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Comments: 127 +- News: Comic Books Improve Early Childhood Literacy on Saturday November 07, @04:47PM
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Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Professor Carol Tilley, a professor of library and information science at the University of Illinois, says that comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of reading, children benefit from reading them at least as much as they do from reading other kinds of books, and that there is evidence that comics increase children's vocabulary and instill a love of reading. 'A lot of the criticism of comics and comic books come from people who think that kids are just looking at the pictures and not putting them together with the words,' says Tilley. 'But you could easily make some of the same criticisms of picture books – that kids are just looking at pictures, and not at the words.' Tilley says that some of the condescension toward comics as a medium may come from the connotations that the name itself evokes but that the distinct comic book aesthetic — frames, thought and speech bubbles, motion lines, to name a few — has been co-opted by children's books, creating a hybrid format."
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No doubt. (Score:5, Interesting)
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I was about to post the same thing. Even as a kid I didn't get into comics, because I had to constantly switch my mind from processing words to processing the action. I'd get fatigued from that many context switches in one reading session. This is also the reason I absolutely _hate_ subtitles in movies. I guess my mind is just wired differently.
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I have no problem with subtitles in anime. It's really not that hard to read the text while you're looking at the image.. if anything the text is easier. I want to play the video at double speed sometimes because I read the line instantly and then have to sit around for a few seconds waiting for the character to say it.
As for the story, I'm sure it depends on the type of comic. If you're reading Dresden Codak then you're getting more real material than most books. If you're reading POWs and KER-BLAMs in a s
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You can probably get a degree in it.
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Re:No doubt. (Score:5, Funny)
There's an art to reading graphic novels, and knowing how to read them. To analyze the frames for relative action to the story and so on. I for one have never been as good at understanding comics as I have traditional literature.
I agree. My 13 year-old son can read a graphic novel and tell me the story in great detail. When I look at one of his books it's just a bunch of random explosions and women with bizarrely large breasts.
Parent
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Had you started reading comics when you could buy them for five cents, you'd have had an easier time making sense of the story and not needed to worry about the graphics stealing your concentration. The artwork then, compared to that found in comics today could only be called primitive. This is not to say that the artists were unskilled, but rather that the medium was still, for all its color, only in its late infancy.
The graphic novels of today revel in the pure colors and glossy paper. 50-60 years ago, wh
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"The writers were passing their mores to the next generation, building a society viewed patriotism without today's fashionable disdain, without the snarky remarks about nationalism and right-wing beliefs. It was better then."
You forget, that the right wing deserved its disdain by distorting the word 'patriotic' with their 1-bit white&black view.
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Such insight.
Your brilliant hindsight is a common flaw of youth. Displaying great wisdom when you have few facts and only one chance to do the right thing is harder than simply passing judgement on decisions made before you were born.
You'll see. Your grandchildren's generation will call you to task for missing the obvious solutions.
Time makes fools of everyone.
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Judge Dredd comic has a forum where readers can discuss the different stories. I see the same discussions there, as we had in high-school English when taught about the "classical" plays, novels and stories.
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The graphic novels of today revel in the pure colors and glossy paper. 50-60 years ago, when they went to press with the "dick tracy" palette and stipple shading, plotlines were somewhat less complicated (stories were pretty cut and dried, good vs. evil with no shades of gray) and relied more on the text than they did on the art. The writers were passing their mores to the next generation, building a society viewed patriotism without today's fashionable disdain, without the snarky remarks about nationalism and right-wing beliefs. It was better then.
Of course, you are forgetting that thanks to 'moral panics' about the content of comics, the Comic Code Authority [wikipedia.org] censored all comics to remove storylines which were deemed 'perverted', where authority figures did anything wrong, or where good did not triumph over evil. It's less about the writers' mores and more to do with an industry responding to intense government pressure.
50-60 years ago most people alive remembered the Second World War and the urgent question was whether Communism was going to conquer
What's the difference (Score:5, Funny)
Q: What's the difference between a comic and a graphic novel?
A: About twenty quid.
[kadradabumTISH!]
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Q: What's the difference between a comic and a graphic novel?
A: About twenty quid.
s/comic/novel/ and it's still true
Manga (Score:2)
If they think comic books will help, just imagine what they could do with manga!
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I don't think the world needs a whole generation of children wearing Naruto headbands. Now, if we can get them all to read something like Berserk, then maybe it'll be a good idea. We'd certainly be well prepared for any sudden outbreaks of horrible hellish rapebeasts.
