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Article: Getting Graphic: Connecting with Students Using Graphic Novels By Katherine K. Ruppel, M.L.S. Librarian, Holy Family University - Newtown

Table of Contents, Introduction, and excerpts from The Best American Comics Criticism 2010 (Fantagraphics). Whether you choose to call them "comics lit," "graphic novels," or just "thick comic books," book-length narratives told in words and pictures confidently elbowed their way into the cultural spotlight in the first decade of this new millennium - beginning with the simultaneous 2001 release of Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Daniel Clowes' David Boring, and continuing on through ground-breaking and best-selling works such as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Robert Crumb's Genesis, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, and Joe Sacco's Palestine. This renaissance in turn brought forth a chorus of critical commentary that not only addressed these recent works, but also initiated a much-needed look back at the previous century's neglected and forgotten masterpieces. This chorus, as presented in The Best American Comics Criticism, comprises both criticism (Douglas Wolk on Frank Miller and Will Eisner, Robert C. Harvey on Fun Home, Donald Phelps on Steve Ditko and Phoebe Gloeckner) and history (David Hajdu on the 1950s comic-book burnings, Jeet Heer on Gasoline Alley, Ben Schwartz on Little Orphan Annie, Gerard Jones on the birth of the comic-book business), as well as revelatory peer-on-peer essays by novelists (Jonathan Franzen on Peanuts, John Updike on James Thurber) and cartoonists (Chris Ware on Rodolphe Töpffer, Clowes on Mad's Will Elder, and Seth on John Stanley).