Stick with Stuck in the Middle, Committee Advises

Cover of Stuck in the Middle

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A committee assigned to review a graphic story collection about the travails of life in middle school recommended that the book stay on the shelves of Buckfield (Maine) Junior-Senior High School, but that parental permission be required for students to borrow it.

Parent Becky Patterson called for Stuck in the Middle: 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age to be removed from the library because it contains references to sexuality and includes profanity.

Jerry Wiley, chair of Western Foothills Regional School Unit #10, told the Lewiston Sun Journal that the board met December 12 to hear the recommendation of the committee, composed of the school’s principal, a parent, librarians, and two teachers. Opposing views were voiced by Patterson; her partner, Randy Felker; and Pastor Don Church of Faith Bible Chapel in Buckfield, the Sun Journal reported December 14.

Patterson told the Sun Journal that she wants the book out of the library and in the classroom where it could be taught properly. “There’s sexual content and foul language. I want the correct approach to this book,” she said, adding that having it in the library “is a very lazy way to teach criminal behavior.”

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom sent a letter December 9 in support of the book’s retention. Acknowledging that Stuck in the Middle “may not be right for every student,” CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein wrote (PDF file) that regardless, “the library has a responsibility to represent a broad range of views in its collection and to meet the needs of everyone in the community—not just the most vocal, the most powerful, or even the majority While parents and community members may—and should—voice their concerns and select different materials for themselves and their children, those objecting to particular books should not be given the power to restrict the rights of other students and families to access the material.”

Stuck in the Middle, edited by Ariel Schrag and including stories by Daniel Clowes, Joe Matt, Lauren Weinstein, and other acclaimed comics artists, was chosen for New York Public Library’s 2008 “Books for the Teen Age” list and received positive reviews from theNew York Times, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist, which called it an “honest, acutely perceptive compendium of cartoon black humor.”

Western Foothills Superintendent Tom Ward said the board would meet January 9 to decide on the book’s fate.