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| Creepy collage from House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski |
Chapter five of Wilhelm's,
You Gotta Be the Book corresponds closely with our assigned reading,
American Born Chinese. In this chapter, Wilhelm explains how he came to realize the power that simple pictures have over many students' understanding of a text. After struggling with two students who flat out refused to read, he acknowledged their enjoyment of comic books and sketching and turned them around into a practical application. Wilhelm also goes on to list various art/picture related activities that a teacher can incorporate into their respective classrooms. Two of those activities, I have already experienced in my high school career. I found picture mapping and collage making to be both enjoyable and enlightening. With picture mapping, my mind was able to make more concrete connections to what I was reading/had already read. Collages were more on the enjoyable side rather than the educational. Wilhelm rectifies this when he suggests that students not only create a collage that represents their response to a piece of literature, but then use the collage further as a part of a presentation about their response to the literary selection.
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| Can't go wrong with The Walking Dead! |
On page 164 of You Gotta Be the Book, one of Wilhelm's students (Jeremy) reads Maus and Maus II and then exclaims, "Why don't they write more books like this?" I am in complete concurrence with this student. I absolutely love graphic novels, comic books, and manga. I was thrilled when I looked up the reading list for this class over the summer and discovered both a graphic novel that I've read and loved and one that I had not even heard of. If you know me personally, you know that I naturally went out and bought the one I hadn't experienced yet and read through the entire thing in a day. I do not understand why more graphic novels are not taught in the public school system and English classes. I believe that novels such as Maus, Persepolis, and American Born Chinese hold just as much literary merit as something like the The Grapes of Wrath or A Tale of Two Cities (if not more). A graphic novel has it's reader not only reading the text on the pages, but processing and interpreting what they are seeing in the pictures. As this post is titled, a picture is worth a thousand words. Graphic novels enable their readers to easily visualize characters and identify who is speaking and when. Actions are easier to understand as they are frequently presented in a frame by frame manner. Graphic novels should definitely become a more prominent member of all public high school required reading lists.
I realized the power that pictures have with reading that Wilhelm talked about in the book that I never thought about before. I like how you talked about doing picture mapping and collage making in school. These seem like fun ways to engage students in reading. I think that students may find connections with one another through doing this and that they could possibly learn how to make these types of strategies effective with their other classes to help them be successful. They may feel that they could make a picture map of terms they studied in science to help them or things along those lines. This will help them make connections to the real world which ultimately helps with comprehension of material!
ReplyDeleteI think that one reason that graphic novels aren’t really taught within the school system is because teachers are afraid to incorporate them. I think this is often because they never really learned how. I think that they are afraid of the reaction they might get from parents and others when they hear that they are going to be reading “comics”. I think just by looking at how many of us first reacted to this type of literature makes many hesitant about exploring this in the classroom. I think someone has to make that first step to make it lead to something major in helping our students!
I liked how you said that graphic novels hold as much literary merit (if not more) to other novels. I never would have considered this until actually exposing myself to this type of literature, but I do truly think that it involves much more critical thinking and thought to read a graphic novel. You have to consider both text and picture to pull the meaning out. You have to do more thinking and it is done in ways that you are not used to.
I was never introduced to graphic novels before this class and did not know how amazing they can be. I was one of the people who thought of the stereotypical "comic book kid" in school as a nerdy boy with his comic books in every class. Now that I have read a graphic novel for myself and met people like you and Shannon who have always enjoyed reading them, I see what I have been missing out on! I wish I had been given a graphic novel in middle school to see that literature can be more than The Scarlet Letter or a Shakespeare play.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you that many graphic novels have as much literary merit as the classic literature taught in the classroom. I fully intend to break away from the "norm" of the English teacher with only her classics and introduce graphic novels to my students. I feel that they would enjoy them and find a new way of reading literature. I would also like to pair graphic novels with classics to help the students better understand the similarities and the usefulness of reading the graphic novel.
I look forward to reading many more graphic novels in the future and hope to share many great graphic novels with my future students.
Just wondering... What got you into graphic novels?
ReplyDeleteI really like your use photographs in this blog. I felt that by looking at them, I already knew how you feel about graphic novels, things about what you like, and your overall enthusiasm towards reading. If I sat here I could probably write at least a thousand words to understand each one. Teaching tool...I think yes.
ReplyDeleteSarah- My first graphic novel was Maus and it was recommended to me by the husband of the family I nanny for. After I loved that, he quickly got me into the Walking Dead series (which is 67 some issues long, all of which I own and frequently reread)and then the Y: The Last Man series. I absolutely love graphic novels :D
ReplyDeleteI agree that pictures are worth a thousand words. You can tell so much by looking at them and you don't need words to describe it. I was not into graphic novels at all growing up, but I am liking them more and more going through this class because I have realized how they can be used in a class that is just struggling students. I really do want to introduce graphic novels into my classroom because they are different and fun and I think students will really enjoy them, like you!
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