Description

First paragraph:

Rocco Versaci has a proposal for teachers: he asks that teachers introduce comics into their middle and high school classroom as a means of engaging their students’ interest and enhancing their (the students’) literacy. This is a bold proposal. Comics, after-all, are still thought by many of us as “childish,” undemanding reading material, and middle and high school as the time and place to leave childish things behind. In order for them to become literate, many of us likely think, young adults need to be introduced to literature, and this means reading books--specifically, the “great” books of the English canon. But Versaci not only believes that comic books are the ideal medium to turn adolescents onto reading, he also believes that they constitute a form of literature. He thinks that the contemporary bias against comic books is as unwarranted as was the previous bias against novels; and, as one whose most memorable reading moments in his adolescence came from comic books, I applaud his attempt to redeem their value as meaningful reading material. However, even I am not sure whether comic books get students more interested in reading. My own suspicion that it is the graphic material (i.e., the pictures) in comics that has the greatest impact on the reader/viewer. This suspicion--one which I believe is shared by many--is not adequately addressed nor quietened in his essay. In fact, his most convincing example of the sophistication of comic books, and of the complex interrelationship between images and words that they purportedly offer, really is one in which he persuasively demonstrates the communicative power of its visual images. Though there is much to be said for helping students become more critical in their viewing habits, it would seem a sort of intellectual development that ought rightly to hold a secondary and distant place in an English class to the development of verbal literacy.