Comic Art, Children's Literature, and the New Comic Studies

Children's Literature studies has traditionally treated comics fitfully and superficially despite the importance of comics as a global phenomenon associated with children. Conversely, the growing field of Comics Studies has largely neglected the child reader and childhood. Yet, children's culture scholars have recently begun to embrace comics while Anglophone educators and publishers have become newly conscious of children as comics readers. Hatfield suggests that Childhood Studies and Comics Studies have a new opportunity and need to acknowledge each other. He provides Children's Literature scholars an overview of Comics Studies by summarizing and contextualizing publishing trends, conferences, and theory.