Books

Young Adult author Ellen Hopkins is the second-most-banned author statewide in Utah schools. It’s a distinction she’d prefer not to have.

For two decades, Heidi Posnien owned a burger bar in Huntsville, Utah. But she wasn’t born there. The story of her childhood years is told in a new book “A Child in Berlin.”

Updated guidance from Utah State Board of Education staff clarifies that students can’t bring to school their personal copies of books deemed “sensitive material.”

Utah isn’t just a hot spot for fantasy readers, the state has also produced several best-selling authors like Orson Scott Card and Shannon Hale.

According to a KUER analysis of public records, 25 books are teetering on the edge of being banned statewide.

Today’s divisive political rhetoric around refugees and immigrants isn’t a new moment. novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen said it’s important to remember history: “Immigration is part of our American mythology, but so is hate and xenophobia.”

Ivory’s news conference at the Utah State Capitol featured educators and clergy, and showed attendees passages from books banned statewide in schools.

The list includes books by Judy Blume, Margaret Atwood and several by Sarah J. Maas.

The Utah State Board of Education will send out a list by Aug. 5 of any books that need to be removed from public schools statewide under the new law.

Across the country, book bans and attempted bans have soared to the highest levels in decades.

Lawmakers have passed HB29, which updates Utah’s sensitive materials law and allows for books to be banned statewide.

Lawmakers may have banned “pornographic or indecent” books in 2022, but the law’s implementation has not been smooth sailing.