Also foreign language learning. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I lived in Spain for a year, spoke/read very little spanish when I moved there and read alot of x-men comic books. They did help me pick up vocabulary and common expressions and such. Anyone who things that any form of reading cannot help just due to it's content is just being prejudicial against the material.
Re:Also foreign language learning. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Also foreign language learning. . . (Score:4, Informative)
A friend of mine is obsessed with all things Japanese. I'm interested in the language myself, so I used the Rosetta stone software. I was impressed with what I was able to learn. Fast forward two years.
He knows way more Japanese than I do. I can barely remember the katakana/hirogana. He has a real actual USE for it, and uses it daily. I don't use it much at all. When I do, I have to look everything up.
I suspect if I had gotten some manga (in Japanese) or read a lot of Japanese websites, I'd be much better at it today.
Parent
Re:Also foreign language learning. . . (Score:5, Informative)
Manga is excellent at teaching spoken Japanese. Almost without exception the language you see is the same language that people are using to communicate in every day situations. Of course you have to avoid using extremely rude or bizarre expressions. But it isn't actually difficult to determine what those are. People who don't read manga have this strange idea that manga readers walk around talking like Naruto. The one drawback is that you aren't going to be exposed to a large amount of very polite language. But, personally, I think you shouldn't concentrate on that until you have a decent fluency with plain forms (YMMV)
For anyone who wants to read manga to learn Japanese I have two pieces of advice. If your vocabulary isn't that good, you'll be looking up every second word and it will go too slowly for you to remember anything. Memorize vocabulary as you go until you can read about 95% without looking up the words. After that point, you may not have to memorize words explicitly if you are reading enough. You might just learn them as you're reading (again, YMMV). But using a computer or electronic dictionary dramatically speeds up searching, so don't bother with paper.
The second piece of advice is to read Tae Kim's Grammar guide http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar [guidetojapanese.org] There is almost nothing in a manga that isn't covered in this guide. I also believe that Tae Kim's presentation is vastly superior to any other Japanese grammar book. Personally, I memorize all the example sentences from the guide (English --> Japanese) using a spaced repetition program.
Using primarily manga and Tae Kim's guide I've become relatively functional in Japanese. I can hang out with people who only speak Japanese and have a good time. I've even been on a couple of dates where the girl didn't speak any English. I've never taken a Japanese class.
Parent
Re:Also foreign language learning. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Not particularly. Asterix at its best has jokes for everyone. (And spotting the puns is good fun for french students!)
Parent
Would it kill you to mention some titles? (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone who wants to know what she's talking about, go check out Diary of a Wimpy Kid [wimpykid.com]--assuming you haven't already. It's usually categorized as a "Middle Grade" series of books and is hugely best-selling. It isn't as epic or serious as Harry Potter or the Twilight books, and solidly middle grade stuff doesn't usually get as much play in the press because it doesn't cross over as well into an adult audience, but Jeff Kinney makes fabulous use of short, often one-panel "comics" right in the flow of the story. It's more than illustrations (as still seen in many MG books) but less than exposition.
I'm not sure why the only titles mentioned in the article were Astro Boy and Sailor Moon. I think the professor's arguments are well-considered, but there are some great concrete examples that would have given the article a little more meat.
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Serious?!?!
I guess you didn't actually read Twilight [thebigbags.com], did you?
Tintin (Score:5, Funny)
Shooting rhinos for the lulz since 1931
Ha! (Score:5, Interesting)
What a coincidence. I was just thinking about my dad -- ordinarily a highly intelligent person -- and how he once told me how disappointed he was that I was reading comics, because "I'd forget how to read real books," or some such nonsense. (I was probably about 14 at the time -- a crucial time of life, apparently, when the danger of literary alopecia lurks around every corner.)
What pop seemed to have forgotten was that a large part of the reason why I was reading three or four grades ahead of my class when I first started school was because A.) I had seen the movie Star Wars, and B.) that meant I needed to immerse myself in every Star Wars thing I could possibly get my hands on, especially including comic books.
Remember, there was no way to just watch your favorite movie at home in those days. One of the main ways to get my daily fix of the Force was to revisit the saga in comic book form. And it turns out this was actually a very efficient way to learn how to read. Consider: Having seen the movie in the theater about seven times already, I had pretty much memorized all the lines. The dialogue in the comic books wasn't exactly the same, but before long I could easily follow along with the simple lines and expository captions.
