Yes, Drama: A Graphic Novel Is Banned!

Raina Telgemeier’s 2012 graphic novel follows Callie, a middle schooler who loves theater and throws herself into designing sets for her school’s production of Moon Over Mississippi. The story includes two male characters who share a brief kiss. That’s it. That’s the controversy. For this, Drama has been one of the most challenged books of the past decade, holding the #3 spot on ALA’s top 10 list in 2014 and reappearing in 2017 and 2018.

Entire school districts in Texas banned the book in 2016 and 2017, including Franklin ISD, Chapel Hill ISD, and Kirbyville CISD. The ACLU documented these removals as part of a broader pattern of targeting books with LGBTQ+ content. In January 2022, a Florida school district “quarantined” it after a conservative political group complained it contained “obscene material.” In Cheyenne, Wyoming, parents challenged the book’s presence in elementary school libraries in 2020. The book has sold millions of copies and is one of the most popular middle-grade graphic novels ever published.

Why You Should Read This

Drama is a book about a kid who loves building sets and has a crush. It’s sweet, funny, and exactly the kind of story middle schoolers devour. The fact that two boys kiss for one panel out of 240 pages has been enough to get it pulled from entire school districts.

Telgemeier writes about the messiness of being 12 with more accuracy than most adult novelists manage. Callie’s crushes don’t work out the way she plans. Friendships shift. The school play almost falls apart. These are universal experiences, and the LGBTQ+ characters aren’t a “theme” or an “issue.” They’re just kids in the cast.

The banning of Drama has become its own kind of absurdist theater. A gentle book about putting on a school play gets treated like contraband, while the kids it was written for sneak copies and wonder what all the fuss was about.