Barstow library to display Gravett book

Here’s the latest news from Victorville: The Barstow Community College Library has ordered copies of Paul Gravett’s Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics and will put them on display when they arrive, probably at the end of the month.

“Our feeling is that we would like to see the book returned to the shelves of the county libraries,” Kyri Freeman, librarian at the Thomas M. Kimball Library at the college, said.

Freeman said she and many librarians believe the book did not go through an appropriate process before it was banned.

“In effect, we feel it was an act of censorship and not appropriate,” she said.

Freeman said the book, which she has not read, would be a good fit with the library’s collection, and that the college plans to offer a course on graphic novels in the future. Members of the public can look at the book in the library, but only faculty and students will be able to check it out.

And this is what you call ironic:

Although the Manga book cannot be checked out at the county library branches, a link to the county library’s Web site allows a viewer to purchase the book for $24.95.