Frank was engaged as the CSAA's child reading expert and published a parental literary guide titled What Books For Children?

Due to her progressive views about parental supervision of children's reading, Frank became one of the significant pro-comics voices during the American anti-comics movement of the 1950s, for which she received praise and criticism.

[4] She also investigated child labor and worked with poor immigrants in New York's Lower East Side, while living in Greenwich Village.

"[3] After Chicago Daily News writer Sterling North condemned comic books as "graphic insanity" and "sex-horror serials" in one of his columns, comic book companies rushed to save their image and prove that they were not as harmful as North made them out to be.

[3][6] National Comics Publications managing editor Whitney Ellsworth sent out a memo to his staff that read: It is our desire to publish our magazines in strict adherence to accepted standards of decency and good taste.

We wish to point out that this code of editorial practice has been prepared with the advice and assistance of: Dr. Robert Thorndike, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Miss Josette Frank, Staff Advisor to the Children's Book Committee, Child Study Association of America.

[7][8] In 1943, she sent a letter criticizing sexual and bondage imagery in Wonder Woman stories to National's publisher, Max Gaines.

She reveals one of the main aspects of parental frustration with comic books: "the intensity of the children's absorption in these paper-covered concentrations of color and motion leaves us aghast.

And what safer was to enjoy the thrills of danger than knowing, with deep certainty, good will triumph over evil—by no matter what improbable means.

Here, surely is the most soul-satisfying justice!After the publication of What Books For Children?, the CSAA featured two articles by Frank in their Spring 1942 and Summer 1943 issues of Child Study, the organization's magazine.

[14][15] Hilde Mosse, the acting physician in charge of the Lafargue Clinic, used Frank's position on the advisory board to discredit her pro-comic writings published in the Journal of Educational Sociology at a 1950 symposium on comics held at a New York school.

During the proceedings, Estes Kefauver grilled Child Study Association of America president Gunnar Dybwad over Frank's links to the comic book industry, suggesting as Mosse did earlier that her writing was not credible due to her professional affiliations (receiving pay from the industry).