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graphic novels
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From: Hollis Rudiger <hmrudiger>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 09:24:24 -0500
Monica, please don't shut up! Since I was hired here at the CCBC last July, I have been looking forward to this month's discussion, and of course, I was on vacation last week, and missed the beginnings of the conversation. Now it's my turn to get chatty, and thank good ness I am not the only zealot.
I'll start out with a few of my favorites that haven't been mentioned yet:
Courtney Crumrin, by Ted Naifeh about a little girl whose yuppy parents have decided to move the family into Uncle Aloyisius' mansion-- It has been compared to Harry Potter in that Courtney discovers she has witch in her, and her Uncle is there to mentor her in spite of her nasty parents. For me, the comparison stops there. Courtney is a snotty little sarcastic brat-- think HP in book 5, but worse. But she is comletely loveable and funny, and as antisocial as she is, there is a definite feeling that the kids at school and her parents deserve what they are getting. There are 3 vols out so far. Perfect for upper elementary and middle school
Leave it to Chance, by James Robinson, art by Paul Smith A PERFECT elementary GN. Sorta like Nancy Drew and Sammy Keyes and Penny from Inspector Gadget all rolled up into one. Chance, 14, lives in a supernatural town and is the daughter of a "municipal sorcerer"
(cop) She wants to join her father in the business, but her father, of course, objects to a girl being in such a dangerous profession. Great Girl Power story, and specifically written for elementary aged kids.
And then my big love is non-fiction graphic novels, both because I, personally, learn a LOT more from the good ones than I do straight text
(Persepolis, for example, introduced the Shah/Iran conflict in a way that helped me really understand it ) and also because the good non-fiction GN's are so much more easily accepted by the naysayers, adults and kids. For example, Pedro and Me, Maus, Persepolis, Age of Bronze (excellent retelling of the Trojan War)Clan Apis,(amazing story about a honeybee named Nyukie which includes more science and sociolgy than any text I ever read in high school- the author is an entomolgist) Blankets... Somehow if there is a clear educational gain, if we can easily tie the content to standards, we can sneak them in more easily.
The major gripe I have with graphic novels (and comics for that matter) in schools and libraries is that many adults in charge often make assumptions which actually harm readers' experiences. So it's hard for me to intelligently defend their inclusion in library collections or in the classroom because I realize I am talking in a completely different language. terms like backstory, pacing, panel, inker, all of these things mean something in this genre.
Examples: 1-)MYTH- comic books and GN's are just books with pictures. There is no additional teaching necessary to make the experience richer for the kids, if they can read books, they can read these things. heck, even if they can't read, the pictures will help them, so my LD students should be ok with them FACT: Reading comic books is a different kind of reading. Not better or worse, not more or less sophisticated, just different, and should be taught as such. It's less linear, requires more inference, requires more imagination (as in what happens between the panels) and sometimes, as much prior knowledge as a novel. and FACT: Students with certain learning disabilities will NOT be more successful with GN's because of the pictures, certain LD's will actually make it HARDER for those kids.
2)-MYTH-It's all about super heroes and fantasy and "weird" stuff FACT: it's not. duh. for every genre in text literature, there are GN's in that genre too. And B, even if it were, isn't fantasy a genre that is useful to teach and to use to explore reality? Furthermore, what is weird to us as adults is what makes our kids tick. We need ot understand where they are.
3)-MYTH- Kids won't want to go back to "real" literature FACT: Kids like good stories. For some, comics/GN's are the only stories they have felt like they have mastered. Why not give them that confidence, learn their tastes, and then slowly finds them that PERFECT book that is a similar story. And the already "good" reader already knows this and goes back and forth seemlessly. If it gets kids into the library, if it gets kids drawing, imagining, playing RPG's, talking to one another about the nuances of art or story, thinking about writing fan fiction and all those associated pop-culture activities, who are we to say what's real? PS- The real literature of Melville, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling amog others have been made into GN's...
OK, now I am taking over. I'll leave it here for awhile...
etc etc. In my next post
Hollis Rudiger, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706
hmrudiger at education.wisc.edu Voice: 608&3930 Fax: 608&2I33 www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Barbara Tobin writes: did to
I'm so curious about this. These students did not read comics? In the Sunday papers? (When we moved to New York from St. Louis when I was 15 I was horrified to discover our local paper had no funnies; still doesn't.) Archie comics? Garfield? Superman? Donald Duck?
What exactly are their objections? Is it the really old one that comics are bad for you? That they aren't literature? Was it the YA content or the particular structure and look of the ones they studied?
If I were to present these wonderful publications to teachers I'd probably do it historically. Go back to the early comics (hmmmm....anyone know what is the earliest comic? Is it related to chapbooks?): Krazy Kat, the Katzenjammer Kids (spelling?), Little Nemo, super heroes, Little Nemo, and move on to Tin Tin, Asterix, Feiffer, and so on. Also, I'd have them consider them as something between a picture book and a novel without pictures. I'd give them all sorts to consider (including C. Underpants!).
The range is so great and so wonderful. Short, long, b/w, color....
I'm turning into a comic zealot (who'd a thunk it? - lightbulb going on over head), but the relative silence here (or is everyone just recovering from Easter!?) and the response of these students reinforces my sense that this is a form of publication that needs to be much better known and appreciated beyond one extreme or the other.
Monica (who cannot shut up it seems!)
