DRAWN INTO MANGA

Matt Andazola

Nov. 8, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- Pegeen Scott-Cohen has loved to draw since she was little, but it wasn't until she was in the seventh grade that a friend lent her a book of manga -- a Japanese graphic novel.

"You know they say reading a book is just like visiting another world?" she says. "It's kind of the same thing but a more visual experience."

She says she loved it for its storytelling style and subtly shaded characters, and now, about seven years later, she is busy at work making her own.

Seven years ago, Scott-Cohen says she saw manga as being on the far fringes of mainstream U.S. culture, written off by most people as odd foreign comics whose characters' eyes are too big and noses are too small. But now publishers are eager to print new volumes every month to satisfy a growing legion of fans, and leading educators advocate graphic novels as a valuable tool for literacy in the next century.

"Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups," says Peter Gutierrez, spokesman for the National Council of Teachers of English. "It's not tied to print texts."

Advances in technology have, he says, created a world where interacting with media requires being able to interpret complex systems of text and graphics that convey a single message. Manga, like all comics, uses artfully constructed panels to tell stories in a way that is uniquely able to teach readers how to make sense of this style of communication.

"You're looking at pictures and you're getting meaning from them, but there's also a print track," Gutierrez says. "And you can't separate them. These are not illustrations of what would otherwise work as a prose narrative."

Scott-Cohen says the combination of art and text in manga allows for a deeper understanding of character than would be possible with straight prose, and the best manga artists make full use of the creative possibilities.

"I know it bugs some people because they have huge eyes and little tiny noses, but the eyes are made that way because they're very expressive and they offer a lot more subtlety and movement in the face," she says. "That's a big part of the storytelling, because it's visual. It's kind of boring if you're reading a thought bubble that tells you exactly what the character is feeling."

Nonfiction is getting the graphic-text treatment as well, says Andy Howe, middle school librarian at the Albuquerque Academy's Simms Library.

"It's a very visual generation," she says, adding that while on a committee to select the top nonfiction books of the year for middle schoolers she noticed a number of drawings, photos and diagrams in unlikely books -- like history volumes -- that older readers might find surprising.

'Adults hate' the complex comics

Often, Gutierrez says, reading comics requires making sense of panels that seem to skip a beat, making inferences about action or information that is left out. And among episodic comics, manga especially, the reader is also left to guess what will happen in the next installment.

Inference-making, he points out, is a key metric of reading comprehension.

One of the things a lot of kids enjoy about manga is its format, says Brigid Alverson, the writer of mangablog.net, because translated manga is meant to be read back-tofront, right-to-left.

Publishers likely keep the Japanese formatting, she says, to save money, but it has the added effect of creating a very distinct reading experience.

"This is a great thing because adults hate it," Alverson says.

The different reading directions, added to an already compound interpretation of graphics and text, give manga hidden levels of depth, Gutierrez says.

"It requires a different set of navigational tools," he says. "It's a very complex process that looks very simple on the outside."

Manga gets kids reading

Whatever its educational benefits may be, Howe says, her manga collection is her most consistently popular.

Her records show that during the past school year most of her collections had a circulation of about 7 percent always checked out. The manga collection was about 20 percent.

Publishers have been hit hard by the recession, with the number of new volumes of manga published this year falling about 10 percent from last, but the trend was on an upswing through 2007 -- boasting a 35 percent increase over 2006 -- according to ICv2, an organization that keeps tabs on the business of graphic novels, games and toys.

Local bookstores like Page One have been eager to respond to that popularity, says Shannon Michelle Thompson, the employee there in charge of the graphic novels.

She says she keeps her section as up-to-date and as kid-friendly as she can, with series that appeal to young boys and girls. Parents, she says, do not seem to be conflicted about manga.

"People are definitely leaning towards letting their kids read it, because it gets them reading," she says.

Scott-Cohen says her mother was ambivalent at first, skeptical of spending so much money on books she doubted her daughter would read more than once.

But Scott-Cohen says reading the manga is only where it starts for someone making her own series.

"When I buy them, I do use them as reference materials to study panelling and art, storytelling techniques," she says.

Alverson says it's common for young readers not to passively read the comics, choosing to also create their own.

"They really talk back to the comics," she says. "It's something kids have that's just theirs."

The process of learning to effectively communicate a story to other readers -- whether it be manga or traditional prose -- is, Gutierrez says, a central component of literacy.

Inspiring comics around the globe

In Japan, manga is a wellrespected art form, says Josh Elder, executive director of the nonprofit education group Reading with Pictures.

Elder, who wrote the American manga series "Mail Order Ninja," says manga has achieved the same status in Japan as paperback books have in the U.S., and that comics make a lot of sense as a leisure activity for people without a lot of time.

"With a novel, you're going to have to read for quite a while before you know whether or not you like it," he says. "You open up a comic, you can tell within a couple of seconds."

Manga tends to be more sophisticated than other comics, he says, because it is so lucrative in Japan. Creative people who might otherwise become fine artists, novelists or movie directors turn to comics because that is where the prestige is.

"Manga has been a wakeup call to the rest of the world's comic industry," Elder says.

But despite the praise, Elder says he doesn't advocate manga in a classroom setting, mostly because the manga brought to the U.S. isn't as thematically or artistically advanced as manga can be -- the medium's equivalent of Hollywood blockbusters.

Also, Elder says, translators often do a direct, word-to-word translation of the manga's text. Unlike their original-English counterparts, the comics that result may be legible, he says, but usually "don't have any art to them."

And while Elder trumpets manga's popularity among U.S. children -- it now far outsells American comics -- he is quick to say he doesn't think traditional, prose-only books are going anywhere soon.

Howe, the librarian, agrees. Though her manga collection is extremely wellliked, she says the Japanese comics have nothing on British boy wizards or sullen teenage vampires.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0010-39550094