Graphic novels are currently used in a variety of ways in the classroom, but, they appear most often in contemporary educational literature as a method to motivate a myriad of marginalized readers. The unexplored assumption that graphic novels are easier to read than print-dominant novels because of the lower print-text load is often cited for using these texts with marginalized readers. An alternative hypothesis is that the medium may not be less cognitively taxing, and instead graphic novels may require different reading strategies from print-dominant texts. This qualitative multiple case study utilized think-aloud protocols, stimulus interviews, and a new attention-mapping activity to better understand how expert readers use metacognitive reading strategies and attention shifts to read graphic novels. Eight expert readers, 17-20 years old, sat for two sessions: The first session included a semi-structured interview and a 30-minute think-aloud; The second session included a stimulus interview and a Visual Attention Map (VAM) activity. The think-aloud data was analyzed for time, metacognitive strategies used, and the sequence of those strategies. The VAM was designed to make visible the attention patterns of readers of graphic novels. The findings of the current study show the time spent reading varied across individual readers. The most important aspect was not the time spent, rather it was the way these readers used the time. The metacognitive strategies put in place varied greatly depending on the readers experience with graphic novels. All readers used individualized patterns of metacognitive reading strategies during their think-alouds, but the graphic novel readers were adept at using both illustrations and written text to better understand the stories whereas expert print-dominant readers tended to rely on the written text alone. In addition, the VAM analysis showed that expert graphic novel readers initially attended to the illustrations, followed by decoding the written text, and finally synthesized the two. Expert print-dominant readers were able to bring to bear their expertise on the written text, but they were unable to use the illustrations available on the page. This study complicates current assumptions about the ease of reading graphic novels by observing expert-print dominant readers and expert graphic novel readers negotiate written text and illustrations.
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