Whenever I encounter some news article regarding “banned” books I dig a little deeper and typically discover that some library or elementary school simply put an age restriction on those titles.

I’ll grant that some of the restrictions seem overprotective. That being said, a parent could easily check out one of those books for their child.

You would be correct there are no "banned books" in America.

When people say "banned book" they mean that a certain level of government such as a school board or municipality has "banned" them from being in a public (often school) library.

But the headline "In [state I disagree with] they are banning books that have [ideas I agree with]" makes a lot more headlines and clicks.

Then people run with the phrase "banned books" to make things sound worse than they are.