I have found myself constantly telling my daughter, who is a big fan of graphic novels, “Why don't you read real books?”, by which I mean a traditional text-based book.

However, I have been recently reflecting on my prejudice, and the contradiction in what I say in my work versus what I say to my daughter.

When I ask her why she likes  graphic novels, she tells me that the use of images and text helps her understand the story. We encourage picture books when children are young, but expect them to “age out” into traditional text when they begin to read to themselves. 

I have also noticed that my daughter is more likely to read more thematically challenging storylines about trauma, loss, and conflict in graphic novels which she would not go near in a traditional story. The visuals helps her get beyond the words. It helps her comprehend, ask critical questions and add humanity to people and their situations. Having a visual helps her to understand the person behind the words.

I am also a big fan of Chris Lysy’s comics about evaluation, because they prompt insights, questions and reflection in my practice. The comics help me get under the surface of evaluation challenges and communicate concepts to others.

In my practice at Cultivating Change, we encourage the use of mixed methods, because words or charts alone don’t tell a whole story. We also prefer to use slide reports to communicate evaluation findings, rather than traditional long written reports. A slide report has includes pictures, narratives and visual data.  It helps our clients with understanding their performance story, and engage with sometimes challenging findings.  

I am feeling very sheepish, because I now realise that all the reasons my daughter likes graphic novels are what I am attracted to also as a communication style. I will stop with my silly prejudices against graphic novels and my blatant hypocrisy, as I am obviously a secret graphic novel (now not so secret) fan!