Michelle Ann Abate - Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults: A Collection of Critical Essays

GRAPHIC NOVELS
for
CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS

GRAPHIC NOVELS
for
CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS

A Collection of Critical Essays

Edited by
Michelle Ann Abate
& Gwen Athene Tarbox

University Press of Mississippi | Jackson

Childrens Literature Association Series

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright 2017 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2017

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

LCCN 2016055428

ISBN 978-1-4968-1167-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4968-1168-4 (epub single)

ISBN 978-1-4968-1169-1 (epub institutional)

ISBN 978-1-4968-1170-7 (pdf single)

ISBN 978-1-4968-1171-4 (pdf institutional)

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

CONTENTS

Gwen Athene Tarbox and Michelle Ann Abate

Annette Wannamaker

Karly Marie Grice

Sarah Thaller

Catherine Kyle

Rachel L. Rickard Rebellino

Joseph Michael Sommers

Aaron Kashtan

Meghann Meeusen

Gwen Athene Tarbox

Christiane Buuck and Cathy Ryan

.

Michael L. Kersulov, Mary Beth Hines, and Rebecca Rupert

Marni Stanley

Eti Berland

Rachel Dean-Ruzicka

Rebecca A. Brown

Krystal Howard

Lance Weldy

David E. Low

Joanna C. Davis-McElligatt

Anuja Madan

Joe Sutliff Sanders

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Over the last decade, scholars in literary studies, visual theory, library and information science, and education have developed a serious interest in childrens and YA comics. At national conferences and in leading journals, experts such as Charles Hatfield, Philip Nel, Joe Sutliff Sanders, and John Schumacher have helped to define the medium in relation to young readers. We are extremely grateful for their contributions to the field, as well as those of comics theorists such as Thierry Groensteen, Scott McCloud, Jared Gardner, Barbara Postema, and Hillary L. Chute, whose scholarship has helped to inform many of the essays included in this volume. We also want to acknowledge the work of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; their website includes a number of resources related to childrens comics, including Meryl Jaffes Raising a Reader! How Comics & Graphic Novels Can Help Your Kids Love To Read!, which has introduced scholars and school children alike to the value of reading childrens and YA comics.

As we worked to assemble this collection and write the introduction, we were aided in our research efforts by librarians at a number of institutions, including the Billy Ireland Museum at The Ohio State University, Dwight B. Waldo Library at Western Michigan University, and the Belgian Comic Strip Center in Brussels. In the last few years, we both attended informative conference panels sponsored by the Modern Language Association, the Childrens Literature Association, the International Comic Arts Forum, the National Council of Teachers of English, and perhaps most memorably, a series of talks at the First International Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels: Sites of Visual and Textual Innovation, sponsored by the Instituto Franklin at the Universidad de Alcal in Alcal de Henares, Spain. It was at that conference that we had the pleasure of meeting many international scholars who were engaged in the study of childrens comics, and we are grateful for their generosity and support.

At the University Press of Mississippi, we began this project with Vijay Shah, who helped usher us through the proposal stage before handing the project off to Katie Keene, who has worked with us closely throughout the manuscript-editing process. We appreciate their encouragement, advice, and unwavering support of this project. We also want to thank Valerie Jones and Robert Norrell for their editorial help. We want to thank the Childrens Literature Association Publications Committee for their review of the proposal and the subsequent readers of the manuscript. Their helpful comments and advice enabled us to develop what we hope is a substantive and timely collection.

The initial call for essays for this project solicited proposals from over fifty scholars, an indication of the growing interest in childrens and YA comics. We want to thank everyone who participated in this initial phase. We wish we could have included all of your fine scholarship in this volumeand we hope that you will continue to research, write, and publish your excellent work about comics and graphic novels for young people in other venues. We owe a special thanks to those scholars whose work appears in these pages. They adroitly engaged with numerous rounds of editorial feedback, and they delivered quality chapters in a timely fashion. We thank you for your unfailing professionalism, your intellectual diligence, and, of course, your marvelous essays.

Michelle wishes to thank, first and foremost, her coeditor, Gwen. Your intellectual input, editorial hard work, and myriad logistical efforts were tremendous assets to this project. In addition, your lively conversation, buoyant personality, and general good cheer made the long and often arduous process of putting together a volume of this nature pleasurable. Michelle is equally indebted to her colleagues and students at The Ohio State University. Caroline Clark, Sandra Stroot, Pat Enciso, Mollie Blackburn, Jenny Robb, Caitlin McGurk, and Karly Marie Grice provided not simply the intellectual camaraderie but also the material support that helped to make research projects like this one possible. Finally, Michelle owes a special debt to Annette Wannamaker for her wisdom, her good humor, and her patience. I value your friendship, both personally and professionally, more than I can express.

Gwen would like to thank her coeditor, Michelle Ann Abate, for bringing her extensive expertise in childrens and YA literature to bear on this collaboration, and for her enthusiasm about the comics medium in general. Gwen would also like to thank Alex Enyedi, former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Western Michigan University, as well as Jonathan Bush, former department chair in English, and Nicolas Witschi, current department chair, for their support of this project from the outset. They helped her to secure travel and research funds as she worked to further her understanding of comics studies, and along with her department colleagues, provided a wonderful home base from which to conduct scholarship. Gwen is also grateful to colleagues in comics studies, including Charles Hatfield, Aaron Kashtan, Joe Sutliff Sanders, Philip Nel, Barbara Postema, Pascal Lefvre, Ian Hague, Paul Gravett, Hillary L. Chute, and Greice Schneider, who introduced her to advanced comics theory.

In Fall 2012 and Spring 2014, Gwen had the privilege of teaching two upperdivision courses in comics studies at Western Michigan University; in each instance, her students proved themselves to be exceptionally gifted at comics interpretation and often served as sounding boards for her ideas. Among this group of talented students, Gwen wants to extend a special note of thanks to Traci Brimhall, her teaching assistant for ENGL 5970, Introduction to Comics Studies, whose expertise in poetics helped further some of her ideas about comics structure.

Gwens comics family has grown in the last couple of years to include Derek Royal and Andy Kunka, the Two Guys with PhDs Talking About Comics, whose Comics Alternative podcasts reflect the very best ideas, trends, and concepts in the field. In 2015, Derek and Andy invited Gwen to co-host a podcast devoted to childrens and YA comics, along with Andy Wolverton, a librarian in the Anne Arundel County Public Library system in Maryland. Gwens work on childrens comics has been greatly enhanced by this collaboration, and she is grateful to all three guys for their help and support.