After talking to the kids today in reading group, a few mentioned that their parents weren’t quite sure they knew what a graphic novel was so…
Scholastic magazine explains…“A graphic novel, like a regular novel, is a stand-alone story that is published as a book. It’s easy to get confused, though, because some people will still use comics for the whole genre or graphic novel for any comic-style work that’s handsomely published, even if it’s just a collection of superhero stories.”
Graphic novels powerfully attract and motivate kids to read. Educators have reported outstanding success getting kids to read with graphic novels, citing particularly their popularity with reluctant readers, especially boys—a group traditionally difficult to reach. At the same time, graphic novels with rich, complex plots and narrative structures can also be satisfying to advanced readers. In fact, graphic novels are flexible enough that often the same titles can be equally appealing to both reluctant and advanced readers. Providing young people of all abilities with diverse reading materials, including graphic novels, can help them become lifelong readers.
The notion that graphic novels are too simplistic to be regarded as serious reading is outdated. The excellent graphic novels available today are linguistically appropriate reading material demanding many of the same skills that are needed to understand traditional works of prose fiction. Often they actually contain more advanced vocabulary than traditional books at the same age/grade/interest level. They require readers to be actively engaged in the process of decoding and comprehending a range of literary devices, including narrative structures, metaphor and symbolism, point of view, and the use of puns and alliteration, and inference. Reading graphic novels can help students develop the critical skills necessary to read more challenging works, including the classics.
Check out these sites for a list of graphic novels for kids.
http://www.scholastic.com/graphix/Scholastic_BoneDiscussion.pdf (we have many of these at Center)
