What are some of the teaching advantages of graphic novels?
Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher, the authors of Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School, say graphic novels can be an effective means of enhancing the literary appreciation of adolescent readers. Frey uses panels from graphic novels in shared reading to engage students in a discussion of the nuances of visual language to represent ideas, “We invite them to tell the story and ask them lots of questions about how they know. You’d be surprised at the answers — they can immediately identify the devices used by the artist to represent these concepts. It’s a short journey to replacing visual images with words. In our minds, it makes sense to initially move them as far away from text as possible so they can concentrate on what they already know. Their recognition of the similarity between how artists and writers use language to communicate the ideas becomes a bridge for teaching new information about reading comprehension.” “We’d also like to acknowledge the impor
