Earlier this year, a challenge filed against Gender Queer, Fun Home, and Blankets resulted in their removal from the Radnor Township School District high school library in southeast Pennsylvania. Opponents of these graphic novels also filed a police report calling for the arrest and prosecution of school officials for allegedly distributing child pornography.
Fortunately, the police and district attorney did not agree with these allegations, so no arrests were made. However, under the school district’s book challenge procedures, the graphic novels had to remain off the shelves unless the school board voted to restore them. This happened at last night’s four-and-a-half hour school board meeting, in which a host of community members gave moving and impassioned defenses of not just these books, but the importance of graphic novels as a medium.
An interesting moment from the discussion was a board member’s account of explaining to a college admissions interviewer back in the 1990s that the last book she’d read was Maus. The interviewer had never heard of the book and was skeptical – a comic book about the Holocaust? Fortunately, the board member observed, graphic novels – including these three – are now respected as true works of art.
In addition to the community’s vital – and decisive – effots, the CBLDF also voiced its support for these three graphic novels and the educational value of the comics. As it happens, I grew up in a nearby community, so in addition to a joint letter with other free speech groups recommending revisions to the school’s existing review process, I also reached out personally to the district’s school board. My teen-age fascination with the legal aspects of the great comics scare of the 1950s and subsequent attacks on comics as obscene helped shape my own interest in the law – indeed, it led to my work with the CBLDF and writing this very post; I wouldn’t be surprised in the least of the current controversy has a similar impact on some kids growing up there today.
Kudos to the school board and the RTSD community for protecting access to these important books!