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
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Received on Tue 13 Apr 2004 09:24:24 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 09:24:24 -0500
Monica, please don't shut up! Since I was hired here at the CCBC last July, I have been looking forward to this month's discussion, and of course, I was on vacation last week, and missed the beginnings of the conversation. Now it's my turn to get chatty, and thank good ness I am not the only zealot.
I'll start out with a few of my favorites that haven't been mentioned yet:
Courtney Crumrin, by Ted Naifeh about a little girl whose yuppy parents have decided to move the family into Uncle Aloyisius' mansion-- It has been compared to Harry Potter in that Courtney discovers she has witch in her, and her Uncle is there to mentor her in spite of her nasty parents. For me, the comparison stops there. Courtney is a snotty little sarcastic brat-- think HP in book 5, but worse. But she is comletely loveable and funny, and as antisocial as she is, there is a definite feeling that the kids at school and her parents deserve what they are getting. There are 3 vols out so far. Perfect for upper elementary and middle school
Leave it to Chance, by James Robinson, art by Paul Smith A PERFECT elementary GN. Sorta like Nancy Drew and Sammy Keyes and Penny from Inspector Gadget all rolled up into one. Chance, 14, lives in a supernatural town and is the daughter of a "municipal sorcerer"
(cop) She wants to join her father in the business, but her father, of course, objects to a girl being in such a dangerous profession. Great Girl Power story, and specifically written for elementary aged kids.
And then my big love is non-fiction graphic novels, both because I, personally, learn a LOT more from the good ones than I do straight text
(Persepolis, for example, introduced the Shah/Iran conflict in a way that helped me really understand it ) and also because the good non-fiction GN's are so much more easily accepted by the naysayers, adults and kids. For example, Pedro and Me, Maus, Persepolis, Age of Bronze (excellent retelling of the Trojan War)Clan Apis,(amazing story about a honeybee named Nyukie which includes more science and sociolgy than any text I ever read in high school- the author is an entomolgist) Blankets... Somehow if there is a clear educational gain, if we can easily tie the content to standards, we can sneak them in more easily.
The major gripe I have with graphic novels (and comics for that matter) in schools and libraries is that many adults in charge often make assumptions which actually harm readers' experiences. So it's hard for me to intelligently defend their inclusion in library collections or in the classroom because I realize I am talking in a completely different language. terms like backstory, pacing, panel, inker, all of these things mean something in this genre.
Examples: 1-)MYTH- comic books and GN's are just books with pictures. There is no additional teaching necessary to make the experience richer for the kids, if they can read books, they can read these things. heck, even if they can't read, the pictures will help them, so my LD students should be ok with them FACT: Reading comic books is a different kind of reading. Not better or worse, not more or less sophisticated, just different, and should be taught as such. It's less linear, requires more inference, requires more imagination (as in what happens between the panels) and sometimes, as much prior knowledge as a novel. and FACT: Students with certain learning disabilities will NOT be more successful with GN's because of the pictures, certain LD's will actually make it HARDER for those kids.
2)-MYTH-It's all about super heroes and fantasy and "weird" stuff FACT: it's not. duh. for every genre in text literature, there are GN's in that genre too. And B, even if it were, isn't fantasy a genre that is useful to teach and to use to explore reality? Furthermore, what is weird to us as adults is what makes our kids tick. We need ot understand where they are.
3)-MYTH- Kids won't want to go back to "real" literature FACT: Kids like good stories. For some, comics/GN's are the only stories they have felt like they have mastered. Why not give them that confidence, learn their tastes, and then slowly finds them that PERFECT book that is a similar story. And the already "good" reader already knows this and goes back and forth seemlessly. If it gets kids into the library, if it gets kids drawing, imagining, playing RPG's, talking to one another about the nuances of art or story, thinking about writing fan fiction and all those associated pop-culture activities, who are we to say what's real? PS- The real literature of Melville, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling amog others have been made into GN's...
OK, now I am taking over. I'll leave it here for awhile...
etc etc. In my next post
Hollis Rudiger, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706
hmrudiger at education.wisc.edu Voice: 608&3930 Fax: 608&2I33 www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Barbara Tobin writes: did to
I'm so curious about this. These students did not read comics? In the Sunday papers? (When we moved to New York from St. Louis when I was 15 I was horrified to discover our local paper had no funnies; still doesn't.) Archie comics? Garfield? Superman? Donald Duck?
What exactly are their objections? Is it the really old one that comics are bad for you? That they aren't literature? Was it the YA content or the particular structure and look of the ones they studied?
If I were to present these wonderful publications to teachers I'd probably do it historically. Go back to the early comics (hmmmm....anyone know what is the earliest comic? Is it related to chapbooks?): Krazy Kat, the Katzenjammer Kids (spelling?), Little Nemo, super heroes, Little Nemo, and move on to Tin Tin, Asterix, Feiffer, and so on. Also, I'd have them consider them as something between a picture book and a novel without pictures. I'd give them all sorts to consider (including C. Underpants!).
The range is so great and so wonderful. Short, long, b/w, color....
I'm turning into a comic zealot (who'd a thunk it? - lightbulb going on over head), but the relative silence here (or is everyone just recovering from Easter!?) and the response of these students reinforces my sense that this is a form of publication that needs to be much better known and appreciated beyond one extreme or the other.
Monica (who cannot shut up it seems!)
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
~ ~ ~ To send a reply to the entire CCBC-Net community,click on...
mailto:ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu To send a request to remove your address from the mailing list, click on...
mailto:ccbc-net-unsub at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
Received on Tue 13 Apr 2004 09:24:24 AM CDT
