It’s official! The battle has been won, according to the Telegraph:
Professor Carol Tilley, from the department of library and information science, said that comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of reading, and children benefit from reading them at least as much as they do from reading other kinds of books.
She said there was evidence that they increased their vocabulary and instilled a love of reading.
She said: “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.
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Yeah! Take that, you fuddy-duddies! Comics are HELPING CHILDREN LEARN! Around the world. So let the joyous news be spread, from this day henceforth, comics are here to stay.
For a ‘scientific’ research article, it’s surprisingly lacking in actual data! ;)
I remember 30 years ago kids in grade school having their comics taken away from them because they were too distracting (possibly because they were smuggled into class in never-read science books).
My 6-year-old’s teachers are amazed at his reading comprehension. They were very impressed when I told them that we’ve been reading comics together for years (though he still doesn’t know how to treat them properly ; ).
I almost exclusively buy DC Kids, Marvel Adventures and BOOM Kids books these days – I only wish they weren’t so ghettoized in stores, leading to their low sales being a self-fulfilling prophecy. The latest BATMAN: THE BRAVE & THE BOLD is the best Batman book in stores right now.
“we’ve been reading comics together for years (though he still doesn’t know how to treat them properly”
Keep at it… eventually you’ll teach him to stop bag-and-board-ing them. But if you’re not persistent, he may end up slabbing them, and then you’ll be to blame for unleashing another Collector upon the world.