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| Image Courtesy of: http://www.preboundbooks.com/ws/image/cover/20571/m |
Bibliographic Citation
Title: Stuck in the middle: Seventeen comics from an unpleasant age
Author/Illustrator: Vanessa Davis, Joe Matt, Tania Schrag, Eric Enright, Ariel Schrag, Jace Smith, Daniel Clowes, Cole Johnson, Nick Eliopulos, Gabrielle Bell, Dash Shaw, Lauren Weinstein, Jim Hoover, Robyn Chapman, Ariel Bordeaux, Aaron Renier
Year of Publication: 2007
Publisher City: New York
Publisher: Viking
ISBN: 9780670062218
Author/Illustrator Website: http://www.spanielrage.com/ & http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/artStudio.php?artist=a3e4e9bab51f0d & No Author Website & http://ericenright.com/ & http://www.arielschrag.com/press/ & http://danielclowes.com/ & http://colejohnson.net/ & No Author Website & http://gabriellebell.com/ & http://ruinedcast.com/ & No Author Website & No Author Website & http://www.un-pop.com/ & No Author Website & http://aaronrenier.com/
Media Used for Artwork: Ink
Awards
· Booklist Starred Review
Annotation
The graphic novel collection is a series of stories about the struggles of surviving middle school from a group of authors who are willing to tell humorous, sometimes sad, and always embarrassing stories of being a tween.
Personal Reaction
This series of short narrations shows the life of middle school students in a realistic life. Not everything is happy and innocent. Middle school is a time of puberty (where people develop at different rates), extreme awkwardness (because of puberty and recognizing the opposite sex for the first time), and trying to find out who someone really is. The range in this collection offers many opportunities to learn different perspectives.
The illustrations change by the illustrators. Some are very childlike while others are quite detailed. The variety of the illustrations compliments the different types of stories in the collection. There is a story and an artistic style that will attract any reader.
This graphic novel is a good read for any middle school student who is struggling through the “unpleasant age” and for any older reader who is willing to look back on those years with a sense of humor and dread.
Challenged Book: In 2009 this book was removed from middle school libraries in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The reasoning behind this was “spurred by a parent’s complaint that the graphic novel contained foul language, sexual references and depictions of teen smoking,” (“School board pulls,” 2009). This was the first time in eight years that a book had been removed from the student collection (“School board pulls,” 2009). While I do agree that this book may not be appropriate for some middle school students, it was surprising to read about thirteen year olds who smoked, drank, cursed, and were obsessed with sex, I also do not approve of it being removed from the collection.
Clearly, this is how students in middle school really are. Parents have to realize that. And the authors should be praised for representing their audience in a realistic light.
Perhaps instead of taking the book out of the collection all together one of the options might have been to move it to a restricted area of the library or even move it to a high school library if parents felt the book was put in the wrong collection. At the public library where I checked this book out, the item is located in the Teen section, which draws middle school students all of the time. I am quite glad to see that.
Article and slide presentation about the graphic novel being challenged: http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2009/11/school-board-pulls-stuck-in-the-middle-from-library-shelves/
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