‘My son will only read comics – I need to get him reading real books.’ Dr Becky Long, education outreach manager at Children’s Books Ireland, has often heard these words, particularly from parents of boys aged eight to 12. “When I ask what they mean by ‘real’ books, it turns out ‘real books’ mean words and more words.
I say comics are real books.” Long has had these conversations at book clinics, run by Children’s Books Ireland, where young readers meet a book doctor for a ‘prescription’ for a new read. She believes we need to support parents in expanding their idea of reading and literacy.
The traditional reading trajectory for a child was “progressing from picture books that you have read to you, to reading books yourself that are text-based”, Long says: “There’s this idea of moving away from pictures, as if images and pictures are somehow childish, when, in fact, nobody is ever too old to gain value from pictures.” In just under a fortnight, the first Irish comic book festival for children takes place in Co Wicklow. Funded by the Arts Council, it is run by children’s bookshop Halfway up the Stairs, whose owner, Trish Hennessy, says Irish comic books “are bursting onto the scene in a big way”.
According to The Bookseller magazine, sales of children’s comic books quadrupled in value between 2018 and 2023, and “experienced triple-digit growth between 2021 and 2022”. Also, comic books have been among the Irish children’s top-10.