Graphic Graphic

I've been trying to find a place to begin for a while now and I think I figured out why I'm so stuck. We refer to graphic novels as a whole, a unit of literature that goes together- but they do not. Where is my smooth transition from Maus to Rapunzel's Revenge? Maybe I could tease one out, but I don't want to sully the mark Maus made on my life with Shannon Hale's chopped and screwed fairy tale. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it and I absolutely see a need for it on my school's library shelves but that the graphic novel is not a genre but rather a format with consistent visual codes. It is a versatile format that lends itself to many different genres.

I am imagining Sumo's talk with Death in Into the Volcano written as prose. It wouldn't be as whimsical. (Yes, I think the way Death dangles from the walls and toys with Sumo is playful.) Reading about things shaking isn't the same as seeing the lines on the page blur. This tale of adventure and emotional growth is interwoven with surreal experience and a level of action that, were it equally described in narrative form, would require a different skill set that would arguably make it less accessible to more readers.

Rapunzel's Revenge achieves completely different goals. In this case the author employs the graphic novel format to make the book read more like a cartoon. It is a fairy tale, ever after. It is riddled with jokes and asides, and the Disney-style characters and bright colors give the story a lightness even at its darkest. The absence of color in Maus or Palomar stands in contrast to these books. It makes them feel more grave and lends the pages the historic significance of black and white photographs or the newspaper. The visual choices of the author are as important as the dialogue.

Consider also everything that Spiegelman told us by simply using animals. We know who comes from where at a glance and at one point we understand that his father is passing as a Pole wearing a pig mask- a visual metaphor!

I have used comics in my teaching curriculum for two years. Below is a text I relied on to write my comic unit. Kids adore reading both strips and graphic novels and are highly motivated to write their own. They are especially wonderful for language learners since the words are supported by visual representations. Now I want to include their use as teaching tools in reading. I imagine a lesson where students infer what happens in the gutter, then infer what happens between scenes or chapters. Students could look at Vladek wearing the mask of a pig and compare that to a metaphor in a line of poetry. If struggling readers who are adept graphic novel readers were aware of the skills they used to read visually it could be a powerful tool in helping

them transfer those habits to the written word.

Greg Heffley's Secret Childhood Identity

Hanging in my father's office is a poem. You have to look very closely to see that it is a poem because it is in the shape of a face. My face. I remember using a mechanical pencil to assure myself of those fine lines and writing in as minuscule letters as possible. When I had nothing more to say I complete strands of hair with hair hair hair hair hair.

Blue Lipstick and Technically, It's Not My Fault by John Grandits brought me back to a time in my life when I was overflowing with words and not too self-conscious to put them on paper. It takes a kind of bravery to put your intimate thoughts into a format meant to be read by others (or in the case of a diary one that could be read by others.) I think this is part of what makes these books so compelling. They are not just told in a child's voice, but are children's voices revealing intimate thoughts meant primarily for themselves to hear.

Each book represented a gender, which seems to be how the much of the course is laid out. I try to deny that such a gender divide exists when I teach not wanting the girls to feel they have to read Diary of a Teenage Witch instead of Harry Potter, but I suppose I must accept that especially at their developmental age, a lot is different. I'll save my thoughts on gender though for the graphic novels, which illustrate my thoughts more clearly (pun intended.)

I want to clear the air of rumors- at least in my school, at least in the fifth grade, kids LOVE poetry! They love breaking the rules of punctuation and left to right. They love making comparisons and being silly. They love reading a poem and imitating its rhythm. They love using poetry to tell us what they think. We have poetry slams in the fourth and fifth grade every year and Grandits' work is a great source for lessons and independent reading during that unit.

On a different note, Diary of a Wimpy Kid may have saved my life. I consider myself a skilled book dealer. I pride myself on drawing reluctant readers out of their holes and into our class library. When they whine, "I can't find anything I like," I put something in their hands that turns it all around. Except when it doesn't. Enter comics. Thank you Calvin and Hobbes for being witty and accessible. Thank you Fox Trot for featuring bickering siblings. Thank you Boondocks for being political and edgy. I know, I am woefully out of date but I just don't get into manga and kids find that on their own anyway. But what's a teacher to do when kids need to build stamina and experience whole paragraphs? Enter Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Greg Heffley is self-centered, mischievous, and in general a pretty bad role model, but so is Calvin. On the other hand they are both creative, pensive, and trying to survive school. Come to think of it there is quite the resemblance in the work they hand in to their teachers and in their perception of bullies. Watterson retired but I think it's safe to say that here we get a glimpse of Calvin in middle school. Our students get a glimpse into their own world from a humorous point of view.