Comic Books: Conduits to Culture?Author(s): Kay HaugaardSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Oct., 1973), pp. 54-55Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20193391 .

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Comic books: conduits to

culture?

KAY HAUGAARD

Kay Haugaard is a teacher at Pasadena City College, California and a writer of children's literature. She writes here, however, from her viewpoint as a mother.

Photo by Erik Haugaard.

NO,

I AM NOT one of the new

(or fairly pass? by now) pop art fans who is trying to convince the world that common culture is quality culture and that the most inner

expression of our sociological id or

something of the sort can be found on a tomato can label. My point is far

more pedestrian and it has to do with the teaching of reading.

As the mother of three boys who, one after the other, were notoriously unmotivated to learn to read and had to be urged, coaxed, cajoled, threatened and drilled in order even to stay in the super slow group in

reading, I wish to thank comic books for being a conduit, if not a

contribution, to culture. The first thing which my oldest boy

read because he wanted to was a comic book. I had been hearing a lot of bad publicity about comic books,

so I picked his up and read it. It was

poorly written and I could tell the writer's age from his outdated slang ("Who's that creep?" "He's really in the groove!"). My boy did not under stand their special meaning and I had to translate from my own personal knowledge of my teenage years.

It was poorly written, so poorly that it was really hilarious in the same way that a high school produc tion of Hamlet can be hilarious?but I saw nothing harmful in it. It had crime but crime as a generality that was not graphically and enticingly portrayed. So, as long as these things appealed to him where all other

printed matter had failed, I let him read all he wanted. The words he learned to read here could be used in other reading material too and

perhaps his skill would lure him be

yond this level.

54 The Reading Teacher October 1973

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He devoured what seemed to be tons of the things. I tended to steer him to the funny type as much as

possible (Donald Duck, Casper the

Ghost, Hot Stuff, The Little Devil, Archie, and so forth) and he gobbled them up.

The motivation these comics pro vided was absolutely phenomenal and a little bit frightening. My son

would snatch up a new one and, with feverish and ravenous eyes, start gob bling it wherever he was?in the car on the way home from the market, in

the middle of the yard, walking down the street, at the dinner table. All his other senses seemed to shut down and he became a simple visual pipeline.

Pass it on

The two younger children were

interested in comic books, too, and would finger them hungrily, gazing at the pictures with illiterate frustration.

They would come and press the

things on me to read to them and I

did, out of pity. But Little Huey and

Casper the Friendly Ghost, Hot Stuff and Astro Boy were so repetitive, so filled with the same old, threadbare

plots, themes, exhausted, wheezing, debilitated jokes, ancient, out-of date slang, that I frequently found

myself literally going to sleep. The

kids, one on either side would poke me impatiently. "Mommie, Mom

mie, wake up and read another one!" So I let the oldest one read them

and what I had hoped came to pass. His eagerness to read these things was so consuming that he kept run

ning to me with words to explain ("Mommie, what does s-y-n-d-i-c-a t-e spell?" "What does k-e-r-p-o-w

mean?"), and soon his growing skill made him aware of other words in other books and magazines and

everywhere. He was lured into them

by the magnetic power of his own

knowledge. He used to guard fiercely his

voluminous collection of curled up, coverless comic books with intense

possessiveness and get furious if his

younger brothers touched it. But, after about a year or two of lessening interest in them, combined with a

commensurately growing interest in other reading, he gave the whole dog eared collection to his younger brother. He is far more interested now in reading Jules Verne and Ray Bradbury, books on electronics and science encyclopedias.

His younger brother now pores over the comic books lovingly, adds

more to the collection, and sits on his bed glued to a Batman comic book while I call him and call him for sup per and finally come into the bed room with fire in my eye. The fire is

quickly quenched by the sight of another reluctant reader eagerly reading after having been in the lowest reading group in his class for

months, getting desperate notes from the teacher and being forced to drill

with me and Kitty and Spot and Billy and Sally.

The other day my third one, who has been every bit as slow about

reading as the other two, who has been working with a reading con sultant at school and with me at

home, came up to me carrying a Sad Sack comic book. He had a tremen

dous, glowing smile of self-satis faction. "Mommie, Mommie, I can read Sad Sack!" I gave him a kiss and a hug and wanted to give one to Sad Sack, too.

If educators ever find out what constitutes the fantastic motivating power of comic books, I hope they bottle it and sprinkle it around schoolrooms.

HAUGAARD: Comicbooks 55

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