Cartooning Book Pulled From School Had Page Of Nude Characters

First Adam and Eve were tossed out of the Garden of Eden. Now they’ve been expelled from Meadow Ridge Elementary School.

This time, the offending couple are wisecracking, naked cartoon characters in a book called “The Beginner’s Guide to Drawing Cartoons.”

Mead School District administrators decided to pull the book from the library Friday after a mother complained that the nudity was a bad influence on kids.

Laurice Cranshaw said she first saw the book when her 8-year-old son, Spencer, flipped to page 45 and said, “Oh, Mama, I shouldn’t have brought home this book.”

“I said, `No, you certainly shouldn’t have, honey,”’ Cranshaw said. “I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe they’d have a man’s penis and a woman’s breast in a grade-school library.”

Ardith Hunter, a librarian for 19 years, said she was trying to fill a gap in her library when she ordered the book based on its title. Kids had become extremely interested in drawing cartoons after an artist visited the school, Hunter said.

No one remembers how long the 80-page book, written and illustrated by Peter Coupe, has been at the school. It was published in 1996 by Arcturus Publishing Limited.

Hunter said she wasn’t aware of the nude characters until Cranshaw brought them to her attention last fall with a written complaint.

On Friday, assistant superintendent Joan Kingery met with Hunter and the school’s principal to review the book. Sometimes when a parent complains, a larger review committee is convened, but this time the issue never got to that point.

Kingery said she decided to permanently pull the book from all district schools because the three educators readily agreed. They disliked the Adam and Eve drawings, which Kingery said she suspects were intended for an older audience.

“It may be more for adults who want to doodle,” Kingery said.

The educators also objected to a drawing of a liquor bar and a character’s comment that some bosses marry their secretaries.

“There were things bordering on being the wrong kinds of stereotypes,” said Kingery. “In other words, not good humor. Inappropriate, stereotypical kinds of humor.”

The book might encourage kids to draw things that would get them in trouble with teachers, Hunter said.

“I felt like the title was dependable, because it was a beginner’s guide. But it did not get screened thoroughly.”

Cranshaw is delighted by the district’s decision to pull the book. She suspects kids were interested in more than art when they checked out Adam and Eve, located between a chapter on drawing hands and one on drawing backgrounds.

“That page was worn much more than the rest of them,” she said. “You know what the kids were checking that book out for.”