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The American Library Association and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund announced last week that this year’s Banned Books Week is going to spotlight comics and graphic novels.
Here are three reasons why we’re even more excited about Banned Books Week than usual this year.
- Comics and graphic novels have some specific components that get them banned much more than similar prose work — namely, the images, which are somehow more problematic than a prose version of the same content. This spotlight gives us all a chance to examine why exactly this is the case, and if there are things we can do to address this situation.
- The American Library Association, and librarians all over the US, have been some of the biggest proponents of comics and graphic novels in the US for the past two decades. The fact that the ALA has chosen now to spotlight comics and graphic novels is a sign that the comics medium is really coming of age in the North American literary landscape.
- Banned Books Week is a national literary event — that means that bookstores and comics stores and schools and libraries and all the people who work with them all over the United States will be celebrating comics and graphic novels this week. That’s so, so awesome!
We’re excited for September!
