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Provides a comprehensive review of the significance attributed to the usefulness, practicality and appropriateness of graphic novels in the school library media center with specific implications for collection development.

A careful review of recent literature provides the school media specialist with an overview of graphic novels including definitions, challenges, benefits, helpful resources, curricular connections and collection development issues. The sources reflect the recent trends in the increasing popularity of graphic novels and their use and benefit in school media centers.

Presents information on the definitions of graphic novels and the challenges and benefits specific to the school media center. Notes that while challenges exist, the benefits of including graphic novels in the school library media center are many, including engaging reluctant readers. Offers practical information for collection development and provides useful sources that serve many purposes.

Offers background information for the school library media specialist about graphic novels. Includes advice and practical strategies for building a graphic novel collection in the school media center.

This paper reflects recent trends toward increased interest in graphic novels and offers the school media specialist practical advice on how to best meet that growing interest by including graphic novels in the school media center.

Graphic novels can contribute to effective content area reading on social studies topics such as the American Revolution. This action research study’s purpose was to examine student recall of facts, enjoyment of reading, and interest in the topic when using graphic novels as compared to illustrated nonfiction prose in social studies content area reading. Twenty-two fifth grade students (13 females, 9 males) in a public school in a Midwestern state participated in the study. Half of the students read about the Boston Massacre and Patrick Henry through graphic novels and read about Paul Revere and the Boston Tea Party with illustrated nonfiction texts, with the other half doing the opposite. The mean number of correct ideas recalled by students two weeks after reading two books in the graphic novel condition was 8.6 compared to 7.1 for the nonfiction prose condition with a medium effect size. Students rated their reading enjoyment significantly higher in the graphic novel condition indicating that graphic novels should be employed more often into the school curriculum. Suggestions for integrating graphic novels into the curriculum are provided along with other ways to take action.

The use of six non-fiction graphic novels to teach historical agency in a social studies methods course was examined in a critical action research study. Pre-service social studies teachers were asked to read one graphic novel and to discuss it with classmates, first in literature circles, then as a whole class. Data revealed graphic novels engaged pre-service teachers in thinking about historical agency, and helped them make connections between historical agency and their own agency. There were three overlapping ways pre-service teachers connected to historical agency in all six graphic novels: upbringing and personal experience, unpredictability of historical situations, and injustice. The findings highlight the value of graphic novels for teaching about historical agency in social studies courses because of their focus on historical agents’ positionality.

The purpose of this paper is to review an existing graphic novel collection in the curriculum materials center of an academic library. The review would result in a clear identity for the collection and guide the creation of revised collection development, management and cataloging processes.

The physical and bibliographic identities of each individual graphic novel were reviewed and compared with collection development tools.

The review revealed a mismatch between the physical and bibliographic markers applied to some graphic novels and inconsistencies in the assignment of items based on audience and literature type. At the completion of the project, 43% of the graphic novels were reassigned based on audience, literature type or both.

There is limited research about the collection challenges and needs of graphic novels in juvenile and curriculum materials collections within academic libraries. This research details the process used to evaluate the collection and create a physical and bibliographic identity that fits the needs of the library’s users.

The purpose of the study is to analyze how the popular comic book series DC Graphic Novel for Young Adults depicts superhero, civilian and villains of color in the titles and address how the collection engages in or avoids discussions of racism.

This study uses a critical race content analysis to analyze how characters of color are represented in the DC Graphic Novel for Young Adults collection.

The findings demonstrate the series’ uneven attempts at writing about race and racism. The DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults illustrates more radical politics in some titles but reifies dominant beliefs in others. The analysis also shows how many titles approach discussions of oppression from a single axis approach rather than an intersectional one. The series strives for racial diversity and justice; sometimes achieving the goal, but not always.

The study demonstrates how the DC Graphic Novel for Young Adults constructs hegemonic ideas of “appropriateness” about race, racism and readership in some titles while offering explicit discussions about race and racism in others.

The authors outline potential ways English teachers can position titles in the DC Graphic Novel for Young Adults in English classrooms to develop students’ racial literacies.

This paper provides an analysis of superhero comics produced specifically for adolescent readers and written by an intentional racially diverse cohort of authors. The methodology can inform future studies of graphic novels for adolescent readers.

We need a locally relevant curriculum because it is engaging and leverages community knowledge strengths. However, new teachers are not always aware of the resources available to make a locally relevant curriculum. Here in New Mexico, Los Alamos is a location with many resources detailing its purpose and existence. These resources coupled with so much notoriety inside and outside the state make Los Alamos a place that lends itself to culturally relevant instruction. Specifically, graphic novels provide a unique medium for students and teachers alike to start learning about the city that started the Atomic Age: Los Alamos and begin applying that knowledge more broadly. I, being a student and a teacher from New Mexico, offer my own understanding of a locally relevant curriculum utilizing three graphic novels about Los Alamos, its people, and its stories.

The purpose of this paper is to encourage and assist collection of adult‐level, graphic novels and book‐length comics by women, and to demonstrate the breadth and depth of such work.

This paper provides a brief history of women and independent comics, tracing the medium's development from the 1970s underground comix movement to the present day. Individual creators and their works are discussed.

In the early years of independent comics, many of the women creating them were consciously reacting to an overwhelmingly male‐dominated profession. There was a high degree of shock value in these early works. As time went on the comics still tended towards the autobiographical, but storytelling gained importance. Most of the women creating comics today are still doing so from a woman's point of view, but their target audience seems more universal.

Graphic novels are in increasing demand, both for scholarly and leisure reading. Guides to collecting graphic novels exist; however, the vast majority of the artists included in these guides are men. This paper fills a gap by introducing librarians to several women graphic novelists who have been overlooked thus far.

Comics and graphic novels can disrupt traditional texts by challenging the “worship of the written word” (Torres, 2019), a feature of white supremacy that perpetuates textual hierarchies within educational spaces. Giving all of our students access to contemporary literature that centers Black youth perspectives is not only important in decolonizing literature education but also in presenting a holistic view of Black childhood. They can be used in the classroom as subjects to challenge stereotypical depictions by centering experiences, ideas, and concepts that are often marginalized in traditional curriculum. Within this chapter, we focus on comics and graphic novels as tools to enact students’ multiliteracies and to analyze visual stories depicting BlackBoy adolescence, using the frameworks of BlackBoy Crit Pedagogy (Bryan, 2022), an equity framework that interrogates the interdisciplinary ways that Black boy students' literacy learning can be formed through the teaching and learning of Blackness, maleness, and the schooling experiences of Black boys. We utilize this framework to analyze the use of diverse comics and graphic novels to facilitate critical conversations of bringing inclusive visual texts into the classroom. We invite practitioners to reimagine curricular ideas and content centered on empowerment and Black boy adolescence and how those ideas are presented to youth through a variety of visual narratives.

This bibliographic essay examines the scope and variety of nonfiction works in comics form with the intent of expanding librarians’ awareness of the diversity of such materials and serving as a resource for librarians.

It provides some theoretical background for understanding what constitutes nonfiction in graphic form and an overview of works available in print.

The article provides a representative (but not comprehensive) survey of graphic nonfiction works in the genres of memoir, travel, journalism, history, biography, science, essays and educational materials.

The essay focuses on materials published in books in English; the library world would benefit from subsequent research exploring the richness of materials available in other formats and other languages.

The field of graphic nonfiction is expanding, and this article serves as a guide for libraries interested in building or expanding collections in this format.