Graphica: Real Books

A little boy brought back a graphic novel, Monkey Vs. Robot by James Kochalka, saying his mother told him he needed to get a "real" book.

Recently I attended the Conference on Children's Literature at the University of Georgia. My favorite panel: Graphic Novels and Literacy: Using Comics to Teach Reading Comprehension in Grades 2-6. Graphica refers to manga, novels, comic strips, comic compilations, stories told in panels, and stories with speech bubbles. The category includes biographies of Helen Keller and George Washington; nonfiction explaining Hurricane Katrina; even the 9/11 Report has been issued as graphica.

The National Council of Teachers of English, the International Reading Association, Horn Book magazine and School Library Journal have all published research based articles which show that graphica and comics are linguistically appropriate and can improve reading outcomes. Among the research results:

• Comics and graphica scaffold students toward more difficult reading (read the comic version of Beowulf first, then approach assigned text).
• They improve reading development, demanding a high level of inference.
• Readers of comics read as much as, and often more than, students who don’t read comics.
• Readers of comics score just as high as non-comic readers on comprehension tests.
• Comics and graphica improve motivation to read and thereby improve vocabulary, comprehension and pleasure reading, for excellent readers but especially for struggling and emerging readers.

As teachers and parents, we must explicitly teach the conventions of this genre:
• Ask a child to generate a story from a wordless or nearly wordless book.
• Ask a child to interpret facial expressions and other nonverbal communications; understanding emotions from facial expressions is a critical skill.
• Sequencing – ask about how it is organized, noting especially subtle clues for cause and effect.
• Verbalize the process by which the child discerns plot, motivations, and feelings.
• Note onomotapoeia and how it adds to the story.
• Point out speech bubbles; children who read them include more direct speech in their own writing and understand why speech adds so much to a story.
• Notice lettering. It creates mood and intonation with lots of bold print – reading it aloud encourages fluency and expression. Children seem drawn to handwritten text.

Our always-creative teacher José Cordero, teacher of 5 & 6 year olds, sent me this email:

I just put Owly to a new use this morning. I have a kid who I've struggled with all year trying to get more language out of her. At the beginning of the year she would only nod, shake her head, or make animal sounds at me. We've made a lot of progress since then, but we're far from done. She needed a new reading record today, and I knew she was solid with short vowels, long vowels, blends & digraphs... She's already a very good reader, with good fluency and good comprehension. What I really wanted most for her was to practice generating descriptive language. So I gave her Owly and Polo as her new reading record. It's the first time I'm trying this, but I'm really excited. She's already spoken more to me this morning reading Owly than she has all week combined. Plus, I'm getting even more evidence about how observant she is reading all the details of the panels.


Popular examples in the Paideia Library:

Pigeon series and Elephant & Piggie series by Mo Willems have really taken over the early reader world. These bridge comics demand lots of inference about feelings and motivations.

Owly series by Andy Runton: Almost wordless, but perfect for teaching literary elements – plot, setting, character, motivations, cause & effect – children need to look from panel to panel and back again to understand what is going on. These are especially good for inference with facial expressions.

Just a few other popular titles and series, in ascending order by age:
Polo by Régis Faller
Luke on the Loose by Harry Bliss
Stinky by Eleanor Davis
Bone by Jeff Smith
Babymouse by Jennifer Holm
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians by Jarrett Krosoczka
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
To Dance: A Memoir by Siena Cherson Siegel

The research is conclusive: they are "real books" that young readers devour.