The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at the Federalist talks about the sad descent of many USA libraries into leftism, and they allegedly have difficulty even supplying copies of manga books, though even that doesn't salvage a dire situation. The article asks:

Do Anime And Manga Inspire More Reading?

“Hurdles to book ordering have emerged across the country,” reported WaPo. It cites a school librarian in Florida’s Monroe County who has not been allowed to purchase books since last year, who said that her district had seen decreased student interest in and demand for books. Circulation is down “dramatically,” she claimed while providing WaPo with a list of books requested by students that she has not been able to order. The list includes, among other titles, “Dragon Ball, “Dragon Ball Z,” “Pokemon Adventures,” and a long list of various Japanese neo-noir science fiction anime and manga such as “Cowboy Bebop” and “Zom 100.”

The report also quotes John Chrastka, head of the library political action committee EveryLibrary, who warned that hindering librarians’ ability to purchase books would dampen students’ enthusiasm for reading. “We know very clearly from the research that a key driver for individual reading success is self-directed reading when kids pick up a fun new book that interests them.” Brooklyn school librarian Ciro Scardina warned: “No one is going to want to visit the library.”

Forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical that students today demanding anime and manga are tomorrow’s readers of Faulkner, Austen, or Shakespeare. As much as experts say comics can serve as a gateway to more complex reading, the data does not look good: The percentage of adult Americans reading literature has been declining for decades, as has general book reading across all ages and education levels. “Kids’ reading rates have been plummeting for years. … The data goes back many years,” says Mark Bauerlein, author of “The Dumbest Generation” and “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up” and emeritus professor of literature at Emory.

“They don’t move from Pokemon to great literature,” he says. “They go from Pokemon to cartoons and video games, the visual. They want pictures; they’re not going to like pages that are all print.”

Moreover, pace Scardina’s warning, no one has been visiting libraries for decades. Only 7 percent of Americans visit a library weekly, while almost 60 percent seldom or never visit their local public library. Use of libraries in America has declined by about a third in just the last decade. This is unsurprising, given the general decline of American readers.

Well there is a valid argument here that whoever wants children to read classic literature, or plain text sans pictures, cannot expect manga to convince them. Though this does give a strong suggestion even American comics are not drawing younger interest, and that's because the mainstream hasn't been delivering the goods for years. Certainly, it can be impressive when audiences take interest in foreign creations, but it shouldn't have to be at the expense of homegrown talent, yet that's what the mainstream lacks, and the independent scene is doubtless not considered by library staff for purchase, if at all.

It's a definite shame the library business has been horribly decimated, and while there's a lot of real enjoyment to be found in manga if you know where to look, of course it shouldn't have to be the only thing modern children should be reading, and shouldn't come at the expense of the pictureless books. Unfortunately, this is the result of educational and parental disasters, not to mention the book industry's own wide-door welcome to pervert authors, whose works are alluded to in the article. Speaking of which, there appears to be a graphic novel mentioned here that's disturbing:

Every June, my local library, one of many in Fairfax County, pulls out all the stops to celebrate Pride Month. Guess how many copies of Abigail Shrier’s best-selling “Irreversible Damage,” which discusses the damage of transgenderism to young girls, the entire library system possesses. One, in Spanish. There are only five copies of Ryan T. Anderson’s “When Harry Became Sally,” also about transgenderism. There are, by comparison, 16 copies of “Gender Queer,” and 17 copies of “Lawn Boy,” two highly controversial LGBT books for adolescents.

And IIRC, "Gender Queer" is a GN, with a viewpoint so perverse, it makes even the most questionable manga books with adult subjects look tame by comparison. At the end of the article:

Bauerlein asks, “Is the argument for LGBTQ stuff in the schools so feeble that you have to invent this notion that ‘well if Pokemon is not there, the kids won’t read.’ Are you that desperate for proof or evidence that you can make such a ridiculous and flimsy rationale?” Apparently, leftists are.

Yet even Pokemon's not exactly something they consider the highest priority reading for children compared to the other aforementioned controversial books. If they wanted to, they could push the children to read other stuff that's the opposite of what the LGBTQ propaganda pushes. Tragically, that's not what they believe in, and it practically compounds the perception they're throughly disinterested in rebuilding a market for better themes, let alone convincing anybody they're worthy of everybody's time. That's why even manga will eventually fail to draw children's interest any more than USA comics.

Labels: censorship issues, golden calf of LGBT, libraries, manga and anime, politics