'One of the most significant transformations in literature for children and young adults during the last twenty years has been the resurgence of comics. Educators and librarians extol the benefits of comics reading, and increasingly, children's and YA comics and comics hybrids have won major prizes, including the Printz Award and the National Book Award. Despite the popularity and influence of children's and YA graphic novels, the genre has not received adequate scholarly attention.Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults is the first book to offer a critical examination of children's and YA comics. The anthology is divided into five sections: structure and narration; transmedia; pedagogy; gender and sexuality; and identity, that reflect crucial issues and recurring topics in comics scholarship during the twenty-first century. The contributors are likewise drawn from a diverse array of disciplines-English, education, library science, and fine arts. Collectively, they analyze a variety of contemporary comics, including such highly popular series as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Lumberjanes; Eisner award-winning graphic novels by Gene Luen Yang, Nate Powell, Mariko Tamaki, and Jillian Tamaki; as well as volumes frequently challenged for use in secondary classrooms, such as Raina Telgemeier's Drama and Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
'With contributions by: Eti Berland, Rebecca A. Brown, Christiane Buuck, Joanna C. Davis-McElligatt, Rachel Dean-Ruzicka, Karly Marie Grice, Mary Beth Hines, Krystal Howard, Aaron Kashtan, Michael L. Kersulov, Catherine Kyle, David E. Low, Anuja Madan, Meghann Meeusen, Rachel L. Rickard Rebellino, Rebecca Rupert, Cathy Ryan, Joe Sutliff Sanders, Joseph Michael Sommers, Marni Stanley, Gwen Athene Tarbox, Sarah Thaller, Annette Wannamaker, and Lance Weldy.' (Publication summary)
Contents indexed selectively.
In this essay Christiane Buuck and Cathy Ryan 'discuss how introducing comics theorist Thierry Groensteen's ideas about visual repetition enriched their university students' ability to interpret the medium. First introduced in his 1999 classic The System of Comics and reinforced in his wiz text Comics and Narration, Groensteen's term "braiding" refers to a repeated element in a comic that draws the reader's attention to a particular idea or theme using images rather than words. The repeated element can be a page layout, the layout of an image in a panel, the repetition of a design, the figural placement of characters or objects on the page, but the key is that the braid requires the reader to be an active agent in the interpretative process (Comics and Narration 35). Buuck and Ryan demonstrate that many of the repeated elements—what they term "visual metaphors'—in Shaun Tan's The Arrival "offer opportunities for readers to superimpose their own lived experiences and cultural perspectives on the book's visual landscapes.' (from Introduction)
'Scholars have placed considerable importance on the study of contemporary children's and young adult (YA) comics, and this collection of twenty critical essays furthers that endeavor. As editors of Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults: A Collection of Critical Essays, Michelle Abate and Gwen Tarbox make a sensible case as to why there needs to be a continuation of scholarship of children's and YA comics. Since the beginning of the twenty‐first century, there has been a boom in the number of publications inside this genre. This explosion of material has reached young readers in school libraries and classrooms. While the field of comics studies continues to blossom, little attention has actually been given to children's and YA comics in contemporary times. Most comics scholars have tended to focus on comics aimed at young adults before the twentieth century. This work helps fill this hole in comics scholarship.' (Introduction)
'Scholars have placed considerable importance on the study of contemporary children's and young adult (YA) comics, and this collection of twenty critical essays furthers that endeavor. As editors of Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults: A Collection of Critical Essays, Michelle Abate and Gwen Tarbox make a sensible case as to why there needs to be a continuation of scholarship of children's and YA comics. Since the beginning of the twenty‐first century, there has been a boom in the number of publications inside this genre. This explosion of material has reached young readers in school libraries and classrooms. While the field of comics studies continues to blossom, little attention has actually been given to children's and YA comics in contemporary times. Most comics scholars have tended to focus on comics aimed at young adults before the twentieth century. This work helps fill this hole in comics scholarship.' (Introduction)
