The Benefits of Graphic Novels

There has been a lot of different research on the benefits of graphic novels and yet there are still a lot of people who look down on or hate this style of writing. 

The article published by Continental Press Publishing Service, “Do Graphic Novels Have a Place in the Classroom?” from September 13, 2018, talks about how many teachers have a problem with graphic novels because they see graphic novels as a genre instead of looking at them as a format of books. A lot of parents think in similar ways.

 Research has shown that students reading graphic novels have reading scores that went up to 82.7% while students who read traditional novels scored 5% better than the average score of 69.9%.

 The article, “Do graphic novels have a place in the classroom” states that sometimes graphic novels are easy to read for students with disabilities and they are enjoyable for students in general. Graphic novels can be a good way to introduce classics like Romeo and Juliet and Moby Dick which can seem intimidating to some students.

 The article “Teaching with Graphic Novels” by Brigid Alverson (September 08, 2014) talks about a time were a graphic novel called Persepolis was taken out of the classrooms because of one scene displaying images of torture. Many think that graphic novels can not improve students’ reading fluency, vocabulary or comprehension and that they just use graphic novels as the easy way out. What the students and teachers don’t probably know is that there are many benefits.

 The article “Studies show that Graphic Novel Readers Retain more Information Versus Traditional Textbook Users” by Matthew Price January 25, 2013 tells about a study from the Oklahoma university in which they had business students in college read graphic novels and had them take a test. The people who read the graphic novel had better results than the students who read the traditional textbooks. The people who held the experiment were Aaron Mckenny and Jeremy Short (who also made a TED talk on the subject as well as the graphic novel Atlas Black).

Graphic novels should be seen as normal books.  They have just as many benefits, if not more, as a traditional novel.