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In the past several years, the buzz about graphic novels has grown deafening. These books, which look like comics on steroids, seem to have near miraculous properties. They attract reluctant readers and bookworms. They lure teen boys, while retaining the qualities beloved by teen girls. They work for ESL students (Krashen 54), teach visual literacy (Gorman 9-10) and sequencing, and, above all else, they are wildly popular with an adolescent audience. If you listen to the praise heaped on the format by its followers, you may think that graphic novels will do everything, including walk your dog and make your teeth whiter.
Even as research piles up on the benefits of these materials, many educators and librarians are reluctant to join in on the graphic novel love fest. Perhaps it is the association with spandex clad heroes saving the world from improbable destruction by impossibly attired villains. Maybe it is the memory of cartoons featuring pretty, big-eyed children and cuddly, but deadly, creatures. Or possibly it is simply the thought, instilled by dozens of teachers and librarians who have come before, that these materials, looking like, feeling like, and acting like a comic book, simply are not "real" books. They have too many pictures, too few words, and lack too much quality to ever be seriously considered as literature, or even books.
The shortest definition of graphic novels describes them as "book-length comic books." A definition used by librarians refers to them as book-length narratives told using a combination of words and sequential art, often presented in comic book style. The constant in both definitions is "comic book." Because the image of comic books seems to fuel resistance to graphic novels by many educators and librarians, correlating the benefits of graphic novels to learning requires a change in the way they are viewed. Instead of thinking of them as a genre, it is necessary to think of them as a format.
To illustrate this, let's look at another format, which is already in most public and school libraries: the audiobook. An audiobook can be of any genre, for any audience. The content of audiobooks is variable within the same format. A stroll through the audio section of any large bookstore will reveal titles by authors...