The visual in literature, or On a contemporary competent child

Abstract

The article elaborates on the premise that the development of visual literature (comics, graphic novels and other genres of visual narrative) has become a condition of contemporary children and adolescents’ successful integration into information world and a condition of nurturing competences of information security. As arguments in favour of the stated idea the research data are cited concerning the opinions of adult readers who evaluated the differences between their own perception of visual literature (mostly comics) and children and adolescents’ perception. Strategies and practices of visual narrative reading are also described; the author of the article considers them to be important conditions of nurturing new readers’ competences which determine whole new ways of interacting with a text, close attention to detail grounded in ‘living through’ what has been read.

Keywords: competent child, visual literature, comics, graphic novel, survey