About

Boy Reaching for Books is a cartoon by Cuban artist Osvaldo Gutierrez "Osval" Gomez that depicts a boy standing on a stepladder trying to reach for a shelf with books, ignoring easily reachable guns on the wall. In May 2023, the webcomic achieved virality as an exploitable meme format as users replaced the books with other objects or labeled the image.

Origin

On January 12th, 2016, Cuban cartoonist Osvaldo Gutierrez "Osval" Gomez published a cartoon titled "Easy Access" on Cartoon Movement^[1] and Facebook^[2] (shown below). The cartoon depicts an American boy standing on a short stepladder trying to reach for a shelf with books, ignoring five guns hanging on the wall. The post gained over 80 reactions and 30 shares on Facebook in seven years.

Spread

On January 17th, 2016, the Facebook^[3] page Occupy Democrats posted the image with the caption, "We can judge a society by how easily it allows access to certain things…" The post (shown below) gained over 36,000 reactions and 28,000 shares in seven years.

Prior to May 2023, both the original cartoon and the captioned version were occasionally shared online on Twitter, Facebook and other websites.^[4][5]

On May 29th, 2023, Governor of California Gavin Newsom then shared the image on his Twitter^[6] account, with the post gaining over 7,300 retweets and 39,600 likes in two days. The post was followed by users on Twitter editing the images, replacing either the guns or the books with other objects, or humorously labeling them.

For example, on May 29th, Twitter^[7] user @Jack2LOneill tweeted a meme in which the bookshelf was replaced with the FN PS90 submachine gun (shown below, left). The tweet gained over 960 retweets and 17,400 likes in two days. On May 30th, Twitter^[8] user @MidnightMitch posted a meme in which they replaced guns with gender studies textbooks and the books on the shelf with math, reading and history textbooks. This version (shown below, right) accrued over 5,700 retweets and 40,200 likes in one day.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References