Digital reading of literary works in comics format during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

As social distancing was officially recognized worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the physical presence of teachers and students in the traditional classroom has been abruptly replaced by a digital environment in an online class. Visual literacy is directly related to understanding that visual information is an ornament of verbal information and a semiotic element that adds meaning to the text. Due to the multimodal language of comics, which provides a fruitful situation for constructing meaning during remote emergency learning, the relevance of the topic has been verified. Thus, this paper aims to present insights concerning the use of classic literature in comic book format. In this sense, the theoretical basis was built with the contributions of authors who corroborate the discussions presented here, anchored in the proposal of a didactic sequence carried out with elementary school students in the city of Barra do Garças - MT (Brazil), amid the pandemic context. The results revealed a change in the student's perception, even though the verbal language is predominant over the image. Regarding the classic literary works, it was noticed that the language change facilitated the understanding of the text read, making the reading enjoyable and exciting and making a bridge between past and present.