Comic Books

An article in The Huffington Post here notes that there is resurgence of interest in comic books.

So many of my avid-reading students in my high school English classes started with comic books.  I remember interviewing an inner-city minority girl--an excellent student--asking her what she'd read as a kid.  She denied reading any of the usual children's books. 

I couldn't figure out how she had a acquired her excellent reading skills until another teacher complained that she was smuggling comic books into her chemistry class to read when she got bored.  When I asked her about it, she laughed and said, "My brother and I probably had thousands of them at one point.  It was all we read."

Comic books are wonderful for developing reading skills.  Many have sophisticated vocabulary, complicated plots and, best of all, most kids can't put them down.

I vote that we divert some of this technology money and Common Core money into comic books.