Several weeks ago Janet Evans, Literacy and Educational Consultant and Senior Lecturer in Education at Liverpool Hope University, visited the National Institute of Education in Singapore and gave a presentation entitled “Exploring Comics, Graphic Novels and Picture Books as Multimodal Texts with Particular Reference to Raymond Briggs and His Partnership with Controversy.” Myra Garces-Bacsal of Gathering Books attended the lecture and emailed me soon after to say that she was so impressed with Janet’s presentation that she stayed up until 2am to blog about it!
Truth be told, I have little inkling about who Raymond Briggs was, but I love graphic novels and I adore picture books. I thought that it was another blogworthy post for Gathering Books. True enough, it was the highlight of my day.
Janet’s 60-minute talk this afternoon (and I really feel it was waayyyy too short, I could have spent an entire day just listening and talking to Janet who is a fantastic and animated speaker) – basically centered on the subtle differences between comics, graphic novels, picture books and illustrated books. She also discussed the themes in Briggs’ work as a graphic novelist and how comics and graphic novels can be effective conduits to philosophical discourses, existential issues, and profound ruminations about life, death, war, tragedy, you name it – his picture books have them.
Now I feel like a total lark not knowing about Raymond Briggs. His works are now considered classics, extremely rare (thus expensive), and yes, he has a cult following. When Briggs was just beginning (1970’s) to publish his works which may be seen as a cross between comic strip, picture books and graphic novels all rolled into one – this kind of writing was regarded with a raised eyebrow at the very least in British society. Raymond Briggs has been credited to be instrumental in elevating the profile of comics and graphic novels to an intellectual level. Janet claims that “there is now a burgeoning renaissance in their creation, production, and acceptance.”
Read Myra’s entire blog post here.