Graphic novels lead reluctant teens to literature

Posted on March 23, 2005 by Brigid Alverson

The Arizona Republic has an article on librarians using graphic novels as a way to get teenagers interested in reading. They contend that graphic novels have an “expansion effect”—teenagers will move on to traditional books.
I’m actually finding the reverse is true at my house: I walked into my younger daughter’s room yesterday and noticed that there were almost no regular books on her bookshelf, only manga. She recently cleared her shelves of quite a few books that she had outgrown; this is what’s left. I’m not worried, because her reading is driven by her interests; in a year or two something else will be elbowing the manga aside.

About Brigid Alverson

Brigid Alverson has been reading comics since she was 4. After earning an MFA in printmaking, she headed to New York to become a famous artist but ended up working with words instead of pictures, first as a book editor and later as a newspaper reporter. She started MangaBlog to keep track of her daughters’ reading habits and now covers manga, comics and graphic novels as a freelancer for School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Comic Book Resources, the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, and Robot 6. She also edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. Now settled in the outskirts of Boston, Brigid is married to a physicist and has two daughters.
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