The Maryland Board of Education has restored Mike Curato’s Flamer, a young adult graphic novel about a gay teen boy struggling with his identity, to schools in the state, CBS News reports. The state board also recommended that the county school board revise its procedures to make them more transparent and allow for more public participation. The book had been approved by the district, but after a parent filed an appeal, the county school board voted in a closed-door meeting to ban it.
Hartford County residents held a protest at their board of education’s August meeting. “In the school system, parents can opt out of any book that they want for their child. There is already plenty of support or protection for any parent who doesn’t want their child to read a book,” Delane Lewis, president of the advocacy group Together We Will Hartford County, told CBS at the time. “What we have is the Board of Education stepping in front of parents and telling them what they should or shouldn’t have their children read.”
In October, Curato had a “fireside chat” with the community that included a question-and-answer session. “A lot of people who ban ‘Flamer’ don’t talk about how the book is about suicidal ideation and prevention,” Curato said. “That’s why I made this book, because I know that there are kids out there right now who are going through exactly what I went through in 1995.”
Flamer, which was published in 2020, was one of the three most frequently challenged graphic novels in the country in 2023 and 2022 (see “Three Graphic Novels Among Top 10 Most Challenged”).
Source: ICv2
