Q. I am working on a paper about the significance of comic books for children.  Are they part of Children's literature?

Let me share a few search strategies with you here,

Let's look at some background research with REFERENCE Sources and ebooks such as,
If you are off campus, full access requirea sign-on with nyit login.

Comics from the Encyclopedia for Adolescence (https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NDc4MTM1Ng==?q=comics+AND+children%27s+literature&aid=18308)

see also related searches about comics AND children's literature

Once you've begun developing a position statement, I suggest collecting a few PEER REVIEW/scholarly articles from both education databases, such as Proquest: (comics and education) AND children.
(https://nyit.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/search/2746556?accountid=12917)

And art/art history databases such as
Art & Architecture Complete search terms:(comics and education) AND children)
(https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/results?vid=0&sid=bc1ebc3f-3fe8-4128-974a-701f3a0f0541%40redis&bquery=%28comics%2Band%2Beducation%29%2BAND%2Bchildren&bdata=JmRiPWFzdSZ0eXBlPTEmc2VhcmNoTW9kZT1TdGFuZGFyZCZzaXRlPWVob3N0LWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d)

Lean into reading the paper abstracts before committing to a closer read of the whole article.

Lastly, look at books and essays to test your position, (some of this search string will overlap with (1)).

Copy/paste your citations from the search results, then edit them to identify the paraphrasing/quotes and pages relevant to your paper, ie,
      Hahn, Daniel, editor. “Comics.” The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, Inc., 2015.  Credo Reference, https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NDgwMjc5Ng==?aid=18308.

Let me know how it goes, we can always meet for a research appointment.