Twin tween geeks Maddy and Anya Ernst, aka the Tweeks, just announced their Challenged Graphic Novel Reading Challenge on the ComicMix website, and their summer reading list is chock full of amazing graphic novels that have been attacked by censors!
This year’s Banned Books Week will focus on young adult fiction, and YA comics are frequent targets of would-be censors — two of the three graphic novels on ALA’s list of the most frequently challenged books list in 2014 are intended for YA readers. The Tweeks have challenged kids and parents to read along with them as they explore these two books and other YA titles. From their announcement:
This summer we will be reading 8 graphic novels that have been challenged or banned in school libraries and then every week we will discuss one of the titles. We’ll talk about why it was challenged, how to best talk about the questioned topics or themes in the book with your kids. We’ll also tell you from a kid’s perspective how we viewed the appropriateness of the books for us, because sometimes adults forget what they could handle and understand when they were our age.
Here’s their reading schedule:
- 7/13 Bone, Vol 1: Out From Boneville by Jeff Smith
- 7/20 Drama by Raina Telgemeier
- 7/27 This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki
- 8/3 The Graveyard Book Vol 1 (the graphic novel) by Neil Gaiman & P. Craig Russell
- 8/10 The Color of Earth Book 1 by Kim Dong Hwa
- 8/17 Sidescrollers by Matthew Loux
- 8/24 Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
- 8/31 Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
Each of these books has been challenged — nearly all of them on multiple occasions — and CBLDF has fought more than a few battles on behalf of these titles. In their announcement video below, the Tweeks talk about our work and their plans for the summer:
We encourage kids and parents to join Maddy and Anya as they explore these amazing books, discuss why they are challenged, and how to talk about the sensitive topics in these titles! For more about the Challenged Comics Summer Reading Challenge, visit the ComicMix website here.
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