Graphic Novels != Garbage

At the library, one of my greatest pet peeves (except that it's really more serious than a pet peeve) is parents disparaging their children's reading choices. Too often, comics and graphic novels are the target of their scorn. "Go find a real book! You're not reading that garbage." [Actual quote from a dad last week.]

Of course, anyone who knows anything about literacy knows that reading comics is a valuable pastime. Graphic novels can be great works of artistry and literature, as even the media elite have recognized. (Art Spiegelman's Maus won a Pulitzer, Gene Yang's American Born Chinese won the Printz last year, as just a couple examples. I guess you can add in Brian Selznick's Invention of Hugo Cabret picking up the Caldecott this year, too!)

But even works never destined to win big literary prizes, like Garfield or X-Men, aren't garbage. Comics entertain and inform as any other book, while building reading fluency. They're especially helpful to reluctant readers and visual learners, but can be appreciated by just about anyone - except those stodgy parents.

Craig Thompson takes a nice jab at those parents in his own highly artistic graphic novel Good-bye, Chunky Rice. Pawing through Chunky's box of belongings, Captain Chuck exclaims, "Oh ho comic books! My kids - Kenny, Doug, Greta & Patrick - will love them! I'd rather they be reading the Hardy Boys, but what the Hell..." The sentiment being, of course, that even mass-market, ghost-written series fiction is somehow superior to any comic book, no matter how lovely.

Besides, the kids at my library read plenty of so-called "real" books at school. Their brains are packed with Newbery winners and required reading in every genre. Every book is picked apart in class discussions and worksheets and book reports. If they want to relax with some Foxtrot or Shaman King, let 'em. By discouraging them from reading what they want to read, you'll only discourage them from reading, period.

All of this is to introduce that, a couple weeks ago, Jen Robinson posted a great round-up of links on encouraging reading through comic books.

And it looks like Buzz, Balls & Hype is starting a new feature by the The Graphic Novels Guy, with its first post about the publishing execs' slowness to acknowledge the appeal and import of graphic novels. I'll be looking for the recommended title, Tales from the Farm, by Jeff Lemire.