Book Store Considers Pulling Graphic Childrens Novel

I'm 18,I love Japanese Manga, and I personally own Absolute Boyfriend, it is a wonderful story...but I don't think it should be in the children's section, it is rated T for older teen, so I agree with that, however i don't like the idea of losing graphic novels in the store. japanese art is so beautiful and the stories are even better. I also have to say I understand why this women is upset. but honestly, when you go into a bookstore watch your kids, they will wander into other sections. I really don't think it is nessecery to remove the books from the store.

"I expected that they would be in an adult bookstore or in a mature area of one of these book stores," says McWaters. But not in the Kids-A-Million section." - Mrs. McWaters

This was not in "other sections". It was in the Children's Section, just where the child belonged in the bookstore.

It's nice that it has a name and some think it's an art form, but porn is also called "erotic art". Having a legitimate sounding name doesn't change what it is.

What happened to the other article that had all the comments? It seems to have disappeared.

I had a similar experience at the Books-A-Million at Sandhills Center. There were many Very Graphic Adult Cover books in plain view for Children. I was embarrassed and upset when my 6 year old noticed them and asked me about them. I complained and the VERY young store manager laughed about my complaints that I made to him. I tried to call the main office but was not successful either. Books-A-Million is about profit not the children. It's very sad.

April K is about the censorship, not about freedom. Crawl back into your hole and leave the rest of our lives alone.

It was very irresponsible of the bookstore to a book rated T+ in the children's section. The ratings are there for a REASON! This isn't censorship, it's common sense! Barnes and Noble manages to separate the manga sections for kids, teens, and adults. Libraries manage. It's not that difficult.

I used to work at a Books-A-Million in Chattanooga, and I can think of a few reasons this might have happened:

* An employee misplaced it when reshelving, not realizing what it was about.

* A customer misplaced it after reading it, which, in fact, happens very frequently. It's not unusual at all to see a book from an entirely different section end up somewhere else.

* The warehouse mislabeled it before it reached the store. Usually employees are expected to take it back to the office so it can get relabeled, but it can often be missed. Hence you may occasionally see a James Patterson novel labeled as a Bible.

I do have to take issue with the article's treatment of Absolute Boyfriend. It makes it sound like a hardcore porno, but while it does have quite a bit of nudity, it is hardly graphic. The naughty bits aren't shown, and the characters are actually very shy about sex. The book is aimed at older teen girls, not children, and not adults. What happened was a mistake: it should be taken out of the kid's section, but it doesn't need to be pulled off the shelf altogether.

What a stupid Article!

"It's nice that it has a name and some think it's an art form, but porn is also called "erotic art". Having a legitimate sounding name doesn't change what it is."
Kinda makes me ask "Have you read it?" or "If you often browse books to search porn?".
Anyway, that aside, the store should have more attention to their goods and their location as well the mother should pay more attention to what his kid is buying rather to what might she find in kids section. From her reaction, i doubt that she buys books often. If so, she would certainly thought that the book might have been misplaced for other reasons besides "evil bookstore owner wants to corrupt my boy".
Should everything been solved without hysteria. Oh i guess it's easier to take the responsibility away and put blames on other.

I've read it, and it's not that bad. I mean, sometimes you might see a man's chest, but mostly there's no sex going on, in fact, nothing happens. They kiss sometimes and that's about it because the girls is so shy about sex and is scared of hurting her friend who is also male and who likes her. But it's not porn, it's far from it. And some lazy person probably left it there.

Collins referred to manga as "children's books"; however, not all manga is appropriate for children. All manga will have a label on the back which lists the age appropriateness of the book. Some mature books are even shrink-wrapped as a precaution.

Most book stores will place all manga into one section, but there are a few store that spread manga around the store based on the subject matter. The report did not state which method this Books-a-Million used to organized its manga. It's also not clear by the report if the manga section was located near or beside the "Kid-a-Million" section.

