Graphic Novels in the Classroom
Even though I have not read a graphic novel for enjoyment in quite some time, I remember being fond of them in elementary and middle school. I had a fascination with the graphic novel Knights of the Lunch Table: The Dodgeball Chronicles . It had vivid imagery, an engaging plot, and it was more entertaining to read than a chapter book. More recently, I had a graphic novel appear on a book list for an English course here at EWU. I believe it was an American Literature class. If it had not been for this experience, I would have never known that graphic novels could be used in higher level English classes to teach literature. Graphic novels are useful for secondary English language arts classrooms because they contain layers of plot, character development, and images that complement the reader's imagination of the story. Each page of a graphic novel offers rich details that would require pages of paragraphs in a traditional novel due to the written pros and...