Utah public schools have banned Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, for good.
The dark fantasy that reimagined author L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, from the wicked witch’s perspective, is now among dozens of titles from the Utah State Board of Education’s list of banned books.
Wicked, along with Stephen Chbosky’s Perks of Being a Wallflower and Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, was reportedly added to the statewide list on Monday.
The move is in accordance wth Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law. The law was originally passed in 2022 and amended in 2024 to “identify and remove pornographic or indecent material.”
The novel was first removed in the Davis County, Tooele County and Washington County School Districts, local outlet KUTV reported. Since three school districts found the book to contain “objective sensitive materials,” it was banned statewide.
Despite the popular Wicked films that are based on Maguire’s book being PG, the author admitted his novel is different from the movies and the Wicked Broadway show.
He said his book is “completely not for children,” in a November 2024 MassLive interview. “I purposefully put somewhat raunchy material in the first few pages of Wicked, the novel, to show what people were getting into.”
The Independent has reached out to Maguire and the Utah State Board of Education for comment.
Utah’s book bans have been challenged in court by some of the affected authors.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah filed a lawsuit earlier this week on behalf of authors Elana K. Arnold, Ellen Hopkins and Amy Reed, as well as the estate of author Kurt Vonnegut, claiming the state’s book-banning efforts violate the First Amendment.
“The right to read and the right to free speech are inseparable. The First Amendment protects our freedom to read, learn, and share ideas free from unconstitutional censorship,” Tom Ford, attorney at the ACLU of Utah, said in a statement.
The banning of books is a nationwide issue, with the literary freedom advocacy group PEN America keeping tabs on book bans since at least 2021. According to the group’s Index of School Book Bans for 2024 through 2025, there were more than 6,700 novels banned within school districts nationwide.