These days I'm revisiting the same trick, reading Franco-Belgian graphic albums as a booster for studying French. My brain is far less able to pick up languages these days than when I was a kid, but the same rules apply with modern French comics as with those Star Wars comics from the 70s, for the most part. The things characters say aren't usually all that complex, and the pictures often give you a hint as to what they might be saying. You can even pick up idioms and colloquialisms that you might not normally be exposed to by a textbook.
I'm glad to see someone's actually doing the research, though. It's probably the only way you would ever convince my dad.
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Show me a 10-year-old who knows the meaning of "invulnerable", and I'll show you a kid who reads comics.
I learned to read before I started school, well enough that they put me in a 1st-grade class for reading when I was supposed to be in kindergarten. I was also a fan of comic books and comic strips. Not a coincidence. Reading comics engages both the linguistic left side of the brain and the spatial right side of the brain. What could be a better way of learning?
Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
I always enjoyed reading the comics as a kid. I'd have to say Calvin and Hobbes was the best. Nothing like a big cardboard box being so many different things when left to your imagination.
Gateway to literature AND art (Score:2)
Comic books are a great gateway drug to more serious reading. If a kid gets interested in story and plot then they will continue that interest in other reading materials... but at the same time, comics can help instill an appreciation of graphic arts in a way they might not have otherwise. It's a twofer!
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud (Score:2)
Nerds of many stripes can benefit from the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud [scottmccloud.com]. It is required reading in many undergrad and masters programs (like HCI, Film, English, Interaction Design, etc). If you ever have the chance to see Scott give a talk, do yourself a favor and go.
If you aren't sure if comics are a legitimate art or communication medium, read the book. It uses comics as a platform for explaining how narrative works---and that's something that is useful to basically everybody.
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Obligatory Penny Arcade comic [penny-arcade.com] whenever someone brings up McCloud.
Makes sense (Score:2)
My son is seven years old and has graduated to books like Zac Power [wikipedia.org]. But two years ago he was into comic books. I think anything which gets them reading is good. With a comic they can follow the pictures then use the words to better understand the story, so it definitely leads them into reading and gives them the confidence to turn the pages.
Little Kids Love The Family Circus (Score:2)
Little kids seem to love The Family Circus [familycircus.com] (characters look like them), and later will get a kick out of The Dysfunctional Family Circus [furr.org].
Hydrocephalus? (Score:2)
Little kids seem to love The Family Circus (characters look like them)
How big are their heads again?
Uncle Scrooge and Nephews in the 50s (Score:2)
Take with a pinch of Salt... (Score:2)
Now as a kid who had a fairly vast comic book collection I would read them a lot, and well looked at the drawings as well ( Mrs. Fantastic was pretty dang hot ) and I doubt I am any worse for the exposure.
Fast Forward 40 years and now I have an 8 year old. He just finished reading Tom Sawyer for school and was completely absorbed by it and it had very few simple line drawing illustrations. He is trending toward books with few illustrations and I am really ok with that.
I am not sure if that is a product of
Accuracies (Score:2)
Why so defensive? I haven't heard a discouraging word about comics since specialty stores started pulling in big bucks and especially since Bruce Willis made it a habit of using them as a primary source. Perhaps TFA wouldn't get get as much milage here if it made the generalization explicit and said that narrated dialog with action directions given as illustrations improved etc. etc. And the author may not have been confident of the attention to be had except when there's a condescending offstage character
Other languages, too (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone above mentioned Spanish, but I've been using 'comic books' to help learn Japanese. Regular books are -far- too hard yet, but I could puzzle my way through an easy manga (japanese comic book) months ago now. Now I'm up to early teen mangas and still getting better. Yes, my goal is to eventually read any book I can lay my hands on, but there's no doubt in my mind that manga have made it far, far easier to learn Japanese.
I see no reason this wouldn't be the same for English as well. Yes, there may be some reluctance from the child when moving from comics to real books, but if they already enjoy reading when it comes time for that, it'll be easier.
Back in the day, comic books were EVIL! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yah. I remember, as a kid in Orange, California in the late 50s - mid 60s, the unanimous line from parents and teachers about how comics would rot your brain and keep you from ever reading "real" books.
Funny thing: me and my comics-reading, comics-trading buddies all grew up to love reading. We graduated from comics to adult (not meant in the porn sense, you dirty-minded pervert) books earlier than most of our peers, and still, in our 50s, tend to read more than most people.
Go figure!
More than pretty pictures. (Score:2, Funny)
I only read Playboy to increase my vocabulary and increase a love of reading.
