Utah Board Bans Stephen King's Different Seasons, Raising School Prohibition List to 35 Titles
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jul 15
Utah Board Bans Stephen King's Different Seasons, Raising School Prohibition List to 35 Titles
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jul 15
Summary
Utah's state school board added Stephen King's 1982 novella collection Different Seasons to a statewide public-school ban on July 6 after four districts removed it from library shelves.
Three districts are enough to trigger a statewide removal under Utah law if a book is judged to contain "objective sensitive material"—content defined as pornographic, indecent or harmful to minors.
The collection, previously available to students in grades 7 through 12, includes stories adapted into Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption.
35 titles were on Utah's banned-books list as of July 15, including The Perks of Being a Wallflower, showing the latest removal is part of a broader censorship push.
A January ACLU lawsuit on behalf of the Kurt Vonnegut estate and other authors argues Utah's book-ban system violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.