Books and Articles
Eggers, Dave. "After Wham! Pow! Shazam!" New York Times, November 26, 2000.
Eggers, the editor of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, has become an authority in the literary world of the young avant-garde. McSweeney's devoted its issue number 13 to an excellent collection of excerpts from graphic artists and samplings of historical sources for comic books. This article from the New York Times Book Review provides an example of the discourse that has surfaced on the graphic novel genre. Eggers examines how seriously the literary community should take this emerging art form. Eggers discusses Lynda Barry's The! Greatest! of! Marlys!; Ben Katchor's Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, containing the novella The Beauty Supply District; Daniel Clowes's David Boring; and Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. These works, the latter three in particular, are topics of discussion in other reviews and analyses of the genre and have become part of a foundation. Their comparison provides for a complex synthesis.

Eisner, Will. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative. Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse, 1996.
Often called the "grandfather of graphic novels," Eisner is a comic artist in his own right, creating the well-known Contract with God trilogy and The Spirit series. However, this book and his Comics and Sequential Art were among the first to examine graphic novels as an artistic form on level with other art forms and styles of writing. A major shortcoming of the text is that Eisner primarily relies on analysis of action and adventure comics rather than the more mature comics that the genre now consists of, but teachers can apply the major concepts that he discusses -- narrative tools, the function of symbols, methods of sequencing and pacing, devices used to develop voice, style and tone -- to other graphic works.

Franzen, Jonathan. "The Comfort Zone: Growing Up with Charlie Brown." The New Yorker, November 29, 2004. Also in Susan Orlean and Robert Atwan, eds. 2005's The Best American Essays of 2005. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
This Franzen article is a noteworthy piece that discusses the cultural function of graphic work. Although Franzen discusses Peanuts, which is not a graphic novel in any sense of the definition, Franzen's discussions of the broader implications of iconic visuals carry resonance. Franzen also analyzes how Charles Schulz was able to convey adult humor and themes through seemingly simple means. Like much of Franzen's work, this analysis leads to larger conclusions about the atmosphere of the time period and Franzen's life. Schulz also influenced many contemporary graphic novelists, particularly Chris Ware and Art Spiegelman.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper, 1994.
McCloud's work is an invaluable source for studying graphic art. Students will benefit from reading the entire book, but often this is not possible; the first or second chapter gives a good foundation in some key terms and concepts. Through using his own highly developed graphic style, McCloud discusses core concepts of the subjective and the objective, the role of the elements of graphic works, and ways to apply graphic terminology. He integrates philosophy, art, literature, and science into a new form of criticism. Teachers can also use this resource to give students a language for discussing other visual texts, and its layering of complex elements provides for high-level discussion.

McGrath, Charles. "Not Funnies." New York Times Magazine, July 11, 2004.
I use this article with students to discuss the specific traits of graphic novels that make particular works candidates to become "classics." McGrath, the former editor of the New York Times Book Review, discusses the merits of studying the graphic novel as a serious literary form through interviewing several key authors, including Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, and the one-named Seth. The article also serves as an introduction to the world of graphic novels as literature and not just "comic books," and it provides a discussion of the distinctions.

Schjeldahl, Peter. "Words and Pictures: Graphic Novels Come of Age." New Yorker, October 17, 2005, 162-68.
Almost serving as a bookend to McGrath's "Not Funnies" article, Schjeldahl's piece discusses the possible end of the graphic novel "trend." Again, the analysis uses as examples the works of Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Marjane Satrapi, and Daniel Clowes, citing the early historical influences of Will Eisner and R. Crumb. However, the article presents evidence that while the genre has expanded rapidly and has garnered incredible immediate publicity, the art form does not seem to be a short-lived one. Instead, although there may not be works as groundbreaking as MAUS and Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth were, the graphic novel has established itself as part of the literary landscape.

Spiegelman, Art. "Little Orphan Annie's Eyeballs." The Nation, January 17, 1994. Repr. in The Complete MAUS: A Survivor's Tale (CD-ROM). New York: Voyager, 1994.
Based on the discussion of a Valentine's Day New Yorker cover Spiegelman drew depicting a Hasidic Jew kissing a black woman, symbolizing racial tensions in New York in the early 1990s, this article presents an intricate argument on the role of symbols, particularly visual ones. But it is also about language. Spiegelman discusses the generalizing nature of all words and images -- a paradoxical problem that means that representation necessarily must be descriptive but will always be inadequate. He also discusses the practice of creating misleading symbols or words rather than more direct ones, such as the Nazi practice of using the word "extermination" rather than the more accurate term "murder" or the current trend of using "African American" rather than "black." This article is a particularly effective reading for students because its language is rich, its arguments are complex, and it touches on many important thematic issues.

Spiegelman, Art. "A Problem of Taxonomy." Letter to the editor in the New York Times, December 29, 1991. Repr. in The Complete MAUS: A Survivor's Tale (CD-ROM). New York: Voyager, 1994.
This is Art Spiegelman's own letter to the editor of the New York Times following the listing of MAUS II on the best-seller list under fiction. The letter, while humorous at moments, offers an important discussion of MAUS's status as nonfiction despite his portrayal of the main characters as mice and other animals. It is a good source to use with students when examining modes of rhetoric and classification of literature. The editor's response to Spiegelman, also given in this article, lists the Library of Congress's categorization of MAUS, also valuable for discussion.

