Transcript Five Essential Strategies for Reading Graphic Novels

You Call That
Reading? Putting
Graphic Novels in
Their Place
Louann Reid
Colorado State University
[email protected]
Note: I modified some slides after the conference so this presentation and the handouts would make sense together. New
material has a pink background.
Goals of Today’s Presentation
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Notes toward a rationale
Teaching strategies for the beginning of term and beyond
And an invitation . . . Please feel free to raise questions and offer
suggestions from your experience throughout the presentation. I am
here to learn as well as to teach, and I would like to know what you
do in your classrooms regarding the teaching of visual texts.
But first, a word from your presenter . . .
Colorado State—The Green
University
•Teach preservice teachers and
inservice courses for practicing
teachers
•Co-author of textbooks for
secondary school students
•Previously taught secondary
school English, public speaking,
and drama for 19 years
•Recently taught a graduate
course on Visual Texts and
Textuality, from which arose a
question from a teacher, “I want
to teach a graphic novel, but I
don’t know how.”
•Working on a book for teachers
on teaching visual texts.
View from Our House in Winter
Louann Reid, Colorado State University, 2008
The Rocky
Mountains in
early summer
Notes Toward a Rationale
Graphic novels are popular.
 Many of them are serious as well as
entertaining.
 For some topics and perspectives, graphic
narratives are the most effective way of
conveying powerful messages and having
an emotional impact on readers.
 Graphic narratives can connect students
to the world.
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Graphic Novels are Popular
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In the Philippines, according to professor and researcher John Lent,
“komiks are the most read of all media and a source for many movie
plots” (1989).
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Booksellers in America, Britain, Germany, Italy and South Korea cite
graphic literature as one of their fastest-growing categories (Newsweek
2005)
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In Borders, one of America's largest bookstore chains, graphic-novel
sales have risen more than 100 percent a year for the past three years.
Children in Langley, UK read the new Simpsons
graphic novel at Borders.
www.norwich.borders.co.uk
Comics Aren’t Just for Fun
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In order to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, cadets
from the class of 2006 must study Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel
Persepolis (Newsweek 2005)
Around the world, comics have been used to change people’s attitudes and
practices (Lent).
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UNICEF campaigns in South Asia and Africa to uplift role models for girls—television series,
video animation, radio broadcasts, comics, storybooks, posters, etc.
Organizations and governments in India, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Latin America,
Tanzania and others have mounted campaigns using printed comics to educate people on
everything from safe sex to safe driving.
Storyteller Group of Johannesburg—largest and most productive: create books around major
social issues such as AIDS, environments, and peer pressure. The books are based on
extensive research, consultation, and genuine participation.” According to Lent, they have
“huge circulations”—more than 3 million copies of one book were distributed.
Comics Aren’t Just For Kids
From Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks
Graphic Narratives Allow
Expressive Freedom
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"Comics aren't supposed to be 'serious,' so we can say anything," notes
Marjane Satrapi. "Also, the use of a drawing, rather than a photograph,
can create the distance necessary to handle a sensitive topic without
being cynical."
[As for In the Shadow of No Towers] The subversive power of comics
allowed Spiegelman to depict falling towers and satirize the Bush
government while most other writers were staying clear of the disaster
zone.
(quotations from Newsweek 2005)
Comics Can Connect Students
to the World
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Additional Perspectives on World Events
 Persepolis
(Iran) by Marjane Satrapi
 Maus (Holocaust) by Art Spiegelman
 Palestine (Middle East conflict) by Joe Sacco
 Fax from Sarajevo by Joe Kuber
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Social and Political Education
 South
Africa (the Storyteller Group)
 Germany (200 page bio of Hitler to
combat racism in the early 1990s)
Comics Can Connect Students
to Shared Pasts
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Maui: Legends of the Outcast
But Do They Belong in School?
Yes, but . . .
Reporters used graphic novel form to write about a
middle school class reading graphic novels (left).
Comments from readers about the class are below.
Comic books have NO place in
schools. That should be a 'duh'.
I love graphic novels and believe
anything that encourages kids to read is
a good thing. If this class gets students
to read outside of school instead of
playing games on an Xbox, watching
the junk on TV, or mindlessly surfing the
Internet, then I'm all for it.
Talk about the dumbing down of America.
Does every different medium have to
justify itself based on the opinion of
people who either don't really know
anything about it or don't care for it.
St. Paul Pioneer Press, 24 March, 2008. Complete story and
comments on www.TwinCities.com.
Taught Well, Graphic Narratives
Have Value in the Classroom
They are motivating to some lessmotivated readers.
 They provide opportunities to develop
critical thinking skills about images and
representations.
