Exploring an Emerging Medium in Literacy: A Study of Graphic Novels

On a recent afternoon in Lilac Band Literacy, the energy in the room was unmistakable as learners discussed a page from their current read-aloud. When Stars Are Scattered is a graphic novel adapted from the life story of Omar Mohamed, who spent his childhood in the Dadaab refugee camp, and who co-authored the book with noted graphic novelist Victoria Jamieson. Projected on the whiteboard in full color, five panels showed Omar and two friends discussing their dreams for life beyond the refugee camp: to become a lawyer, a social worker, and a teacher. As they contemplated the page, Lilac Band members engaged in a lively conversation about change in the central character. We captured a transcript of the last few minutes:

Anika: Omar was stuck on only looking back to Somalia, only going back to find his mom. But now, he’s opening up… [many voices concur…]

Sophia: Yes. It’s not just hope; he’s also having a better attitude about it and being more cheerful.

Declan: He’s not necessarily hopeful about his mom; he’s hopeful about his future.

Ms. Frank: So maybe his hope is growing? Before, his hope was only this big, but now it’s broader?

John: He’s hearing a lot of different ideas, maybe he’s getting affected by some of them? 

Ms. Frank: I hate to stop this wonderful conversation! We’re still thinking about our theory about Omar and his hope, but let’s keep reading to see where this conversation goes between the three of them. 

When Stars Are Scattered exemplifies the innovative literary work being done in the emerging medium of book-length works that combine text and images in a format that many readers may associate with “comics.” However, many of these texts, which span the genres of fiction, memoir, non-fiction, and infinite hybrids, have intellectual complexity that reaches far beyond the province of a Garfield strip, and are intended for varied audiences that range from early readers all the way to adults. In a work such as When Stars Are Scattered, images provide information about tone, context, character development, and the reality of a very different way of life. Images allow for a spaciousness and impact of the text itself that requires the kind of attention we might devote to poetry – if we were reading a poem alongside an inextricably linked work of art. 

Lilac Band readers are already demonstrating this kind of attention to the graphic novels they are studying. Over lunch on the day of Lilac’s conversation, a learner saw another Long-View teacher –  not Ms. Frank, who leads his Literacy block – sitting down with a copy of When Stars Are Scattered. He immediately picked up the text to comment, “We’ve been noticing color symbolism – see here? The background is purple every time they’re scared! Or here – “ he flipped a few pages back – “it’s yellow when they’re hopeful, or happy!”  

When Long-View’s Literacy team noticed last year that the Units of Study, a state-of-the-art curricular resource for teaching literacy that we’ve long relied on in our school, had just published a new unit based on graphic novels, we were eager to try it out. In teaching this unit – with an eye toward the way that Literacy work translates more broadly into the humanities as learners transition to high school and beyond –  we aim to cultivate our learners' ability to critically navigate and analyze imagetexts, a medium that is increasingly prevalent in our culture in and out of the literary context.

Collectively, our teaching team spends a lot of time thinking about the units and skills we teach. We track which units are taught to which groups of kids over time, and strive to be thoughtful about the collection of units that they experience across seven or so years at Long-View. The units are typically genre-focused, and the four teachers work hard to be sure that our kids are exposed to multiple genres, topics and media within the categories of narrative, persuasive, and informative writing, while also pressing into a variety of specific skills. As suggested by much recent research, writing and reading graphic novels provides an outstanding opportunity to focus on skills such as analyzing the structure of effective stories and making the subtle inferences required by multimodal reading. Writer Shannon Hale, the author of many acclaimed text-only as well as graphic novels, lists even more benefits in a letter that she wrote from her perspective as a parent of a child whose love for reading centered on this medium.

Graphic novels are often less linear than traditional text-based formats, and elements such as setting, theme, plot, and characters are portrayed differently. Because of these differences, reading a novel through the medium of an extended imagetext requires a great deal of inferencing and close reading. And of course, the reader must integrate the visuals and text simultaneously. Many educators believe graphic novels are actually more difficult to analyze, and thus provide opportunities to refine critical thinking and comprehension skills. In addition, the format accommodates aspects of visual literacy that appear in the lives of young learners in myriad ways. Like fellow educators and parents across the country, we know that kids will be more powerful readers if we directly teach these skills through the lens of imagetexts. 

Resources to Help Your Child Find Great Graphic Novels

Award Winning Graphic Novels (complied by San Jose Public Library)

Best Graphic Middle-Grade Novels of 2022 (compiled by Kirkus Review)

2023 Best Graphic Novels for Children Reading List (selected by American Library Association Committee)