Utah Bans ‘Wicked,’ ‘Perks,’ ‘Nineteen Minutes’ From Public Schools

Utah has kicked off the 2026 school year by banning three more widely read books from every public school in the state — including the novel that inspired the hit musical and upcoming movie Wicked.

The Utah State Board of Education has added Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower to its list of prohibited titles, bringing the statewide total to 22, according to a new report from The Salt Lake Tribune.

From Broadway blockbuster to “sensitive material”

All three books are modern staples of teen and adult reading — and of pop culture.

Maguire’s 1995 fantasy novel Wicked reimagines The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of Elphaba, the so‑called Wicked Witch, interrogating power, prejudice and what it means to be labeled “evil.” It later inspired the long‑running Broadway musical and this year’s two‑part film saga starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

Nineteen Minutes, Picoult’s 2007 bestseller, follows the aftermath of a school shooting in small‑town New Hampshire. While its subject matter has made it a frequent target for censors nationwide, Picoult has repeatedly argued the novel helps teens process realities they already live with. In a 2024 interview, she called bans on the book “frustrating,” saying it’s challenged not for its core topic but for a single anatomical term that appears late in the text. (New Hampshire Magazine)

Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, told through letters from shy teen Charlie, has likewise been removed from shelves across the U.S. for its frank treatment of sexuality, trauma and mental health. Chbosky has said the book’s long history of bans makes him think about “that one kid in the community who could really use the book,” in a Q&A with the National Coalition Against Censorship. (NCAC)

How Utah’s statewide ban machinery works

These new removals are part of a broader system Utah put in place with its 2024 law HB29, the country’s first statewide school book ban policy. Under HB29, if at least three school districts — or two districts and five charter schools — decide a book is “objective sensitive material” under Utah’s pornography and indecency codes, it must be stripped from all public schools in the state. (The Guardian; New York Post)

In this case, the Davis, Tooele and Washington County districts’ decisions triggered the automatic statewide ban, the Tribune reports. State officials usually do not specify which passages or scenes led to removal.

The same mechanism has already sidelined books by Judy Blume, Sarah J. Maas, Margaret Atwood and others, echoing a national wave of school censorship that has seen thousands of titles pulled or restricted. Earlier this year, PEN America highlighted how prolific and opaque those removals can be in its list of the 50 most banned books in the U.S.

Utah lawmakers have at times gone even further than other states: a 2025 policy shift initially barred students from bringing personal copies of banned books onto campus at all, a move later partially walked back after public backlash. (The Washington Post)

What this means for readers

For fantasy and YA fans, Utah’s latest bans hit books that often serve as first encounters with big, messy questions: How do we define good and evil? What does surviving trauma look like? Who gets to tell the story? Those are the exact conversations titles like Wicked and Perks were written to spark.

They also underscore how closely pop culture and censorship are now intertwined. The same state that may soon see Wicked billboards and movie tie‑ins is simultaneously ensuring teens can’t legally find the source novel in their school libraries — a pattern we’ve seen from Florida to Iowa and beyond in our coverage of record‑breaking school book bans.

With Utah’s list now at 22 titles and counting, the question for authors, educators and readers isn’t whether more books will be challenged — it’s how far states will go in deciding which stories young people never get to see on the shelf.