When I was a kid, I used to read a lot of books, usually cartoon books like The Magic Treehouse, Junie B Jones, Henry and Mudge, Big Nate, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, etc. However, as I got older, I stopped reading due to every Western fiction book aimed at people over the age of 12 being an unreadable wall of text. Every western cartoon book is aimed at children under the age of 12. If they added cartoons, it would be so much accessible and more readable. Imagine if they made a cartoon book about the Vietnam War. It would be heralded as not just a moving book, it would be considered one of the most moving pieces of media of all time. A picture is worth a thousand words for a reason. Nonfiction books already have this figured out. Instead of walls of unreadable text, they have illustrations and photos everywhere for better understanding. Cartoons are not just for kids. Grave of the Fireflies is an animated movie, but is one of the most moving and emotional war films ever made. Bloom county is a newspaper cartoon, yet it won a PULITZER PRIZE. East Asian countries have already figured this out. They have cartoon books for adults like Slayers, Monogatari, Haruhi Suzumiya, Baccano, Record of Lodoss War, ToraDora, and many more. I know some of you are typing a wall of text that says “um AKSCHUALLY read comic books 🤓” or “cartoons are exclusively for babies, books are meant to be imagined”. So western publishing industry, why do you think cartoons are for kids?
If I picked up what purported to be a serious book on the history of the Vietnam war and I opened it and it had cartoons in it I would think the book was not serious and certainly not buy it as a result.
As someone who reads a lot of non-fiction books, yes there are photos and maps and illustrations in them. What they don’t have are cartoons for goodness’ sake.
If you want to read cartoons for adults then there are enormous numbers of graphic novels, manga, and other such books available. My local bookshop has an entire section dedicated simply to those.
Context matters.
Well, I have read a “serious book” (in fact, a dissertation) on ethnic conflicts in post-soviet Eastern Europe, written by a war journalist and anthropologist.
There were cartoons in the book.
Because much of the text was dedicated to analyzing nationalist propaganda.