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The graphic novel: the "whole brain" book?
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From: Berol2B at aol.com <Berol2B>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 15:05:04 EDT
I'm enjoying this "Graphic Novel" thread and wanted to jump in with my point of view as a picture book writer/illustrator.
I love the picture book art form. Graphic novels encompass all I love about picture books and more. While the picture book market may be downsizing, I believe the graphic novel market will not. Why is it growing in popularity and will continue to grow? Maybe because we're more visual than ever. Technology being able to deliver images cheaper and faster than ever helps, too. (After all, 1500 years ago the equivalent of a comic book was the Trajan Column!) But, as many admirers on this list have attested, these books can deliver complex information in an uncannily digestible form and can pack a surprising emotional wallop, to boot. Why that is really interests me. I wonder if it's not
because they're a more "whole brain" experience.
Like a lot of people, I have a touch of synesthesia. That's the tendency to have one sense linked to others. Ever since I was a kid numbers and letters instantly evoke certain colors. For others, colors (or smells) are linked to music, numbers, any number of things. (Scriabin, a famous synesthete, once created a "light organ" to project corresponding colors to tones in his musical compositions -- but, hold on, this IS going somewhere!) Once thought a psychological disorder, synesthesia is now appreciated as a key to understanding early brain development -- and here is where this information is relevant to our topic.
Pre-birth, it seems, all our senses are in a "sensory soup," flowing together, experienced together. Only later do they get relegated to separate compartments. In some people, however, a little "seepage" remains. I'm one of those people. (I bet there are others here who are, too, but never knew there was a name for it.) Is it too far?tched to suggest that graphic novels, in their mix of word and images, tap into a primal pleasure of breaching some of those walls and having a more "whole brain" experience in book form? Could this also explain why they're a little harder to process for some than others?
I know this brings into play that whole issue of how narrowly we have to define a "book" for it to still seem to be a book to us. But in a time of terrific possibilities in hand-held e-books, etc., that's not an irrelevant question.
It IS, however, probably a question for another time.
I'm new to the listserv and glad to be onboard!
Jean
Jean Gralley pb writer/illustrator berol2b at aol.com
Received on Tue 20 Apr 2004 02:05:04 PM CDT
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 15:05:04 EDT
I'm enjoying this "Graphic Novel" thread and wanted to jump in with my point of view as a picture book writer/illustrator.
I love the picture book art form. Graphic novels encompass all I love about picture books and more. While the picture book market may be downsizing, I believe the graphic novel market will not. Why is it growing in popularity and will continue to grow? Maybe because we're more visual than ever. Technology being able to deliver images cheaper and faster than ever helps, too. (After all, 1500 years ago the equivalent of a comic book was the Trajan Column!) But, as many admirers on this list have attested, these books can deliver complex information in an uncannily digestible form and can pack a surprising emotional wallop, to boot. Why that is really interests me. I wonder if it's not
because they're a more "whole brain" experience.
Like a lot of people, I have a touch of synesthesia. That's the tendency to have one sense linked to others. Ever since I was a kid numbers and letters instantly evoke certain colors. For others, colors (or smells) are linked to music, numbers, any number of things. (Scriabin, a famous synesthete, once created a "light organ" to project corresponding colors to tones in his musical compositions -- but, hold on, this IS going somewhere!) Once thought a psychological disorder, synesthesia is now appreciated as a key to understanding early brain development -- and here is where this information is relevant to our topic.
Pre-birth, it seems, all our senses are in a "sensory soup," flowing together, experienced together. Only later do they get relegated to separate compartments. In some people, however, a little "seepage" remains. I'm one of those people. (I bet there are others here who are, too, but never knew there was a name for it.) Is it too far?tched to suggest that graphic novels, in their mix of word and images, tap into a primal pleasure of breaching some of those walls and having a more "whole brain" experience in book form? Could this also explain why they're a little harder to process for some than others?
I know this brings into play that whole issue of how narrowly we have to define a "book" for it to still seem to be a book to us. But in a time of terrific possibilities in hand-held e-books, etc., that's not an irrelevant question.
It IS, however, probably a question for another time.
I'm new to the listserv and glad to be onboard!
Jean
Jean Gralley pb writer/illustrator berol2b at aol.com
Received on Tue 20 Apr 2004 02:05:04 PM CDT
