{"id":169,"date":"2005-07-19T11:30:46","date_gmt":"2005-07-19T16:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=169"},"modified":"2005-07-19T11:30:46","modified_gmt":"2005-07-19T16:30:46","slug":"usnewscom-the-power-of-potter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=169","title":{"rendered":"USNews.com: The power of Potter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/usnews\/culture\/articles\/050725\/25read.htm\">The power of Potter (7\/25\/05)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The article linked above is about the new <em>Harry Potter<\/em> novel, but contains some good press for comics as well, including a swell quote from yours truly:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nIf Harry Potter doesn&#8217;t lure kids in, maybe comic books will. That&#8217;s what librarians are finding, as they reel in book-wary students with comics, graphic novels, and manga, the genre of Japanese comics. &#8220;Kids exist in a visual world, and comic books are a natural mode of text for them,&#8221; says Ben Towle, cofounder of the National Association of Comics Art Educators, which is promoting the use of these works in literacy programs as well as other school subjects.<\/p>\n<p>Skeptics may still think of comics as trash lit. But Michele Gorman, an Austin librarian, is a believer. &#8220;They&#8217;re fun, but they&#8217;re not always easy to read. The vocabulary can be advanced, as can the imagery,&#8221; she says. That&#8217;s why she&#8217;s focusing on the library&#8217;s comics collection. After all, Maus by Art Spiegelman, the graphic novel telling of his father&#8217;s story of survival during the Holocaust, is as powerful as (if not more than) any plain-prose volume, and Jeff Smith&#8217;s Bone series, about three cousins who get separated in a weird world, is often compared with The Lord of the Rings .\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The power of Potter (7\/25\/05) The article linked above is about the new Harry Potter novel, but contains some good press for comics as well, including a swell quote from yours truly: If Harry Potter doesn&#8217;t lure kids in, maybe comic books will. That&#8217;s what librarians are finding, as they reel in book-wary students with &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=169\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[45],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p46veT-2J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}