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Utah banned a 17th book from all public schools

A pamphlet of banned books in Utah sits on a shelf at Central Book Exchange in Salt Lake City Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024.
Bethany Baker
/
The Salt Lake Tribune
A pamphlet of banned books in Utah sits on a shelf at Central Book Exchange in Salt Lake City Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024.

“Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins joins 16 other titles banned from Utah’s public schools.

Ellen Hopkins’ New York Times bestseller “Tricks” has become the latest book — and the author’s third — to land on Utah’s growing list of titles banned from all public schools in the state.

The young-adult novel follows five troubled teenagers who fall into prostitution.

“But it really is about five young people whose lives fracture, and they are brought to this place through, not choice, but through things that happen in their lives that create a place where they need to survive — and so they are forced into prostitution as a means of survival,” Hopkins explained in a 2009 interview with the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster.

One character, Eden, is from a “very religious” family. There’s also Whitney, a “kind of upscale young woman,” along with Seth, who is gay and from rural Indiana, which Hopkins said was “not necessarily a good place to be gay.” The two other teens are Ginger, whose mother is a prostitute, and Cody, from Wichita, who ends up in Las Vegas — where all the characters converge — and develops a gambling problem.

“Las Vegas has a very successful teen prostitute rescue,” Hopkins said at the time. “And so I wanted that resource to be available for those kids, and also for — I want readers who may be in a place like this to know that they can also be taken out of this place successfully.”

The addition brings the total number of books banned from all Utah public schools to 17. Women wrote all but two of them.

Read the full report at sltrib.com.

This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.