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Internet usage has grown exponentially, thanks, in part, to the increasing popularity of handheld devices, such as cell phones, tablet computers, and e-readers. Today's 21st-century children and teens are surrounded by a mediasphere of visual and textual resources. According to the Teens and the Internet report (Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project 20?6, 2), over eleven million teens go online daily, compared to about seven million in 2000. Increasingly, whether it is through computers, televisions, cell phones, or gaming devices, children and teens are accessing online resources to meet their social, recreational, and informational needs.
Due to the development of new 21st-century technologies, the world of children's and young adult literature is continually changing. For example, one of the fastest- growing multimodal formats that today's visually literate youth embrace is the digital graphic novel. For the purpose of this article, digital graphic novels are denned as graphic novels produced on and/or accessed on some form of digital device, including computers, mobile devices, and e-readers. This engaging literary medium is expanding our definition of children's and young adult literature, as well as the ways in which we teach.
Often referred to as online graphic novels, Web comics, or long-play comics, the digital graphic novel first appeared on the scene in the 1980s. Initially, the conversion from print to Web presented numerous challenges; however, the medium improved greatly in the 1990s with advances in Web 2.0 technologies. Since digital graphic novels are relatively inexpensive to produce compared to print novels, graphic novelists have more incentive to publish their work online, especially independent and beginning illustrators (Rousseau 2009, 206). Furthermore, publishing online enables graphic novelists to make their work accessible more quickly and to larger audiences. Some digital graphic novels and comics have since come out in print editions. For example, Gene Yang originally published American Born Chinese (2006) as a digital comic on the website Modern Tales before publishing the award winning graphic novel edition. Also, Americus by M. K. Reed and Jonathan Hill (2011) first began as the serialized Web comic, "Save Apathea", part of the To Be Continued line of Web comics by First Second Comics. Americus is about a teenager's quest to keep his favorite fantasy series, The Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde,...