Abstract:
This article reports the author’s experiences using graphic novels with pre-service teachers in a young adult literature course. Drawing on critical response papers two students composed after reading Pride of Baghdad, a graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon, the author argues that when readers possess the background knowledge needed to approx- imate the role of the implied reader—that is, the imag- inary audience for whom authors envision themselves writing—they are capable of engaging with graphic novels in ways that readers who lack experience with the form, or who question its literary merit, are not.
Actual readers might be thought to adopt the role of the implied reader when they possess the background knowledge—factual, cultural, and literary—needed to in- teract with the repertoire on which a text draws. It is also worth noting that the notion of an implied reader reflects social constructivist theories of reading insofar as it assumes that literary conventions are constructed. Recognizing this, it is possible to conclude that readers adopt the role of the implied reader when they accept an “author’s invitation to read in a particularly socially constituted way that is shared by the author and his or her expected readers” (Rabinowitz 1987, 22, my emphasis). (34)
The concept of the implied reader—that is, of a figure that possesses the literary, artistic, factual, and cultural knowledge needed to transact with graphic novels—is helpful in this regard. It belies the idea that there is lit- tle skill or knowledge involved in reading images, and it challenges teachers and students alike to ask what graphic novels require them to know as readers. As teacher educators, we ought to create opportunities for pre-service teachers to ask—and answer—questions of this sort, as doing so will prepare them to reflect criti- cally on the role images play in the host of multimodal texts they and their students interact with outside of school. (37)
