Theme: Comic Books in Education. For the past century, comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels have been essential to popular culture, and comic artists have demonstrated the ability to document, celebrate, and provoke the status quo of art, literature, and our way of life. But what is the power of comics – and why do they catch the eyes of so many children? As school materials, comics seem to be virtually invisible – despite being a popular form of reading with children. Why is this? And what can comics do for children’s reading? In this talk, together with other comic scholars and comic artists, I discuss three different perspectives on comics, and the way comics reflect and shape the way we view what reading can be and what reading comics can do. |