Twiddy, David. "Library Patrons Object to Some Graphic Novels." Washington Post, December 18, 2006, C03. 
An excellent way to approach reading any graphic novel in the classroom is to find recent articles that discuss young readers and graphic novels. Graphic novels face a conflicting challenge: they are interesting to young people and therefore can increase curiosity in reading, but they also contain more adult material, which can be inappropriate for young minds. Twiddy's article summarizes arguments of proponents on both sides of the issue. Teachers might also use this article for a discussion about people finding graphic depictions more offensive or provocative than text, as in the case of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Web Sites
Pantheon Graphic Novels
This Web site provides information about the authors, works, and visuals from Pantheon, the dominant publisher of graphic novels, including MAUS and Persepolis. Because of the site's interesting design and its primary function as a promotion tool, teachers can also use it for a visual analysis of a Web site.
  Pantheon Graphic Novels

Comic Books for Young Adults: A Guide for Librarians
While the focus of this site is children's and young adults' comics, the links contained here provide a simple array of key points good for educators and parents. Teachers will find these links useful for introducing the genre to their classes. Students interested in Manga and fantasy titles will enjoy this site.
  Comic Books for Young Adults: A Guide for Librarians

More Than Words: Graphic Novels in Kentucky's Libraries
This is another library page, and it mostly functions as a portal to other useful sites on graphic novels, comic analysis, comic book publishers, and youth literature.
  More Than Words: Graphic Novels in Kentucky's Libraries

Study Guide: Comic Book Programs
When I first started teaching MAUS, I found few resources on graphic novels. This lesson plan helped me discover the works of Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, and others. It shows a simple method of entering into a new and complex way of learning.
  Study Guide: Comic Book Programs

Graphic Novels
Nonfiction
Sacco, Joe. Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2000.
Unlike many graphic artists, Sacco's style is not rooted in personal narrative. Rather, he acts more as a journalist, with the exception that his stories feature cartoons and dialogue alongside traditional fact-based narration. What results is essentially truthful and objective, important in telling the story of the Balkan conflict, but with the emotional resonance necessary to relay the tragedy of the war.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003; and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. New York: Pantheon, 2004.
This autobiography of Satrapi's experiences as a young girl during the Islamic Revolution in Iran is surprisingly simple while not simplistic. Like MAUS, Persepolis depicts a complex historical period through the eyes of one individual, and through iconic visuals it makes the powerful emotions and events of that period accessible to the reader.

Spiegelman, Art. MAUS I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon, 1986; and Spiegelman, Art. MAUS II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon, 1991.
Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize for MAUS in 1992 in the Special Citations and Awards category, the first (and only, so far) graphic novelist to do so. While I teach MAUS I with my students, with excerpts from MAUS II, teachers can use the two pieces in many ways. MAUS II has more postmodern aspects, and Spiegelman involves the text more directly with his father's experiences in Auschwitz. Additional sources on MAUS include:

• An excerpt from Art Spiegelman's Oral History Journal on the creation of MAUS, an excerpt from Stephen Feinstein's Witness and Legacy, and numerous links to related resources.
    Art Spiegelman: Witness and Legacy
• Geis, Deborah R., ed. Considering MAUS: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003.
• Spiegelman, Art. The Complete MAUS (CD-ROM). Prod. by Elizabeth Scarborough. Voyager, 1994. ISBN 1-559-40453-1.

I don't recommend that teachers use In the Shadow of No Towers (Pantheon, 2004) with students; highly charged racial and political issues, as well as some explicit language, make it inappropriate for most schools. But this work, which Spiegelman calls a "graphic novelty," is worth looking at for the sheer diversity of artistic methods he uses and as an example of how the graphic genre might evolve under the influence of improved technology.

Fiction
Burns, Charles. Black Hole. New York: Pantheon, 2005.
This text has serious content issues, and teachers should carefully consider its appropriateness for teenagers; however, it is also a graphic novel that concerns those teenagers. This intricate novel describes a fantastical sexually transmitted disease in Seattle in the 1970s, and it explores the teenage problems of sexuality, alienation, the search for independence, and more fundamental problems of human relationships in an honest yet subtle approach rarely shown in novels about teens. While this work may not be right for a high school classroom, high school and middle school teachers would benefit from reading it.

Clowes, Daniel. Ice Haven. New York: Pantheon, 2005.
This short novel tells intertwining stories that take place in a small town and incorporates many artistic elements that teachers can use to explore the applications of the graphic form. Clowes retells the story of the murderers Leopold and Loeb, layering a commentary on the graphic genre itself, and utilizes the modern convention of varying points of view. Within the context of the visual mode, this practice takes on a new meaning.

Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon, 2000.
Chris Ware's work is so often cited in graphic novel criticism, perhaps because it exemplifies one of the unique characteristics of the genre: it is simultaneously incredibly complex and simple. Almost mathematically perfect, Ware's illustrations use solid colors and round, smooth shapes, but his narrative timing, pacing of panels, and creation of mood heavily contrast the neat drawings with a messy realism and awkwardness. Like MAUS, Ware creates two different stories, but rather than those of father and son, Ware tells the stories of Jimmy in the 1980s and his grandfather during the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in the 1890s. Jimmy Corrigan won The Guardian's First Book Award in 2001.