Current Exhibits

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Graphic Novels at the UCSC Library
Highlights of the UCSC Library's Collections

An annotated bibliography to the exhibit is available.

The sophistication of the American comic book/graphic novel field may be the most underrated literacy movement in recent United States history. It is within the graphic novel format that one encounters much of the most experimental and exciting work being done in the comics medium today.¹ Graphic novels are now regularly being reviewed in The New York Times Book Review. Museums are acquiring pages of comic art. Esquire and The New Yorker have run comic stories in their fiction issues. A MacArthur grant was awarded to a cartoonist. Whether one considers graphic novels as art or as literature, it is becoming apparent that this medium, after a prolonged adolescence, is coming of age.²

Deborah Murphy & Frank Gravier
University Library
UC Santa Cruz

McHenry Library
University of California, Santa Cruz
Summer 2007

(1) Steven Weiner "100 Graphic Novels for Public Libraries" Kitchen Sink Press, 1996
(2) The National Association of Comics Art Educators)

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page updated June 2007