Reading With Pictures was founded in 2009 by award-winning graphic novelist and nationally syndicated cartoonist Josh Elder in order to revolutionize the role of comics in education. The organization has since grown to comprise eight board members drawn from publishing and academia, including John Shableski, Sales Manager for Diamond Book Distributors, and David Rapp, an Associate Professor of Learning Sciences and Cognitive Psychology at Northwestern University. We also engage the talents of more than 60 active volunteers from all over the world in various capacities.
At Reading With Pictures, we believe that comics have the potential to be more engaging, more efficient and more effective educational tools than traditional classroom materials. We believe it because we’ve experienced it in our own lives. Comics made us better students, better citizens and better people. Now we hope to share those experiences with pupils in every city, in every school and in every classroom.
Our Mission
Reading With Pictures is a nonprofit organization that advocates the use of comics in the classroom to promote literacy and improve educational outcomes for all students. We work with academics to cultivate groundbreaking research into the proper role of comics in education. We collaborate with cartoonists to produce exceptional graphic novel content for scholastic use. Most importantly, we partner with educators to develop a system of best practices for integrating comics into their curriculum. At Reading With Pictures, we get comics into schools and get schools into comics.
Who We Serve
We provide tools and resources to educators, parents, writers, cartoonists and publishers in order to meet our ultimate goal of promoting literacy and improving educational outcomes for all students. Together we can revolutionizing the role of comics in the classroom.
The RWP Network
The Reading With Pictures Network is a group of friends, colleagues and supporters from backgrounds including: education, cartooning, writing, parenting and publishing among others. Our network provides access to our moderated forum; allows you to register for events, make contributions, apply for positions, share curriculum and other resources; and allows you to network with like-minded professionals. Learn more or register here.
Our Future
- Partnering with Northwestern University and other academic institutions to oversee the largest and most comprehensive research study in U.S. history on the role of comics in education
- Building an interactive database of research papers, lesson plans and comic-centric curriculum
- Providing educational consultation services to schools and publishers
- Working with cartoonists to produce top-quality educational comics
- Helping universities design courses in the burgeoning field of Comics Studies
- Creating a Speakers Bureau to get cartoonists into schools and libraries
- Aggregating graphic novel reviews from various accredited sources and generating recommended reading lists for every age group and subject matter