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Borders to move children’s book to adult sections …

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Tintin in the Congo,’ the children’s comic book to be published for the first time in the United States this fall, will be shelved in the adult section of Borders bookstores because of content that could be viewed as racist, Publishers Weekly reported Tuesday.

Borders’ British stores earlier this month yanked the book from its children’s sections and placed it with graphic novels after the Commission on Racial Equality denounced it for depicting black Africans as ‘savage natives’ who ‘look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles,’ according to the Telegraph.

‘Tintin in the Congo,’ first published in 1931, is was the second in a series by Belgian artist Hergé to chronicle the international adventures of a quick-witted young reporter and his fluffy white dog. The book was redrawn by the artist in 1946 to remove references to the Congo’s being a Belgian colony, but was excluded from reprinting in Britain until recently because it still contained such images as a black woman bowing to Tintin and saying: ‘White man very great. . . . White mister is big juju man!’ The book will be included in a boxed set of 24 volumes to be reissued by Little, Brown in November as part of a centenary celebration of the birth of Hergé, the pen name of Belgian cartoonist Georges Rémi.

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Borders’ U.S. spokeswoman Ann Binkley told PW’s Karen Holt that the retailer is ‘committed to acting responsibly ¼ and with sensitivity to all of the communities we serve’ by placing ‘Tintin in the Congo’ in the adult graphic novel sections. ‘We believe adults have the capacity to evaluate this work within historical context and make their own decision whether to read it or not. Other ‘Tintin’ titles will remain in the children’s section.’

Meanwhile, U.S. publisher Little, Brown says on its website that the book ‘reflects the colonial attitudes’ of the period and that the reissued volume will seek to ‘contextualize’ the stereotypes held about black African people at the time.

— Kristina Lindgren

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