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Graphic novels 101: reading lesson.

Article Excerpt
Small children read all the time. Hand any preliterate four-year-old a picture book, and she will tell you exactly what is happening on each page by reading what she sees. Even before she can recognize a single letter, the child is able to make meaning from symbols. Unknowingly, she relies on what educators call "prior knowledge" to interpret pictorial clues that are not necessarily realistic representations of what she sees every day. The sun, for example, isn't a circle with sticks coming out all over the place. And grass is rarely Kelly green, yet a swatch of green along the bottom of a page surely connotes grass.

As the concept of letters and sounds having meaning emerges and words are introduced, suddenly the child begins to believe that she actually can't read, because the squiggles mean nothing; as she gets older, "reading comprehension" means reading words exclusively and means less, if any, emphasis on understanding the nuances of visual images as symbols. An art history elective in high school might revisit visual literacy, or perhaps a computer class on Web design will address the function of white space and organization of nonlinear information, but not every student has such opportunities. No wonder grownups don't read comics: they don't know how. And if grownups can't read comics, they certainly can't be expected to value them, much less promote them among children and teens.

When reading a graphic novel, be like a child. Notice every visual detail. Artists must convey as much information as possible in a limited amount of space, and no pencil stroke is accidental. If a character has long hair, ask yourself why. If there is a rug in a room, and it has stripes, that's significant. Maybe it provides visual texture and creates an aesthetic response (albeit subconsciously). Or maybe there's a trapdoor hidden beneath. A good...

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