Comic books aim to prepare test-takers

By Bloomberg News  |  August 30, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Comic books, once considered junk literature, may finally be helping American teens get into college.

A Washington Post Co. unit, Kaplan Inc., has added vocabulary words such as sanctimonious and exculpate to increasingly popular Japanese-style graphic novels known as "manga." The 150- to 200-page paperbacks are designed to help teens prepare for the SAT Reasoning and ACT tests.

Kaplan is seeking a chunk of the $330 million in annual US and Canadian sales of graphic novels. Other publishers, including Scholastic Corp., already supply such books to school libraries and classrooms. Manga, Japanese for comics, help visually stimulate students to learn and remember, educators say.

"The literary demands of the 21st century are different, so teachers need to use new ways to engage students," says James Bucky Carter, 30, visiting instructor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The Kaplan series, "Psy-Comm," "Warcraft: Dragon Hunt," and "Van Von Hunter," have big-eyed, angular characters posing on the covers. Definitions of more than 300 underlined vocabulary words appear in the page margins. During an ambush at the beginning of "Psy-Comm," one character shouts: "Relinquish control of this Junebug or burn!" In the margin, "relinquish" is defined as "renounce or surrender something."