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Sales of manga or Japanese comics dominate the publishing market in Japan. Manga cater to a wide variety of readers, ranging from children's comics to adult pornography. In this paper, we focus on adolescent readers and describe patterns of learning to read manga. The findings demonstrate the importance of belonging to a community of readers since this community enables readers to share ideas and provides a resource for developing reading skills. These skills are self-taught, developed outside the classroom, since the reading of manga is generally frowned upon in most schools. Being aware of how actively adolescents read manga as well as of the kinds of skills needed to understand these texts would provide teachers with a deeper understanding of their students' reading skills.

Notes that "manga"--Japanese comics--constitute the most popular kind of reading material in Japan. Discusses the skills needed to read manga. Surveys 297 Japanese college students. Suggests that many manga readers can be considered engaged readers as they are highly motivated and have developed a range of strategies to help them understand texts. (PM)