At No Flying, No Tights, Jen ponders censorship and stereotypes evident in some recent coverage of comics and librarians. Particularly interesting are thoughts on a recent piece in The New York Times about Susan Patron’s The High Power of Lucky, an award-winning novel for young adults with the word “scrotum” on the first page. I particularly like Jen’s sum-up:
“Yet librarians doom themselves when they base their collection decisions on fear… I’m more worried that the people who flip out over a single word will make it impossible for librarians to buy anything that pushes the envelope…what would they say if they knew I put Same-Cell Organism in my library’s young adult collection?”
Edited: The original Times article on the controversy is here (and thanks to Dave Carter for sending the link), and there are several letters to the editor available for perusal.
At The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon takes a comics-centric approach to another Times topic, discussing books you haven’t yet read:
“In comics, saying you haven’t caught up with something yet has the regular advantage of letting the person who just spoke know that what they brought up is of interest, and the added advantage of flattering the art form in terms of there being so many things out there to explore.”
And if you haven’t had enough linkblogging from me, I basically devote all of this week’s Flipped to it, doing a drive-by of some recent events in the manga realm.