NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Author Jodi Picoult this fall she had the dubious honor of being banned from two genres—her books and now the musical based on her novel Between the Lines.
“I’m pretty sure I’m the first author to experience censorship in two different types of media,” Picoult says. “Honestly, I'm not here to be obscene. I write the world as it is, and honestly, I'm just trying to write about difficult issues that people have a hard time talking about, because that's what fiction and art do.”
Principal of Mississinewa High School in Gas City, Indiana. canceled production last week's Between the Lines, saying concerns had been raised about “sexual innuendo” and references to alcohol in the musical. Jeremy Fewell, the superintendent, did not respond to requests for comment.
“We are saddened to know that these children, who had put in hundreds of hours of hard work, were deprived of it because of the objections of one of their parents,” Picoult said.
“What I know, perhaps better than most people, as someone whose books have been banned, is that when one parent starts deciding what is appropriate and what is not appropriate for the other parents' children, we have a big problem.”
Picoult noted that the same Indiana high school had previously produced the movie “Grease,” which featured much more sexual innuendo and alcohol abuse, including a pregnancy scare, sex-crazed teenagers and the line “Did she pick a fight?”
“Between the lines” It centers on Delilah, an outsider at a new high school who finds solace in a book and realizes that she has the power to write her own story and tell her own life. “It's a very welcoming message. And it's actually very important for today's teenagers,” Picoult says.
The original work, which features a non-binary character, has already been edited with licensing changes to make it more palatable to conservative audiences, including removing any reference to the non-binary character's gender orientation.
The production was scheduled for Halloween weekend at the Gas City Performing Arts Center. The show features music and lyrics by Elissa Samsel and Kate Anderson and a story by Timothy Allen MacDonald, based on the 2012 novel by Picoult and her daughter Samantha van Leer. It played off-Broadway in 2022.
Picoult, the bestselling author of “My Sister's Keeper” and “Little Great Things,” also wrote about the moments leading up to the school shooting in “Nineteen Minutes,” which was banned 16 times in the 2024-2025 school year, according to PEN America, manufacturing she is the fourth most banned writer in the country.
“In one Florida school district alone, I had 20 books banned because a parent objected and she admitted she had not read any of the books,” said Picoult, a PEN America trustee. “She said they were banned for 'adult content and sexuality.' There were my books in which there was not a single kiss.”
The surge in book bans also spread across several phases. The Playwrights Legal Defense Fund has documented recently challenged plays and musicals from states such as Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio And New Jersey after parents or teachers complained that the works' social themes were inappropriate for minors.
North Lebanon High School in Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania, has canceled its 2024 production of “The Addams Family,” citing concerns about graphic violence, children smoking and subtle queer themes. Paula Vogel's play Indecent, which explores a flashpoint in Jewish and queer theater history, was abruptly canceled in Duval County, Florida. in 2023 for “inappropriate” sexual dialogue.
Last year, the Educational Theater Association surveyed more than 1,800 theater teachers in U.S. public and private schools about censorship. More than 75% of respondents reported pressure to reconsider their gaming and music choices in the 2023/24 academic year.
“We’re not protecting children,” Picoult said. “We are robbing them of the materials we use to fight an increasingly complex world.”
