Tricks (Ellen Hopkins)

Tricks is a 2009 young adult novel in verse by Ellen Hopkins. It follows five troubled teenagers who fall into prostitution, and it became a New York Times bestseller.

The book is not banned across the United States, but it is one of the few titles removed at state level. The Utah State Board of Education officially banned Tricks from all public schools on 6 March 2025, after the Davis, Tooele County and Washington County school districts removed it. It was the 17th title on Utah’s list, and PEN America’s list of books banned statewide in Utah, which counts 44 titles as of September 2026, still includes it.

How the Utah law works: under a 2024 law, a book must be removed from every public school in the state once at least three school districts (or two districts and five charter schools) find it to be “objective sensitive material”, meaning pornographic or otherwise indecent content as defined in Utah code.

Why it was challenged: the objections concern the book’s sexual content and subject matter. PEN America notes that many of the books on Utah’s list address consent, bodily autonomy or sexual assault.

The wider record: PEN America named Hopkins the second most banned author of the 2024-25 school year, behind Stephen King, and five of her novels (Crank, Identical, Tilt, Glass and Fallout) appear on its 2025-26 list. Tricks also ranked 98th on the American Library Association’s list of the top 100 most banned and challenged books of 2010-2019.

Utah’s list also covers A Court of Thorns and Roses and The Bluest Eye, which were removed under the same law.