Anchorage Daily News

Grade school kids snatch up anime like bubble gum and sketch comics of their own, but a fifth-grade boy from Northwood Elementary discovered how "Manga Mania" could lead to trouble beyond the art room.

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Hatcher's sketch was based on instructions from a book called Manga Mania: How to Draw Japanese Comics.

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Hatcher Johnson took several of his own drawings of anime-style figures to school a few weeks ago and ended up in the principal's office with his artwork confiscated and three days of in-school suspension.

Principal Greg Balcao said he can't talk about the specifics of the incident because of confidentiality, but he sees it as a discipline issue, not an art censorship issue.

The boy's mother, Susan Johnson, disagrees and thinks the school overreacted by making her son feel as if he did something dirty and wrong.

Hatcher, 12, showed his drawings to a friend at recess. Things snowballed when his friend handed the drawings to someone else, who passed them to someone else, who passed them to a girl who got offended at something the boy said and ripped up several of the drawings.

Hatcher ended up in the office for "Drawing nude females and taking them to school," he said.

"He was pretty upset for a couple of days," Susan Johnson said, "and that's what made me call the principal up and say my son shouldn't have to feel like that about doing art."

The drawings came straight from a book called "Manga Mania: How to Draw Japanese Comics." Hatcher said he chose to freehand-copy these particular images because they were simpler than some of the other exercises in the book.

He thought it would be OK to show them at school since he saw nude paintings in art books in the library.

When Balcao moved some of the impressionist books from the Masters of Art Series to the reference area of the library, Susan Johnson got even more upset.

"I almost feel like I never should have said something in the first place," she said. "I really feel responsible for the books being pulled."

Balcao said the books are still available to students, but not through the general collection.

"Our action was to take the materials they were giggling over and drawing pictures from inappropriately ... and to address the discipline issue."

Michelle Egan, communications director for the Anchorage School District, said schools put expensive volumes -- like art books -- in specific parts of libraries to monitor them.

"Keeping them in the reference section preserves them," she said.

Egan said she couldn't comment on Hatcher's in-school suspension but noted that principals often hand out consequences progressively, based on how often a student ends up in their offices.

Hatcher has been called in a few other times, he said, but not for his artwork.

INDELIBLE IMPRESSION

Amber Whitney knows how he feels. As a student at Polaris K-12 several years ago, she did a three-dimensional piece with a collage of images about drugs, alcohol and addiction for an art show held at the school after hours.

"It was a bit disturbing, but that was the impact that I wanted," she said. "I grew up with addiction in my family, and it's a disturbing issue, and art has always been my venue for expressing myself in constructive ways."

She showed up the night of the show with her piece, but the principal rejected it because of content.

After that experience, Whitney refused to take an art class at Polaris again and was furious with her instructors and principal.

She never gave up on art, however, and is now finishing her third year at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and teaching art classes at the museum in the summer.

Now she sees her encounter with censorship with the perspective of an adult.

"The bottom line was that it was too serious and disturbing for people of that age group, and now I do understand that."

Her art teacher back then, Jody Jenkins, remembers the rejection as "a powerful blow" to Whitney. Jenkins, now the curator for arts education at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, still wonders if she did enough to defend Whitney at the time.

"There were a lot of factors involved," Jenkins said. "I didn't know how seriously she was involved in the piece. It was the only time that I had a student who refused to take another class from me."

DIFFERING OPINIONS

Whitney and Jenkins urged caution when dealing with art that offends or disturbs other people.

"It can be hard to judge with nudity and school," Whitney said. "I can understand how he (Hatcher) got in trouble. But at the same time, if they weren't lewd, I don't think he should have been punished by anything more than being told not to draw nudes at school."

Jenkins agreed, but acknowledged, "You have to be so sensitive because you're dealing with everyone in a public school of all kinds of beliefs."

As Egan put it, "Not all kids are developmentally ready, and not all families support the full freedom of exposure to art and literature and the range of things that might be in the library.

"It's a delicate fine line for the district to walk, because exposure is important to their learning."

Susan Johnson understands all that, even supports it, and has prohibited her son from taking his drawings to school. She just wishes everyone had taken a little more care in how they talked to her son about his drawings.

"I'm proud of them," she said. "I can see where he erased and corrected. I can see how hard he worked to get them right."

Last week, she got one of the drawings back whole and another ripped into about a dozen pieces, but two are still missing. Hatcher sounded indifferent.

"I was proud of the drawings until I got into trouble," he said. "I didn't really care about them after I got in trouble, and I haven't really wanted to draw anything like that since."

Find Dawnell Smith online at adn.com/contact/dsmith or call 257-4587.

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