Mouly’s article, Visual Literacy: Exploring This Magical Portal, surveys some of the ways in which comics enhance literacy in ways that regular novels can’t. This includes how comics can help to build connections between words, pictures, and sound effects, providing context for new vocabulary words, guiding the attention of a reader, and depicting the story structure and narrative style more plainly than novels.
Mouly states the general purpose of her article when she says, “[Kids] don’t need to be told, “Go read a comic book!” Because the stories of comics are spelled out visually, children intuitively figure out how to read them. If we understand, and take advantage of, children’s love of comics, that love will help us on our quest to share our love of books and reading with the new generations.” (Mouly, pg. 12). I agree that the flow of comic book reading is largely intuitive as to what panels to read first and so on. However, this statement also harkened back to our class discussion of comics as a stepping stone. I don’t particularly like the idea of comics being a stepping stone and definitely don’t like the vocabulary of “stepping stone”, however, I think it is important to understand how comics help in ways that traditional novels can’t.
I feel very mixed about this article. It has a few very good points and thoughts on comic books and literacy, but it often makes unfounded assumptions such as the following statement, “Reading pictures calls upon many more intuitive processes than read-ing words—no child has to be taught how to look for Waldo. Babies recognize a happy face before they even recognize their own mother’s.“ (Mouly, pg.12). I agree, to a point, with this statement. I do think that reading comics is very intuitive. Even if you had someone sitting there with a novice comic reader to teach them the order to read the panels, it isn’t like a math problem that someone else can really teach. It takes time for the reader to build their own pace to combine the reading and visual aspects of the comic.
However, the part of the earlier statement I really have a problem with is the Waldo portion. In my experience, when they’re young, infants need to be taught everything. They need to experience different things and make connections such as ‘if I drop a marble in this maze, it will roll and eventually come out the other end. It doesn’t cease to exist once I drop it out of sight’. They may figure these things out by themselves, but it also may take guidance in some fashion. And this is the same with older kids. They’re constantly experiencing the world and making connections. The author’s statement gives no proof, no resource, and no notation on where she got her information. Later on in the article, she does provide a source in the form of a Stanford University Psychologist, but for the most part, the article is full of generalizations and assumptions that are given no validation through source or notation.
Works Mentioned In This Post:
Mouly, Francoise. “Visual Literacy: Exploring This Magical Portal.” The Journal of the Children & Libraries: Association for Library Service to Children 9.1 (2011): 12-14. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.
Librarian Ginny 
This seems like a really interesting article, i had never thought about how the sounds such as BAM, ZAP, WACK, etc may be adding new vocabulary, rather than just emphasizing sounds. I guess it makes sense when you think about it 🙂
I’m very intrigued by the issue of visual literacy as well as how the brain reacts to information in word form or in image form. I’ve written a bit about it on my blog when I have time. I think there are many things that differ when a brain ‘reads’ an image vs. words. I don’t have any great experiments to point to, and I have plenty of assumptions, but it’s something any writer who works with pictures will find intriguing.
http://mfearing.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/pictures-vs-words/
I was really intrigued by the points in this article until I saw that it’s another broad article without any strong research behind it. It makes me sad considering how many articles I’ve seen lately that have nothing to back them up, especially when they sound like they have some good ideas.
There is so much that cannot be taught to you when you read comics. McCloud even mentions this when he talks about the spaces in-between panels. That takes a lot of complex thinking to be able to say Panel A leads to Panel B because of an action that occurred in Space C. It is a skill that has to be learned through experience rather than being taught.