Concerning & Potentially Concerning Content

The biggest concern is that this is an adult book packaged as a children’s graphic novel (see more discussion in the next section). The most concerning resulting parts are the following (these are middle school girls): We see an illustration of girls looking at a Sears catalog. They say to check out the last page because you can see “a man’s thing”. The girls use a Ouija board. This is illustrated and presented as this cute, innocent, fun activity. One of the newspaper articles shows a feature on ghost hunting with quite a bit of detail. The movie “The Exorcist” is mentioned, with the plot described. When the main character gets a boyfriend, they end up hanging out a ton in the woods together alone. Other concerning items: Early in the book we see an image of the “predators” at the middle school (think bullies). When showing them we see some of their bully-like behavior and description shown. Examples include “French-kissed an 8th grader”, stole gum, has no curfew. Next up the “prey” are shown. Some of these descriptions will likely make kids not feel great about themselves. Descriptions of what make them prey include freckles, being very tall, mom making her own clothes, retainer being out at lunch, having a strange last name. Reference to “hot pants”. A 70’s teacher breakroom is shown with a ton of smoking and gossiping. Friday the 13th is referred to as “bad luck”. There is quite a bit of note passing during class. The main character is 12 and describes having to wear “this weird half undershirt, half bra thing” with a picture shown. She is also shown kissing a poster of John Denver. When bullies are shown we see comments like, “I hate her” and “such a jerk”. There is a comment that “most people don’t realize the danger our planet is in”.