 They offer a way to capitalize on students’
out-of-school literacies to strengthen
academic literacy.
 They can enlarge our view of the world.
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Teaching Comics Well
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Practice close reading
Support for reading difficult
texts
Teach style and craft
Advance social justice
Develop a more powerful
literacy that allows
students to produce as
well as consume text
Activities To Consider
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Close reading
Sort and Sequence
Supporting Readers
Deepening
Understanding
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Examining Narrative
Craft
Developing
Multimodal Literacy
Activities in the Workshop
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Sort and Sequence
 Read
the next slide
and answer the
questions.
 Form small groups of
no more than 5.
 Click to the slide that
says “Sort and
Sequence”
Close Reading
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My faith was not unshakable. The year of the
revolution I had to take action. So I put my
prophetic destiny aside for a while. “Today my
name is Che Guevara.” “I am Fidel.” “And I want
to be Trotsky.” We demonstrated in the garden
of our house. “Down with the king!” “Down with
the king!” The revolution is like a bicylce. When
the wheels don’t turn, it falls. “Well spoken!” And
so went the revolution in my country.
What is the subject? Who are the speakers?
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Sort and sequence
 Open
your envelope and take out the panels
for three different excerpts. Keep the piles
separate from each other.
 Put the panels in sequence. Be ready to
explain why you chose the sequence you did.
 Decide among your group members what the
subject is and what the story is.
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Added notes about the activity
 Envelopes
contain the
panels for three
comics pages. The
words have all been
blocked out.
 Assemble each, using
the pictures as clues
to sequence.
“The Bicycle” uses
the words read on
the close reading
slide.
 Look at the complete
pages on the second
handout for this
session.
 As a group, discuss
what was easy and
what was difficult
about this activity.
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Is This Reading?
What skills or strategies would a reader have to
use (or could a reader learn) to make sense of
the excerpts?
Valuing Visual Texts [some conclusions
from the activity]
 Words and images offer different
affordances. There’s value in both ways of
telling.
 Value in versions
 Support
readers
 Enlarge interpretive abilities/deepen
understanding
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Value in finding the most effective form to
tell your story.
Supporting Readers
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Use a graphic
narrative to acquaint
students with the
story basics.
Graphic adaptations
can demonstrate to
today’s students the
timelessness of
stories.
From Manga Romeo and Juliet
Deepening Understanding

Seeing a Metamorphosis
in Reading
 Visualize
from text
 Analyze narrative in
images
 Compare artists’ styles
Where This Comes From
Daybooks of Critical Reading & Writing, 6-12
Claggett, Reid, and Vinz. Houghton Mifflin Supplemental Publishers, 2008-2009
Seeing a Metamorphosis in
Reading (handout)
Pages 2 and 3 offer three versions of
Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”
 Discuss the effects and effectiveness of
each version. What’s told? What’s
omitted? Whose story is told (from whose
eyes do we see the story and,
consequently, from whose value system or
world view)?
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Multimodal Literacy
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Students need to be able to construct and
comprehend messages that are, increasingly,
presented in multiple modes.
Using comics helps them to identify the interplay
of modes and understand how they can employ
multimodality in their own creation (what we
might have called “writing”).
Students become producers as well as
consumers.
Maus
Page 4 of the handout offers definitions of the
modes in multiple literacies—the ways we
make meaning from the text. We didn’t have
time in the workshop, but I’ve asked readers to
divide into 5 groups, each taking one of the
modes and preparing to comment on how that
mode contributes to the meaning they make
from the two pages of Maus provided here.
Examining Narrative Craft
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Word balloons
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Thought balloons
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Words and images that denote sound simultaneously
Proportion
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Narrate story, provide background, indicate shifts in time
Onomatopoeic sound effects
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Characters’ thoughts
Captions
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Characters’ speech
Size of text and images to denote dominant characters or important
information
Composition
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Artist’s manner of organizing images and using size and shape to create
an overall effect
Invitations to Literacy Habits
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“In an era when literary texts and age-old literary
themes enter new forms every year—from films
to adventure games in arcades to hypertext—the
visual and verbal powers of comics may be one
of the most powerful and productive forms of
preparation and motivation available to invite
new readers into literacy habits.”
Shirley Brice Heath and Vikram Bhagat, “Reading Comics, the Invisible
Art,”Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the
Communicative and Visual Arts, (1997, 2005)
Invitation to Contribute to My
Learning
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If you would be willing to tell me . . .
 What
graphic novels do you teach, if any?
 What questions do you have?
 What objections do you have to graphic
novels?
 How could I contact you if I would like to know
more? (email?)
What graphic novels
will find a place in your
classrooms?