Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the book that inspired the hit musical and blockbuster adaptation, is one of a number of books recently banned in some Utah school districts …
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the book that inspired the hit musical and blockbuster adaptation, is one of a number of books recently banned in some Utah school districts.
The state’s education board said the book had been banned because it contained “objective sensitive materials.”
Newsweek has contacted the Utah State Board of Education via email for comment.
Why It Matters
Book banning in the U.S. has been accelerating in recent years, with PEN America having recorded 6,870 instances of books being pulled from school libraries across 23 states and in 87 public school districts from July 2024 and June 2025, according to a report called “Banned in the USA.”
That report found that the majority of instances of banned books were in three states—Florida, Texas, and Tennessee.
PEN also warned that book censorship has become “rampant and common” in the United States.
What To Know
Three books have been added to Utah’s list of banned books in schools. Each of the three are removed in the following districts: Davis, Tooele, and Washington.
The book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire is one of them. While no specific reason has been given for the book being banned, a note at the top of the Utah State Board of Education’s list states “The titles below have been determined to contain Objective Sensitive Materials in a final determination.”
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult and The Perks of Being a Wallflower have also been added to a list that totals 26 banned titles.
Beyond the Utah ban, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West was the sixth most-banned book of the 2024 to 2025 School Year, according to PEN. It is tied with The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Maguire told MassLive in December 2024, around the time of the film’s release, that the book is not for children.
The novel’s substance is much darker than that of the film. In an extensive interview given to the outlet Them, also in December 2024, Maguire said, “I wanted to write about evil, about the murder of [British toddler] Jamie Bulger and the war in Iraq, the Desert Storm War, the ‘coalition of the willing,’ and seeing a headline referring to Saddam Hussein as ‘the next Hitler.'”
Beyond this, Maguire said in the interview that his retelling was also inspired by the AIDS epidemic.
Despite the subject matter not being suitable for children, book bans spark concern irrespective of the book’s content.
What People Are Saying
Kasey Meehan, director of PEN’s Freedom to Read program and an author of the report, said in a statement following the release of the “Banned in the USA” report: “Censorship pressures have expanded and escalated, taking on different forms—laws, directives, guidance that sow confusion, lists of books mislabeled as ‘explicit’ materials, and ‘do not buy’ lists.
“A disturbing ‘everyday banning’ and normalization of censorship has worsened and spread over the last four years. The result is unprecedented.”
What Happens Next?
More states could follow suit to ban this book or similar ones as we move into 2026.
Source: Utah News