The Stan Lee Excelsior Award is a relatively new prize for manga and graphic novels and is aimed at school children. There are now two separate awards, one for children aged 11-16 and a new junior award for those aged 8-11:
“The junior award is a spin-off of the hugely successful and popular Stan Lee Excelsior Award, the ‘secondary school version’ which now attracts nearly two hundred schools and public libraries from all over the UK – from Scotland to Jersey, from Belfast to Hull. The overall goal of this scheme is to encourage reading amongst children. However, its secondary target is to raise the profile of graphic novels and manga amongst teachers and school librarians. This storytelling medium has been a largely underused resource within education for many years. Both versions of the Stan Lee Excelsior Award attempt to highlight some of the amazing books that are out there – books that fully deserve to be in our school libraries and classrooms alongside regular fiction.”
For further information on using comics, graphic novels and manga for teaching literacy, see the UK literacy charity Comics Literacy Awareness (CLAw)
