Foreword Sina Grace I almost ­ don’t know what to write ­ here ­ because Jack Phoenix did all the heavy lifting. The history and necessity of comic books/graphic novels in libraries is masterfully detailed in the pages following. He did an abso- lutely aces job of taking a very complicated subject that ­others would fail at tackling with big words and run-on sentences . . . ​and he made it a fun read. What Jack ­ couldn’t do, however, is get down to the personal of it all. My first memories at the Santa Monica library involve me scouring through Astrid Lindgren’s work, hoping to find books that could match the awe and won­der I felt when reading the illustrated versions of Pippi Longstocking. Aside from Mad Magazine (which may be an imaginary memory—­more on that in some other book), I ­ don’t recall ­ there being any graphic novels or collected editions at the public library. For me per- sonally, this ­wasn’t a huge prob­lem as the comic store (Hi De Ho Com- ics) was located literally across the street from the library, so when I reached an age where I ­ didn’t want to read books, I could mosey over to Hi De Ho. The library lost me right at peak ­middle grade years. Jack gets into the nitty-­gritty of the symbiotic relationship between nonprofit and for-­profit businesses, but suffice to say, I had a positive opinion of both, but assumed they ­ were to remain separate. While comics and graphic novels have had a tenuous relationship with legitimacy in the book market and library system, ­there is without a doubt a positive correlation between literacy and kids who read comics. Again, ­ because Jack so succinctly details all the facts, I get to focus on the personal. When I was in sixth grade, a lonely kid who enjoyed drawing
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