November 2009     Although comics have been published in newspapers since the 1890s, they still get no respect from some teachers and librarians, despite their current popularity among adults. But according to a University of Illinois expert in children's literature, critics should stop tugging on Superman's cape and start giving him and his superhero friends their due.

Carol L. Tilley, a professor of library and information science at Illinois, says that comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of literature, and children benefit from reading them at least as much as they do from reading other types of books.

"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," Tilley said. "Some kids, yes. 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."

Although they've long embraced picture books as appropriate children's literature, many adults – even teachers and librarians who willingly add comics to their collections – are too quick to dismiss the suitability of comics as texts for young readers, Tilley said.

"Any book can be good and any book can be bad, to some extent," she said. "It's up to the reader's personality and intellect. As a whole, comics are just another medium, another genre." Critics would say that reading comics is actually a simplified version of reading that doesn't approach the complexity of "real" books, with their dense columns of words and relative lack of pictures. But Tilley argues that reading any work successfully, including comics, requires more than just assimilating text.

"If reading is to lead to any meaningful knowledge or comprehension, readers must approach a text with an understanding of the relevant social, linguistic and cultural conventions," she said. "And if you really consider how the pictures and words work together in consonance to tell a story, you can make the case that comics are just as complex as any other kind of literature."

"If you look at the comics that are being mass-marketed to kids," Tilley said, "it's mild, tame stuff with a strong commercial tie-in to another media format. There aren't many stand-alone titles unless you go to comic book store."

The one exception is Manga, the Japanese version of comic books that has its own unique artistic and narrative style whose influence can be seen in the "Astro Boy" and "Sailor Moon" franchises. "You are going to find a wide selection of Manga at most bookstores," Tilley said. "That's another part of comics that has taken off – one that kids have claimed as the format of choice for themselves."

Although commercial publishers of comics have yet to recapture children's imaginations, Tilley says that some librarians and teachers are increasingly discovering that comics can be used to support reading and instruction. 

From a media release by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , November 5 2009.

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