Young Adult Graphic Novel Faces Another Censorship Challenge

Stuck in the Middle: Seventeen Comics from an Unpleasant Age, a collection of comics shorts edited by Ariel Schrag and featuring selections from top comics artists, has come under fire from folks wanting to remove it from public school libraries twice since 2009.

The first case resulted in the book's removal from shelves in districts in South Dakota, and, last month, a committee in Maine's RSU 10 serving schools in Dixfield, Mexico, and Buckfield responded to a parent request to remove the book from its secondary schools' library shelves by moving the book to its professional section and requiring parental permission for access.

Read more about these instances here.

In both these instances, students' rights to read have been compromised. While any text can become a victim of censorship at any time, comics and graphic novels may be especially prone to attacks because of their perceived novelty, concepts of literary merit, and other general misunderstandings regarding them.

Maupin House knows this and wants to help teachers teach from an informed professional stance and certainly wants to preserve students' rights to read. This is one reason why Maupin House published Rationales for Teaching Graphic Novels, a collection of summaries, reviews, lesson ideas, thematic pairing ideas, and overt discussion of " hot button" issues in 108 different graphic novels.

Each rationale is written by a practicing k-12 teacher who has used comics in his or her classroom or by teacher educators who focus on comics and education.

Rationales for Teaching Graphic Novels is available as a CD-ROM, as an E-book, and, in by-grade-level chunks via the new a la carte feature.

While Stuck in the Middle was not one of the 108 included in the project, and while this case regarded library use rather than classroom use, I can't help but imagine how useful a rationale might have been in either keeping the censors at bay or aiding in the fight to keep the text available for interested students.