Children's+Graphica

Children's Graphica

While anime and graphic novels were first marketed to teenagers and young adults, there are materials available for the younger set. Some of the materials can be used by children as young as 5 and there are an increasing number being written for Primary Grade children. Graphic novels for teenagers and young adults are often in black and white, but graphica for children is typically quite colorful. Often, the color plays a role in the story line so it is necessary to pay attention to the colors as well as other non-alphabetic cues.

Since anime arose in the Orient where books are read from right to left, many graphic novels ( manga & anime) are also written that way. Many are, in fact, translations from Japanese where Tokyopop ( [|www.tokyopop.com] ) is an established publishing company for manga. However, all examples of graphica that I was able to find for young children were written from left to right as are typical picture books for that age group.

The difference between graphica and traditional picture books lies both in the text and in the pictures. Traditional picture books generally have one picture per page or one picture spread over two pages. The pictures support the text. The storyline in picture books is typically carried in the text which is in paragraph form with quotation marks denoting dialogue. In graphica, there are typically five or six panes of pictures per page. The storyline is carried in the pictures. The text is primarily dialogue bubbles with a few narrative boxes for explanation.

I have chosen to concentrate on three areas of graphica that are popular with young children; trading cards, comic books , and graphic novels (chapter books). Discussion of each of these appears on separate pages. For each category, I have discussed only a few of the currently popular ones. There are many more. Just check out the comic book section and children's section of your local bookstore! See our reference section for information on publishers and our strategies section for suggestions for using graphica to teach reading, writing and viewing skills in the elementary grades.