The Best Graphic Novels For Young Scientists And Thinkers ▬ Big Think

The Best Graphic Novels For Young Scientists And Thinkers
The visual languages of comics and graphic novels are great exercise for developing brains.

Graphic Novels

Big Think: 5.01.2020 by Andrew Lasane

➧ In addition to being fun, studies have shown that the visual language of graphic novels stimulates the brain in ways that complex text can.

➧ For some readers, information is easier to process through images than it is through text alone.

➧ These graphic novels are great for getting young readers into philosophy, technology, and other scientific narratives.

If you're not on the graphic novel train by now, you're missing out. In addition to being a pathway to reading for those who see big groups of text as daunting or inherently boring, studies have shown that the visual language of comics and graphic novels is good for the brain.

In a 2019 paper titled "Visual narratives and the mind: Comprehension, cognition, and learning," assistant professor at Tilburg University and comics theorist Neil Cohn writes that because narrative sequential images are often used in things like children's books and storyboards, it has led to the "general belief that visual narratives are transparent to understand, requiring little learning beyond basic cognition like perceptual and event processing, sequential reasoning, and theory of mind." Cohn says that there is a growing field of psychological research that has shown that this is not true.

Humans are *60,000 times faster at processing images than we are at processing text, and combining the two stimulates the brain in meaningful ways.

Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas
by Jim Ottaviani

Mysteries of the Quantum Universe
by Thibault Damour and Mathieu Burniat

Hawking
by Jim Ottaviani

Hedy Lamarr and a Secret Communication System
by Trina Robbins

T-Minus: The Race to the Moon
by Jim Ottaviani

Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb
by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm

Logicomix: An epic search for truth
by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou

Neurocomic: A Comic About the Brain
by Dr. Hana Roš

Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy
by Steven and Ben Nadler

READ MORE ➤➤

 

Automatic Readability Checker

Based on 7 readability formulas:

Grade Level: 15

Reading Level: difficult to read.

Reader's Age: College graduate

 

* Debunked: 10 Common Myths About Our Visual Brains [Infographic]

Visme: 3.17.2017 by Samantha Lile

8.  People process images 60,000 times faster than text.

The “fact” has been used by countless digital marketers and visual storytellers over the past 30 years. It’s so pervasive, in fact, that no one bothers to research its original source. That is, until blogger Alan Levine made it his mission to discover the truth.