“Graphic novels are not gateways to literature; they are literature!”

-         Joe Ferrara, owner Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz and Vice

President of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

             Ferrara spoke at the Graphic Novel Workshop organized by the School and Public Librarians’ Association of the Monterey Bay Area on March 20th .  Debbie Huey, author of the graphic novel Bumper Boy, and Eva Volin, an expert on manga, rounded out the panel.

            Ferrara pointed out that you use both hemispheres of your brain – left for reading and the right for visual understanding – when you read a graphic novel.

            Author Debbie Huey admitted that she did not read as a child and watched cartoons and played video games instead.  She always drew, though, which led her to comics.  She now works in a library and is living proof that drawing and video gaming can lead to writing and illustrating books!

            Eva Volin explained that manga are Japanese graphic novels divided into four main categories: shonen (for boys), shojo (for girls), seinen (for men), and josei (for women).  You read manga right to left, top to bottom.  In Japan, there is more concentration on a character’s feelings than on plot as there is in the West.

            All panelists stressed that graphic novels are a medium or format for telling a story like DVDs, magazines, microfiche, short stories, and novels.  

If anyone is interested in graphic format books and not just graphic novels, please let me know and I'll post that here as well.

Best,

Ruth