Evening links.

• Challenge Update: Highland Park ISD board OKs policy on selecting books. "If the district receives multiple challenges to the same book or material, they would be consolidated and reviewed by one committee. A complaint would not be heard about the same book or material until three years after the last one." Previously.
• At Book Riot: Reading, Depression, and Me. "After making the excruciatingly hard decision to medicate, I can’t say enough for what a positive difference this has made in my life. Especially my reading and writing life."
• At Diversity in YA: "A Lot to Decode": Perceptions of Diversity in Book Reviews, Part 3. "The idea that books about non-white/non-Western cultures should educate white/Western readers is rooted in white supremacy and Western imperialism. It is rooted in the belief that there is a dominant culture — white/Western culture — to which all other cultures are subordinate; that these Other cultures bear the burden of clarifying themselves to the dominant culture; that they must render themselves intelligible to the dominant/white reader. This is an offensive and racist stance." Previously.
• At the AV Club: We’re talking about young adult fiction all wrong. "The problem with this assessment of YA fiction is that it not only privileges certain genres over others, but also presents itself in gendered terms. That means that the way we have talked about YA fiction since 2005 has largely been constructed around privileging authenticity, or the idea that certain genres and books are inherently more “real” or “prestigious” than others. Gender ties into this argument because more often than not, the YA works pegged as authentic and legitimate are written by men and fall into the category of realism." I agree with so many of the points that this essay makes, but as it's also largely based on the basic premise that John Green's Books Brought YA Into the Literary Realm, I... no.
• At Ciel Rouge: 2015 YA Reads Written By Authors of Color.
• At BuzzFeed: This Guy Trolling His Local Book Store Is The Funniest Thing You’ll See Today.
• At the Show Me Librarian: Selection is Privilege. "First, and frankly, I find the position “because we don’t have X readers in my library, we don’t need X books” to be racist. This position implies that we as selectors view diverse books as inherently less-than. If we argue that only black youth will want to read about black youth, we are really saying that the experiences of black youth have no relevance or meaning to youth of any other race. We are saying that the experiences of the youth in the books we do buy have broader relevance and resonance. That is the very definition of otherizing and making a particular perspective, experience, or group less-than."
• At Unadulterated.Us: A greatness of graphic novels - Winter 2015. SO MANY TITLES TO ADD TO MY TBR LIST.
• At Kottke: How Peanuts got its first black character. "Franklin, the first black member of Charles Schulz's Peanuts gang, made his debut in July 1968. His presence came about through the efforts of Los Angeles schoolteacher Harriet Glickman, who wrote Schulz several letters in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination arguing that the inclusion of black characters in the most popular comic strip in America would be a positive thing."