Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez News 

Decision Reached in “Palomar” High School Library Challenge

By | March 27th, 2015
Posted in News | 8 Comments

Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez

On February 26th, KOAT, a Rio Rancho, NM-based TV news station, ran a story about “Palomar”, a collection of acclaimed stories by celebrated cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez. The piece wasn’t trying to praise the book, however; it was trying to bury it. The mother of a local 14-year-old high school student brought the book, which her son had checked out of the high school library, to KOAT’s attention because it included what she decided was “child pornography” and “child abuse”.

You can read our full coverage of what happened afterwards (including comments from Comic Book Legal Defense Fund executive director Charles Brownstein, Fantagraphics Books associate publisher Eric Reynolds, and RRPSD spokesperson Kim Vesely), but long story short, the school district did decide to follow their own procedures and form a review committee last week to determine whether or not “Palomar” would remain on the library shelves, where it had been for almost a decade without incident.

That decision, relayed to Multiversity Comics late yesterday in a statement from Kim Vesely, was a vote of 5-3 in favor of keeping “Palomar” in the high school library because “in spite of its depiction of some adult sexual themes, [it] does meet the standard of RRPS School Board Policy 425 Library Bill of Rights.”

And just in case you were wondering what that standard was, here’s the definition from the RRPS website:

The board supports the School Library Bill of Rights, provided by the American Library Association, which asserts that the responsibility of the school library is:

    1. to provide materials that will enrich and support the curriculum, taking into consideration the varied interests, abilities, and maturity levels of the pupils served.

    2. to provide materials that will stimulate growth in factual knowledge, literary appreciation, esthetic values, and ethical standards.

    3. to provide a background of information which will enable pupils to make intelligent judgments in their daily lives.

    4. to provide materials on opposing sides of controversial issues so that young citizens may develop the practice of critical reading and thinking.

    5. to provide materials representative of the many religious, ethnic, and cultural groups and their contributions to our American heritage.

    6. to place principle above personal opinion and reason above prejudice in the selection of materials of the highest quality in order to assure a comprehensive collection appropriate for the users of the library.

For various reasons described in the statement, the committee deliberation notes are not made public. The committee’s decision can also be appealed through the Superintendent and ultimately decided by the Board of Education.

But make no mistake: the fact that we got this far and actually achieved the due process afforded by the school district laws instead of the virtual public book-burning that KOAT story all but told people was needed? This, ladies and gentlemen, is a win.

For the Rio Rancho community, for comic fans, for anyone who doesn’t want their access to different or challenging information dictated by the uninformed or the close-minded…this is a win.

But there are other cases just as important going on right now, and there will, unfortunately, be similar cases tomorrow and in the days to come. So if you want to keep seeing these fights won rather than lost, please consider donating to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (or a similar First Amendment organization of your choice).


Greg Matiasevich

Greg Matiasevich has read enough author bios that he should be better at coming up with one for himself, yet surprisingly isn't. However, the years of comic reading his parents said would never pay off obviously have, so we'll cut him some slack on that. He lives in Baltimore, co-hosts (with Mike Romeo) the Robots From Tomorrow podcast, writes Multiversity's monthly Shelf Bound column dedicated to comics binding, and can be followed on Twitter at @GregMatiasevich.

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