Fans, Librarians Flock to NY Graphic Novels Symposium
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Lisa Goldstein -- School Library Journal, 3/19/2008 2:00:00 PM
Who reads graphic novels? Just about everyone these days, say panelists who spoke at the opening session of the SPLAT! Graphic Novel Symposium in Manhattan on March 15.
As a result, it’s a lot easier to introduce graphic novels to the library market, and circulation stats are the easiest way to convince library directors to add graphic novels to a collection, says John Shabelski, sales manager for Diamond Book Distributors.
Christian Zabriskie of the Queens Borough Public Library knows this all too well—close to 60 percent of his young adult manga collection is checked out at any given time. As evidence, Zabriskie’s session "Why Anime and Manga Belong in Your Collection" was packed with attendees eager to hear him discuss how this genre attracts both sexes, not to mention people of all classes and ages.
"This is a really good moment to be a geek," says Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, graphic novel buyer for McNally Robinson.
Because the audience for manga in the United States is comprised mainly of teens, publishers are trying to broaden its reach. In the panel discussion "Comics: For Kids, Too," publishers agreed that education will be the next big market for graphic novels, noting that comics give struggling and reluctant readers a different approach to literacy. Misako Rocks!, artist and author of Rock and Roll Love, further noted that the visual cues in comics teach children how to interact with one another.
Osamu Tezuka's Buddha, Keiko Tobe's With the Light, and Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim are titles with potential crossover appeal, but the manga equivalent of Maus or Fun Home may really only emerge when "the manga generation" matures into adult readers. Understanding Comics author Scott McCloud predicts that in about six to 10 years, there’ll be great work from this generation, and many creators will be women.
Challenges to graphic novels have inevitably risen along with their sales. Stacy Creel, VOYA's editor-in-chief, reminded attendees that an image often has a greater impact than a line of text. Librarians have the responsibility, she said, to know their collections and collection development policy, and to shelve graphic novels in age-appropriate areas.
Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization that defends censorship against comic books, sees a positive side to the recent increased scrutiny of graphic novels: it indicates a growing attempt to "come to terms with the medium." Reflecting his own optimism, Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly stated that this is a "golden age" for comics publishing. Few librarians, or library patrons, could disagree that this is also a golden age for comics in libraries.
