"We don’t have any way of restraining people."

The Hesperia Star offers a more, er, fact-based take on the whole Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics controversy by, you know, talking to the librarians.

In Hesperia, librarian and branch manager Anne Marie Wentworth hadn�t heard any complaints about the book – and rarely any complaints at all.

“I can�t remember the last time somebody complained about a book,” she said. “The last time somebody complained about a book it was a graphic novel.”

Graphic novels are book-format comic books generally intended for more mature audiences. The graphic novel a resident complained about contained no sexual content, as Wentworth recalls, but was more violent than most young adult titles. The book was moved to the adult section of the library.

“They�re not all jumbled together. We have a children�s section, we have a young adult�s section and an adult�s section,” she said. “We don�t have any way of restraining people.”

They do place some works behind the circulation counter, but typically for reasons other than content.

“The only items that we have that we keep behind the circulation desk are the things that will get ripped off if we don�t,” Wentworth said. “If we don�t leave the latest copy of People magazine behind the desk, only one person would get to read it, because it would walk out of the building.”

The relative lack of complaints is typical of the county library system as a whole, said Ed Kieczykowski, County Librarian, the head of the library system.

Personally, I’d love to see libraries employ “Restraint Assistants” that would physically tackle anyone reaching for, say, Tropic Of Cancer before their 21st birthday.