Old Media, New Media: The Graphic Novel as Bildungsroman

Abstract

I frequent our town’s chain book store when\rpaper grading calls my name. Surrounded by books, I find evaluating a stack of freshman composition papers more enjoyable. Recently, I became distracted by a small cluster of absorbed tweens lounging near me. I was struck by the sight of three young ladies reading, each engrossed in a graphic novel held approximately six inches from her face. I wondered, were they also readers of classical coming of age novels like Huckleberry Finn or Treasure Island?\rDid they also read young adult novels? What other kinds of texts did they read? What did these young ladies find so appealing about graphic novels? All this pondering led me to this supposition: surely, there must be both personal and academic benefits to studying new forms of literary texts such as graphic novels.