Yes, Let's Talk About It Is Banned!

Let’s Talk About It is a graphic nonfiction guide for teenagers covering bodies, consent, relationships, gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex. Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan wrote and illustrated it with the same frank, inclusive approach that made Moen’s earlier sex-education webcomic popular with adults. The book uses cartoon illustrations to explain anatomy, discuss boundaries, and answer the questions that teens are already googling anyway. It’s aimed at readers ages 14 and up.

The book landed on the ALA’s top ten most challenged list in both 2022 and 2023. It has been banned or challenged in school districts across Texas, Florida, Utah, Virginia, and Missouri. The Alpine School District in Utah banned it as part of a sweep of 52 books. Spotsylvania County, Virginia, targeted it alongside dozens of other titles. The objections focus on the book’s illustrations of anatomy and sexual activity, its inclusive treatment of LGBTQ+ identities, and the argument that any sex education in graphic-novel form is inherently inappropriate for teens.

Why You Should Read This

Teenagers have questions about sex. They’re going to find answers somewhere. The question is whether those answers come from a carefully researched, consent-centered, medically accurate book, or from the internet’s unfiltered firehose of misinformation and pornography. Moen and Nolan chose to give teens a source they could actually trust.

The book treats its readers as people capable of handling real information. It covers consent thoroughly, not as a legal checkbox but as a practice woven into every interaction. It discusses bodies of all types without shame. It addresses LGBTQ+ experiences as normal variations, not exotic outliers. The illustrations are clinical where they need to be and warm everywhere else. Banning it doesn’t stop teens from being curious. It just takes away one of the best resources available to them.