 percent surge in titles targeted by censorship with over 4,000 titles listed for removal from school districts and libraries.

Nineteen Minutes, as Picoult explained in her post, centers around a school shooting. “Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens — until the day its complacency is shattered by a school shooting,” a synopsis of the book reads.

“Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state’s best witness, but she can’t remember what happened before her very own eyes — or can she?”

“As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show — destroying the closest of friendships and families,” the summary concludes.