Flamer is a graphic novel by Filipino-American author Mike Curato. It’s a semi-autobiographical story about Aiden, a teenager who comes to terms with his attraction to other boys during a Boy Scout summer camp.
It was the fourth most challenged book in US libraries in 2022, according to the American Library Association. It was also nominated by librarians and young adults for the 2021-2022 Georgia Peach Book Award.
The latest challenge occurred in Cobb County, where parents across the county received emails Monday notifying them that a book with “highly inappropriate, sexually explicit content” had been removed from their school’s library and that an investigation will be initiated.
“Earlier this week we learned that 20 school libraries contained a book or two (“Flamer” and/or “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”) with highly inappropriate, sexually explicit content,” district spokeswoman Nan Kiel said in a statement to the Georgia Recorders. “We immediately removed the books, are currently conducting an investigation, and are committed to ensuring our students are taught content that conforms to Georgia standards, board policies, and the law.”
Some of the teenage characters of “Flamer” speak bluntly and bluntly about sexual issues. In the most objectionable scene, a group of campers tell that they are playing a game where everyone masturbates into a soda bottle and the loser has to drink from it. In another scene, Aiden struggles with a communal shower.
Some of the dialogue is explicit, including anti-gay slurs, but the artwork does not depict any sexual acts or explicit anatomy. The book also contains characters who display racism and homophobia, as well as references to suicide. In the final chapters, Aiden plans to end his life, but the story has a happy ending as he finds acceptance within himself and among his friends.
Some Cobb parents took to social media to welcome the book’s removal, sharing screenshots of the most inflammatory boards and advising that parents who want their children to read the banned books can buy them or borrow them from the public library.
Others are questioning the decision, especially in light of the school board’s decision last week to fire elementary school teacher Katie Rinderle for reading a picture book about gender fluctuation. A group of former educators recommended not firing Rinderle, but the board overruled the recommendation in an internal party vote.
“There are a lot of parents in the community who have questions, and the blanket statement they sent out left more questions than answers,” said Laura Judge, a candidate for the Cobb County school board. “Where was it, what’s the name of this book, how long has it been on the shelves, how was it removed?”
Kiel declined to respond as to whether the process was initiated by a parent, when and by whom the books were released to school libraries, and whether the district followed its published rules for removing materials deemed harmful to minors.
“I’ve included an additional statement for you below,” she wrote in an email. “Please attribute it to ‘a district spokesman.'”
“‘The district continues to investigate the details.'”
Cobb’s published rules, which were revised after Senate Bill 226 was passed in 2022, say a parent or guardian can file a complaint if they believe school supplies are harmful to a minor. Thereafter, the principal has seven business days to examine the materials and ten business days to decide whether the material should be removed.
Nan Brown, coordinator of the Georgia Library Media Association’s advocacy team, says she wonders how the guideline could have been followed at 20 schools when the district’s emails said it had of the books earlier this week experience.
“It just seems highly unlikely that that’s what happened in the number of schools that I know of that have had their books confiscated,” she said.
Brown said librarians use a test established by the Supreme Court to determine whether a book is obscene and involves three criteria: “whether the average person, using contemporary community standards, would find the work as a whole appealing to the lustful interest ; whether the work depicts or describes in a manifestly offensive manner sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable country law; and whether the work as a whole is lacking in serious literary, artistic, political, or scholarly value.”
“As a definition, everything is viewed as a whole, each individual is viewed as a whole,” she said. “So no page, three pages, four paragraphs, whatever. That’s not the whole thing. In some places they try to say it’s the whole section, but they fail to restate Supreme Court cases.”
Brown said librarians select books according to their district’s selection guidelines, which typically dictate selecting books to meet the diverse needs of all children.
“Some kids might find themselves in one of the characters in this book. Or for other children it could be a window. You might have a friend or family member that you don’t understand very well, but seeing that character’s thoughts and actions gives you glimpses through the window to that other person, or it puts you in a world.”
Brown said parents have the right to ban children from checking out books from their school library or to ban them from checking out a specific genre of book, which is most common with horror stories. In these cases, a note will be placed on the student’s file and if he attempts to select a disallowed book, the librarian will ask him to make another selection instead.
“People certainly have the right to self-manage their children’s reading. You don’t want anyone to take charge of your children’s reading literacy, so you give other people the same opportunity, other parents the opportunity for their children to read what is right for them, and you decide what is right for your children . Because that’s basically what a book ban means: your child has no right to that book.”