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You could do a lot worse : "A few of the notable authors [knowledgerush.com] who have had works published in Playboy include John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Alex Haley, Stephen King and many more". A lot of SF greats [knowledgerush.com] have also published in Playboy : "In 1966, the magazine showed off a bit with The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, a selection of tales first published in its pages, including George Langelaan's "The Fly" (source of the movie), Charles Beaumont's "The Crooked Man," Arthur C. Clarke's "I
Supervillain Vocabulary (Score:2)
As long as we call them what they are (Score:2)
Comic books. I've always hated the name 'Graphic Novels'
If we're gonna rename it they should be called 'Paper Cartoons'
Long history of this in Belgium (Score:2)
We have a very long tradition of teaching kids to read by reading comic books here in Belgium. Generation have grown up with kid friendly comics like Jommeke [wikipedia.org] and Suske en Wiske [wikipedia.org] eventually graduating to more complex ones like the ever popular Tin Tin [wikipedia.org]. One common trope is to have a character with a confused manner of talking who is always being corrected which effectively shows kids how they should talk. They are also routinely used to teach foreign languages. I myself learned french using Suske En Wiske (Bob
From the Annals of Obvious Research (Score:2)
The fact that reading comics promotes litteracy is pretty obvious to anyone living anywhere with a strong "comic book" culture such as Japan, South Korea or French-speaking countries. The problem is that most US comic books are not very good, and the good ones are not targeted as kids (mostly).
This is why I give out Comic Books on Halloween (Score:2)
I've done it for years and my parents have picked up the habit as well. Here are some relevant links:
An Article About Giving out Comics [aintitcool.com]
Comics 4 Halloween [comicspace.com] - A promotional movement.
For my son it was the BBC.. (Score:3, Interesting)
My son didn't have cartoons, but he got addicted to a BBC programme called "Words & pictures" [bbc.co.uk] which was shown every morning (and we ended up religiously taping). This starts with describing letters ("e" - "eel, egg") and then draws them very explicitly on a whiteboard with a "magic marker" ("straight across and rouuund"), and the series gradually moves into paired characters and then eventually words. This interest started at age 2.5 or so, and after a totally worn out video recorder (for seeing things again), a mountain of scrapbooks (at first, one character was enough to fill a page) and half a paycheck on whiteboard markers (until we found the liquid filled ones that don't dry out) he was writing and reading at age 3.5. I had not realised he picked up pre-reading as well until I asked him to read ME a story, and it was too fluent for him to read that word by word. A few years later I noticed him speed reading as well, he seems to follow the diagonal method.
All we did was give him the opportunity, the exposure. No pressure, just help if it didn't work or learning how to hold a pen properly and how to make letters the same size when fine motoric skills were up to it. I must admit I was a bit worried about how deep he got into this - on holidays, all it took was a pen and a notepad to keep him from getting bored. He seems to have my affinity for fast pattern recognition, maybe that helped - I remember having to slow him down so he switched from reading the words to understanding the sentence and its content.
At his school there was another girl who'd done exactly the same, so they ended up reading the story of the nativity play that year together.
Personally, if the BBC would put that series out on DVDs I would recommend this to any parent. Kids seem to pick things up at warp speed when they're ready for it and interested, just don't try to force it (especially when they're little - they will go to school soon enough). Most of the time exposing them to as many different things as possible and having fun with it is enough - if something resonates you'll know soon.
Thank you BBC.
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Do the hundreds of science fiction studies professors who loudly proclaim that sci-fi is just as valid a genre as any other get posts on Slashdot too?
Believe it or not, there are a great many works of fiction that are not genre fiction -- consider, say, Moby-Dick. From that perspective, saying one fiction genre is equal to another is sort of like saying one pizza is the same as any other. You might disagree. You might like pizza from one pizza place better than the others, or one might deliver faster. But all pizzas are, at the end of the day, pizzas. There's not really any point in arguing.
What this study is hoping to help dismiss, on the other hand, is
Medium, not genre (Score:5, Insightful)
Comics are not a genre.
Westerns, science fiction, romance, mystery, autobiography, war, superheroes, etc. are genres.
Comics are a medium - like films, prose, poetry, songs, or plays - one capable of telling stories in any genre. The problem is that the mediums of comix is so closely associated in our current culture with funny-animal stories for children and superhero stories for adolescents, that people don't realise what the medium is really capable of, especially its ability to be sophisticated enough to engage intelligent adults. But name any popular genre, and I can name a comic book series or graphic novel that tells a story in that genre.
Parent
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"Comic books aren't just escapist fantasy. They're sophisticated social critiques."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_(magazine) [wikipedia.org]