The Construction of Gender Identities in Greek Children’s Graphic Novels

Abstract

Graphic novels initially emerged as a genre primarily addressed to an adult audience, due to the complexity of their
thematic content, extensive textuality, and sophisticated visual narration. However their growing popularity and increasing
recognition as a form of high-quality reading have gradually facilitated their expansion into the field of children’s publishing.
Consequently children’s graphic novels have become an established and distinct category within contemporary children’s
literature. Recent research highlights their potential to engage young readers through the dynamic interaction of image and
text, while also supporting literacy development and reading motivation. Apart from their recreational value, graphic novels
have been increasingly acknowledged for their pedagogical applications, leading to their incorporation into primary and
secondary educational contexts. Similar to literature in general, graphic novels perform an important socializing function,
contributing to children’s understanding of themselves and the world around them, through identification with fictional
characters. In this regard, the fiction that children read can strongly influence the development of their gender identities, as
they often internalize gender roles and behaviors depicted in books as socially acceptable. This highlights the need for careful
and critical analysis of how gender is represented in children’s graphic novels. Building on the above discussion, the present
study investigates gender representations in Greek children’s graphic novels, focusing on the ways in which masculinity and
femininity are constructed and conveyed. The analysis examines two recent works, Stone (2023) and The Days When
There Is No School (2024), which were selected due to their contemporary publication and relevance within the field of
children’s graphic literature. A qualitative content analysis was applied in order to identify and interpret patterns of gender
representation across textual and visual elements. The findings indicate that although both books reflect a contemporary
aesthetic and a modern conceptualization of childhood—consistent with their recent publication—they nonetheless
continue, at times, to reproduce implicit stereotypical gender representations. These results indicate the persistence of
subtle gender norms even within recent and ostensibly progressive children’s books.