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LONDON: Parents, please note - comic books are good for children, says a new study. Researchers have found that children can benefit from tales about the caped crusader, Superman and even Dennis the Menace in the same way they can from reading books, 'Th e Daily Telegraph' reported.

According to them, reading any work successfully, including comics, requires more than just absorbing text. Lead researcher Professor Carol Tilley of Illinois University said that comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of reading, and children b enefit from reading them at least as much as they do from reading other kinds of books.

She said there was evidence that they increased their vocabulary and instilled a love of reading. “A lot of the criticism of comics and comic books come from people who think that kids are just looking at pictures and not putting them together with the w ords. Some kids, yes. But you could easily make some of the same criticisms of picture books - that kids are just looking at pictures, and not at the words.

“Although they've long embraced picture books as appropriate children's literature, many adults - even teachers and librarians who willingly add comics to their collections - are too quick to dismiss the suitability of comics as texts for young readers.

“Any book can be good and any book can be bad, to some extent. It's up to the reader's personality and intellect. As a whole, comics are just another medium, another genre.

“And if you really consider how the pictures and words work together to tell a story, you can make the case that comics are just as complex as any other kind of literature,” Tilley wrote in the 'School Library Monthly' journal. - PTI

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