'Wicked,' the novel behind the musical and movies, is now banned in Utah schools

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: KUER Salt Lake City, UT/NPR

Published January 5, 2026 at 2:27 PM MST
Updated January 6, 2026 at 4:38 PM MST


UPDATE Jan. 6, 2026: The ACLU, along with several authors, including the Vonnegut estate, have sued Utah over its "sensitive materials" book law. Our original story continues below.
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If Utah students want to read the book that inspired the hit musical “Wicked,” they won’t find it in their public school library. “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” a 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire, is now part of the growing list of books banned in the state’s K-12 schools. That list stands at 22 titles after three new ones, including “Wicked,” were added at the start of the new year.

The original novel is notably different from the popular Stephen Schwartz musical on Broadway, and the two adapted PG films starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. In a 2024 MassLive interview, Maguire said his book is not meant for children. He purposefully included “somewhat raunchy material” in the early pages to show readers what they were getting into. If they were looking for chorus lines and dancing monkeys, this wasn’t it. It has sex, violence, and sexual violence.

While the book was expressly written for an adult audience, Maguire hasn’t said at what age a reader might be ready for his book, such as older teens. Instead, in interviews, he said he prefers for readers to decide for themselves when they’re ready. Being on the statewide book removal list means that the book is banned for all grade levels, including high school.

Read more: https://www.kuer.org/education/2026-01-05/utah-school-book-bans-wicked-perks-of-being-a-wallflower-nineteen-minutes

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Link to Vonnegut Estate/ACLU Utah PRESS RELEASE - Vonnegut Estate, Authors, and Student Plaintiffs Take Utah to Court Over the Freedom to Read

Link to SUIT (PDF) - https://www.acluutah.org/app/uploads/2026/01/HB29-Complaint-Filed.pdf

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Surprised they haven't banned DU in Utah /nt

[milestogo]

5. Surprised they haven't banned reading altogether.

[Javaman]

2. because stupidity. nt

[Vinca]

3. Which, of course, will drive school children to the Internet to get themselves a copy.

In my day it was "Lolita." The adults said we couldn't read it, so we scrambled to find a copy and pass it around.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. I remember the hullabaloo about when "Lady Chatterly's Lover" was "banned"

And despite the courts ordering it to be made available by 1960, many libraries still refused to carry it a couple decades later. I did manage to find it at my college library.

It's now on Gutenberg.

[utherpendragon]

6. For the Children

Couldn’t we just ban everything except children’s bedtime stories? Real life has edges, and we don’t want those. We want happy. No loose strings. No bad people—just good people, where everything works out for the best. This way we get to be children all our lives. And isn’t that what we really want?

[DBoon]

9. In my local public library, Lady Chatterly's lover was in a locked case.

Then sometime when I was in high school, it moved to the unrestricted shelves.

Of course I immediately checked it out and read it.

[PatSeg]

7. Exactly, such bans actually encourage

young people to read. There is nothing quite like something being forbidden to make it very desirable.

[70sEraVet]

8. Strange -- I read a couple days ago that many schools no longer assign...

whole novels to be read; the theory was, that today's youth aren't capable of that level of focus, so the schools are assigning condensed study-versions of the novels instead.
Now, it seems, that some of our more repressive communities are worried that their youths might discover illicit nuggets of excitement in those novels.
Why would the mice bother running through the maze, if there is no chance of finding a piece of cheese?

[BumRushDaShow]

10. "so the schools are assigning condensed study-versions of the novels instead."

I remember the days of the "Cliff's Notes"...





Now the kids can get some "AI summary" version.

[msongs]

11. some religions don't want competition lol