![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenygalThe library in which I work, unlike the other library systems which with I'm familiar, sensibly shelves its graphic novels as fiction. Specifically, in almost all cases, in the young adult section, but there is the occasional exception, mainly SANDMAN and the work of Alan Moore. And, as I noticed today, THE TALE OF ONE BAD RAT.
It seems an odd choice. ONE BAD RAT is about a sexually abused teenager who runs away and finds a new life, drawing inspiration as she does so from the life and works of Beatrix Potter. So it's a graphic novel with a teenage protagonist, either of which tends to get books sent to YA, and yet there it is in the adult section, and I'm not entirely sure why. Certainly it's readable for adults (I'm damning with faint praise, there; it's terrific for any age) but I honestly wouldn't have assigned it the level of complexity graphic novels apparently need to get classified adult. (Prose, on the other hand...well, let me put it this way. Dark Knight Returns is listed YA. The novelization of Batman and Robin is listed adult. Uh-huh.)
The content? Obviously disturbing, but that can't be it; there are other books about rape in YA. The visual depiction of same (very disturbing in places, though never graphic)? May well have lent more weight, though again I wouldn't have thought it was more disturbing than other things shelved in YA. The non-fantastic subject matter? While I suspect the assumption that anything with a superhero in it is probably for teens is why some of the other trades have wound up in YA, the absence of those elements shouldn't be enough to keep it off the YA shelves. After all, they're filled with such material in prose form. Perhaps it really is the level of quality then, which is indeed high, and the relationship between life and art is the sort of thing we tend to class as Adult Themes.
All the same, somehow I can't help wishing that they hadn't made an exception for it--surely if there was any story that should be put where the kids can find it, it's this one?
It seems an odd choice. ONE BAD RAT is about a sexually abused teenager who runs away and finds a new life, drawing inspiration as she does so from the life and works of Beatrix Potter. So it's a graphic novel with a teenage protagonist, either of which tends to get books sent to YA, and yet there it is in the adult section, and I'm not entirely sure why. Certainly it's readable for adults (I'm damning with faint praise, there; it's terrific for any age) but I honestly wouldn't have assigned it the level of complexity graphic novels apparently need to get classified adult. (Prose, on the other hand...well, let me put it this way. Dark Knight Returns is listed YA. The novelization of Batman and Robin is listed adult. Uh-huh.)
The content? Obviously disturbing, but that can't be it; there are other books about rape in YA. The visual depiction of same (very disturbing in places, though never graphic)? May well have lent more weight, though again I wouldn't have thought it was more disturbing than other things shelved in YA. The non-fantastic subject matter? While I suspect the assumption that anything with a superhero in it is probably for teens is why some of the other trades have wound up in YA, the absence of those elements shouldn't be enough to keep it off the YA shelves. After all, they're filled with such material in prose form. Perhaps it really is the level of quality then, which is indeed high, and the relationship between life and art is the sort of thing we tend to class as Adult Themes.
All the same, somehow I can't help wishing that they hadn't made an exception for it--surely if there was any story that should be put where the kids can find it, it's this one?
