Links: Banned Books Week and Other News

There’s a lot of activity going on right now around Banned Books Week, with its focus on comics. It even made NPR, which did a segment that includes interviews with Jeff Smith (Bone) and Dav Pilkey (Captain Underpants).

At Comic Riffs, Michal Cavna talks to Jeff Smith, Scott McCloud, and Neil Gaiman about comics challenges.

And right here at SLJ, Eva and I wrote a history of comics censorship that covers a lot of bases, including Frederic Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent, the Comics Code, and the infamous In the Night Kitchen diaper incident.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s website is a treasure trove of information at all times, and they are posting lots of content this week. Check out their article on 31 Comics to Use in Classrooms, and follow them for the latest news and updates on censorship attempts around the world.

And while the timing is coincidental, the Austin Public Library in Cleveland, Texas, will not remove all the vampire books from its young adult room, as a local minister had requested; head librarian Mary Merrell Cohn delivered some stirring testimony before the Cleveland City Council, which took no action on the challenge. However, the mayor also declined to sign a resolution officially recognizing Banned Books Week, saying the timing was unfortunate.

More bad timing: A group of parents are trying to get Persepolis pulled from high school libraries in Oregon.

Michael Cavna interviews Cece Bell, the author of El Deafo. Bell became deaf at the age of four due to meningitis, and the book is the very upbeat story of her experiences as a deaf child using hearing aids in a hearing school.

Luke Pearson talks about his Hilda comics (Hilda and the Black Hound is the most recent one) and the thinking that went behind his creations.

Jim Zubkavich takes questions from a kindergarten class about Figment, the Marvel comic about Disney’s purple dinosaur, for which he is the writer.

At Everead, Alysa Stewart gives her take on the pesky question of “What’s a graphic novel?”

Reviews

Nick Smith on Juice Squeezers, vol. 1: The Great Bug Elevator (ICv2)
Andrew Shuping on Lunch Lady and the Schoolwide Scuffle (No Flying, No Tights)
Nick Smith on Reading With Pictures: Comics That Make Kids Smarter (ICv2)

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