The report also is not clear if this was only a single volume of "Absolute Boyfriend" that was found in the children's section or if there were multiple copies or if the other three volumes were in the same location. It could very well be that the book was misplaced by another customer or a customer trying to stir up trouble by placing an inappropriate book in the children's section.

I also think that the parent's reaction of refusing to shop there any more was over the top. It's one thing if the store refused to correct a problem. But since the store is looking at how to fix the problem, then she is being petty by refusing to shop there in the future.

In summery, the report had no investigative quality to it and didn't attempt to figure out how the book got into that section, if this was a case of customer confusion, or if this was a result of a poorly laid-out store.

As a fan of anime and manga, I find this laughable. McWaters is clearly the type of parent who wants to censor her precious little baby from anything and everything. Does she blindfold him when he's in the bath so he can't see himself? Whatever will she do when he becomes old enough to bathe himself or take a shower?

Absolute Boyfriend is not an "explicit" title. While it is targeted at teen-aged and above audiences. it's not labeled mature because it doesn't contain material that demands such. Manga artists rarely depict "naughty" parts of human anatomy, and when they do, the majority of it is female breasts. I could understand her being worried had she seen that, but when it's a male body in question?

Following the tangent, if McWaters were to find Battle Royale or Yellow (both of which are labeled with mature content warnings), would she demand that the entire manga section be removed from the store for containing excessive gore or pornography? Parents need to stop pampering their children.

McWaters gives such an ignorant statements through out her interview. If she had actually read through the book, she would have found it to not be grapic or adult in nature (older teen at the most). There is not any more nudity in those pages than what you would see at the beach. As a parent myself, I found her reaction to be offensive in it's ignorance and stupidity.

I also found it odd that the article/story did not mention in what way the book was found in the children's section. Was it a large number of books? Was it an actual display? Was it one misplaced book? Did the news reporter read through the book or only read the back cover? If this station is going to give a report on a story it should do a more thorough job.

$10 says the woman goes back to the store within a week.

Since most of these manga ship shrinkwrapped, aren't there more likely conclusions such as someone read it and put it in that section as a banal attempt at humour?
Perhaps being unwrapped, an employee improperly shelved it?
Or it could be that the lady has a sick variation of Munchausnen by Proxy Syndrome and placed the book there herself?

This really isn't a very well written or researched article.
The book in question is designed for older teens, not adults and as others have said, it really hasn't been made clear whether this was a single copy that could have found it's way into that section accidentally, or whether it was actually racked in that section. That's quite an important distinction, and just denotes slightly sloppy, knee-jerk journalism.
Of course, the reaction of both the parent, and to a lesser extent, the bookstore is also pretty knee-jerk, but I guess if everyone involved had been a calm, reasonable sort, it wouldn't be as newsworthy, would it?

Sandy wrote:

"I expected that they would be in an adult bookstore or in a mature area of one of these book stores," says McWaters. But not in the Kids-A-Million section." - Mrs. McWaters
This was not in "other sections". It was in the Children's Section, just where the child belonged in the bookstore.
It's nice that it has a name and some think it's an art form, but porn is also called "erotic art". Having a legitimate sounding name doesn't change what it is.
What happened to the other article that had all the comments? It seems to have disappeared.

It's the fact that people are BLAMING THE MANGA ITSELF that's bad. How this made it to the news is just mind boggling. Blame the store, don't blame the book... Besides, Absolute Boyfriend is aimed at teenagers, not adults...

Heaven forfend that this woman's son should learn what a naked teenage boy looks like.

I wrote about this article in my own blog here: http://duncanheights.com/blog/... , in which I agree with a lot of what many of you have already said.

Actually, I shop in this store all the time and was annoyed to find that they had moved the Manga section. The Manga wasn't IN the kids section-it was behind it. Now it's moved to the other side of the store where it is difficult to shop because of the proximity of other popular sections. This lady is dumb-parent your own children and stop expecting the rest of the world to do it for you!

This is NOT an adult graphic novel.
It's a shoujo manga. Shoujo manga are comic books for young girls and teenage girls. This series is for teenage girls.
So the bookstore should create a section called comic books for teenage girls.