My proposal for a new book award would be the Carl Barks Award for Children’s Graphic Novels. Graphic novels and comic books have been a popular art for with both children and adult for a long time, but only recently has the book community started to recognize the genre for its literary merit. Graphic novels for children have been an important and instrumental part of adolescent readers’ lives, especially those who loved picture books as young children and would like to see the positive qualities of those books realized in a more age-appropriate manner. Modern comic books are written for a variety of readers and are becoming more and more specialized.
Throughout the Golden Age of Comics as comic book readers got older, there was a focus on creating stories that would appeal to a wide range of age groups. Then in the 1980s, there was a shift in focus to more gritty, realistic and edgy comic books aimed totally at adults. Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore popularized this genre of “mature” comic books geared towards adults. Towards the late 1990’s and early 2000’s a new shift began with comics being made with adolescent readers in mind. Jeff Smith’s Bone series was originally self-published and not made with a specific audience in mind. Later Disney recognized the chance for children to be enchanted by these stories and released shorter and censored versions of the story on their imprint. Finally, in 2004, Scholastic Books reissued the collections in an imprint made specifically for graphic novels for young people. This paved the way for other comic book writers, such as the aforementioned Gaiman, to delve into the world of children’s writing. Today, children’s graphic novels are popular and gaining acceptance among the mainstream book world. As such, the creation of an award for such books is only a matter of time.
I propose naming the award after Carl Barks, creator of Uncle Scrooge and other iconic Duckville characters for Disney in the 1940’s. He created comic books specifically for children and has had a lasting artistic impact on comic book creators to this day. Will Eisner, a prominent and standard-setting comic book writer and artist once called him the “Hans Christian Andersen of comic books.”
The award would have the following critieria:
- The work must be in book form. Comic books are not acceptable unless they are collected into a book.
- The work must be appropriate for children up to the age of 15. Works created specifically for children will be considered first.
- The work may be from any country or language, but must be translated into English. Only the English translation will be judged, not the original.
- The work must display both excellent artistic merit and excellent story writing. The book will be judged based on it’s coherence as a total work and the value the work adds to the literary world as a whole.
- A “graphic novel” is defined as a book in which narrative and dialog appears as part of the illustration, either in word bubbles or boxes in the artwork itself. Traditional picture books that have text separate from illustrations will not be considered. It must follow the traditional “comic book” style of multiple panels per page throughout the majority of the work.
- The award will be presented to both the author(s) and the illustrator(s). No consideration will be made to the amount of people contributing to the book, unless it detracts from the quality of the art and/or story.
- Parts of a series will be considered individually. The only time an entire series will be judged as a whole will be if it is collected into a single bound volume.
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
The first book I would give this award to would be The Arrival by Shaun Tan published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc. The book’s unique visual style and breathtaking illustrations are only enhanced by the lack of any words in the book. The reader must derive the meaning of the panels from the action taking place in the illustrations, creating an exciting and engaging experience for the reader. An allegory for European immigrants arriving in the New World, The Arrival follows the journey of a man leaving his desolate homeland and family behind to find a better life far away. He travels to a mysterious and alien world populated by strange creatures and massive and extravagant architecture. There he meets a number of helpful people who assist him in creating a new life for himself. Simple things such as finding food, finding work and communication are difficult due to the fact that the language and writing of the new world is completely foreign to the man. Finally, through the help of friends, he is able to raise enough money to bring his family to his new home and live “happily ever after.” The confusion and desperation of the man is felt by the reader by way of the wordless pages that require the reader to create meaning from pictures. The reader is unable to know if they must take everything at face value or if there is some deep and underlying meaning that is being missed. This book is a fitting winner for the first Carl Banks Award for Children’s Graphic Novels.
Al's Blog 