Bad for You! Celebrating Banned Books Week
Are you the kind of kid who thinks it’s BAD when a graphic novel gets banned? Then get ready to be totally shocked when you find out there was once a time in this country when comic books were BURNED!
Kevin C. Pyle and Scott Cunningham will be reading from their docu-comic BAD FOR YOU: EXPOSING THE WAR ON FUN, detailing those dark days and more. They have a whole chapter on the stuff adults were once afraid of kids reading—including fears from ancient times about reading itself! You’ll also learn about how scary old fairy tales once were, as well as what keeps getting Harry Potter books banned (hint, it has something to do with the devil).
Join Kevin and Scott for their celebration of Banned Books Week (September 21-27) and find out how much fun BAD can be!
Copies of Bad for You: Exposing the War on Fun are available at the Library Shop. Supplies are limited so we encourage audience members to purchase their copies before the event. Kevin and Scott will sign books at the end of the program.
Kevin Pyle learned how to draw copying pages of Mad magazine and war photos from Life magazine and he’s been trying to combine the two ever since. His first graphic novel Blindspot, about boys playing army in the woods, was published in 2007 by Henry Holt for Young Readers and was included in the Best American Comics of 2008 (so why don’t you go out and buy it right now). He has also published Katman and Take What You Can Carry, which is partially set in a Japanese-internment camp during WWII. His “docu-comics” Lab U.S.A.: illuminated documents, Prison Town, Wage Theft and now, Bad For You, all deal with little known history and issues of social justice – although Bad For You is the only one with a toilet joke. He lives with his wife, son, two cats and a dog named Frodo in a creaky old house somewhere past the swamps of Jersey.
Scott Cunningham showed an aptitude for art at the tender age of two and has worked as both an illustrator and writer, and sometimes even an illustrator/writer, for publications such as Heavy Metal, Mad Magazine, Mad Kids, Nickelodeon Magazine, Archie Comics, and a slew of DC Titles, including Vertigo, Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo and Cartoon Network Block Party. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, daughter, dog and WAY too many cats.