As well as being World Book Day week, the first week of March is also a time to celebrate Will Eisner Week. Will Eisner Week is a Worldwide Celebration of Comics, Graphic Novels, Sequential Art, Free Speech and Will Eisner’s Legacy. As part of this celebration, organisers encourage people to read a graphic novel.
I have been looking into integrating graphic novels in the curriculum in school and I have been doing a lot of reading around the subject, most of it coming from the USA. I can highly recommend Worth a Thousand Words by Meryl Jaffe and Talia Hurwich (Jossey Bass) as a first port of call. It is very interesting and Meryl Jaffe has a lot of resources on her website to supplement the book.
I have been working on a list of graphic novels suitable for use in the curriculum. It is by no means exhaustive, and is very much a work in progress; it is mostly suitable for secondary school, though some books are suitable for primary school.