Last week, we reported on the controversy that erupted over Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s The Scarecrows’ Wedding, which depicts a smoking scarecrow. Donaldson and Scheffler are also the creative force behind The Gruffalo, one of the most beloved children’s…
Category: International
CBLDF Executive Director to Speak About the Comics Code at London’s Orbital Comics
Next week, CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein takes the fight for the freedom to read to London, where he’ll speak at the British Library on August 17. At 7:30 p.m. on August 14, he’ll join comics fans at Orbital Comics…
Parents Fume Over Smoking Scarecrow
First it was Santa Claus, then Bone. Now some parents are calling for the censorship of a new book by British children’s author Julia Donaldson because it shows a scarecrow smoking a cigar. Even though The Scarecrows’ Wedding portrays smoking…
CBLDF Executive Director Takes Fight for the Right to Read to London
On August 17, CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein will take CBLDF’s fight for the freedom to read on another international trip, this time to the United Kingdom for “Sex, Censorship and Sensibility” at the British Library Conference Centre in London.…
Singapore: Northstar’s Wedding Passes Muster Because Another Character Objects
Everyone knows by now that the wedding of gay Archie character Kevin Keller is too hot for Singapore’s Media Development Authority, which recently banned retailers from importing Archie: The Married Life 3 because it was “not in line with social…
Partial Victory in Singapore: Two Out of Three Books Back in Libraries
Singapore Communications and Information Minister Yaacob Ibrahim last week reversed course on the planned destruction of two children’s books that had been pulled from public library shelves, instructing the National Library Board to instead have the books restored to library…
Russian Media Watchdog Says Avengers May Incite Violence, Cruelty
A Russian government media regulator is investigating an upcoming Avengers comic as “propaganda of a cult of violence,” possibly resulting in an official warning to Swedish publisher Egmont which distributes the books in Russia. The government is particularly concerned about…
Singapore Censorship Continues With Archie: The Married Life 3
More bad news out of Singapore: in the wake of a ban on three children’s books featuring same-sex parents from the city-state’s libraries, today we learned that the government has also barred booksellers from importing Archie: The Married Life vol.…
Tango, Two Other Books Banned From Singapore Libraries
Last week Singapore’s National Library Board, a government agency that oversees public libraries in the city-state, announced that all copies of three children’s books that mention same-sex adoptive parents have been removed from library collections and will be destroyed. One…
Militants Call for Death of The 99 Creator
Last week the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the militant group better known as ISIS, took a brief timeout from overtaking cities in Iraq to call for the death of Kuwaiti-American comic creator Naif Al-Mutawa. They claimed on Twitter…