‘SIMPLY BENIGN’

Georgia Parents Fight to Bring Back Banned Book ‘Flamer’

More than 100 have signed a petition to return the graphic novel to Marietta school library shelves.

Dozens of parents in Marietta, Georgia, are fighting to return a banned book, the graphic novel Flamer, to school library shelves. The school district removed it after some parents complained it was sexually explicit, and the superintendent rejected an appeal of that decision. Now a group of parents is appealing to the city board of education—the latest in a nationwide series of disputes over books that have sat on library shelves for years or decades with little notice. “When it’s read in completion, in context, the book is simply benign,” Kayla Sargent, who circulated a petition that has 120 signatures, told 11Alive. “My 10-year-old has read it.”