Combining literacies

There are a lot of interesting things going on in the world of multimodal literacies. In particular, I've been struck in my Children's Lit course and in my time at Central by the number of books out there that are combining visual and textual literacies. Graphic novels have taken off - both reading and writing. There are now graphic novel-style versions of many classics - from Crime and Punishment to A People's History. Not only that, but teachers are using the graphic novel format as assignments in English and Social Studies courses, where students are challenged to interpret and create imagery that enforces their textual arguments. Even fifty years ago, such combined literacy would have been relegated to the world of comic books rather than celebrated in some educational circles (not, of course, universally). Books like The Invention of Hugo Cabret and graphic novels also tie into ideas of video literacy - sections of The Invention of Hugo Cabret are told entirely in cinematic sequences of images. The graphic novel format has been translated and tied into countless movies and video games. Young people are now able to read a single story across three, four, even five different kinds of media.

I think that this means - for us as educators and librarians - that we need to acknowledge the various strengths and weaknesses of each media and work with young people to help them develop a skill set to cope with the many ways they can represent themselves and the world will represent itself to them.