When Jerry Craft became the very first graphic novelist to receive a Newbery Medal, he shattered a glass ceiling for cartoonists, who have long been looked at as producing "lesser" literature than their prose-writing siblings. I am so proud of him. The Jan. 27 announcement that the prestigious prize for American children's literature will go to his New Kid, the story of a seventh-grader who doesn't fit in at his mostly white private school, is a victory for Jerry and for the art form of comics.