...but the reporter needs to go back to school, too. The article is from The Washington Post (registration might be required), and consistently wrongly refers to comic books as a genre. Comic books are a medium, not a genre. Superheroes are a genre. Romance is a genre. Comic books, like television, radio, and the internet is a medium. It is a form of media. And anyone who refers to comic books as a genre is exposing a level of ignorance that I'm extremely surprised any editor let through.
There once was a time when comic books were at the bottom of the literary food chain. Children read them under the bedcovers with a flashlight, and parents and teachers decried their reliance on one-syllable exclamations: BAM! POW! WHAM!
"BAM!" "POW!" and "WHAM!" are more artefacts of the Batman TV series than comic books proper. People who read comic books know that their reliance on sound effects are limited. Reading Golden and Silver Age comics, I'm usually pleasantly surprised at the number of vocabulary words in them. Even back when comics were being unfairly criticized, they were teaching kids how to read.
But that was before a comic book was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, before the term "graphic novel" came into vogue as a synonym and before video games became parents' new archenemy.
OOOOH! We've got a synonym! It's ok to like comics now!
"In America, people have loved comic books, but nobody has looked at the value of it as a reading material," said Darla Strouse, executive director of partnerships for the Maryland Department of Education.
Maybe she hasn't, but lots of people have recognized the value of comics in helping people learn to read for many years. Yes, a statewide program is a nice jump from individual efforts, but don't underestimate everyone else while singing your own praises. Later in the article:
That's quite a rehabilitation for a literary genre that 50 years ago was blamed for causing illiteracy, as well as juvenile crime and sexual misconduct.
It's not a freakin' "genre"! It's a medium! It's part of media! Sheesh! This kind of mistake is inexcusable in a newspaper.
I could continue to pick at it, but I'm sure people have got my point. The article, though poorly researched and written, does contain the good news that schools recognize the value of comic books as an intermediate step to reading for reluctant readers.
In one fifth-grade class at George D. Lisby Elementary School at Hillsdale, in Harford, nearly all the students said they had read comic books in their free time. Superman, the Simpsons and Dragon Ball Z -- the children all said that they would rather read those features than a text-only book.
To pick at it once more, the three mentioned comics represent three different genres.
It is "something with action and excitement . . . and superheroes," Lisby student Rashard Drake, 10, said.
To Lisby reading specialist Alberta Porter, comic books are something more -- a way to tempt struggling readers and introduce them to new words and concepts.
On a recent morning, Porter opened a "Donald Duck and Friends" comic book to a page on which a student had labeled parts of the strip: "narrtive box," "thouht ballon," "speech ballon." A worksheet that accompanies the comic "Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists" asks students to define the words "posthumously" and "rehabilitating" and to explain how the women overcame obstacles and how it relates to the students' experiences.
"We're trying to change some previously held concepts and thoughts that there was no place" for comics, Porter said.
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