More Than Graphic Novels Are Students In Almost Any Comic .

SPECIAL TOPICMore ThanComic BooksBill Boerman-CornellEvery few days for the pastthree weeks, I have beengiving a small pile of graphicnovels to my friend Mary.She then gives them to oneof her students at the high schoolwhere she teaches. He devours themwithin a day or two and sends themback. Through Mary, I have sent thisstudent original literature, nonfictionhistory, biographies of mathematicians,popular fantasy, adaptations of adolescent novels, memoirs, and anythingelse I can think of. He loves some of it,likes some of it, and really doesn’t carefor some of it, but he reads all of it andalways asks for more.Graphic novels (book-length fictionor nonfiction narratives told using theconventions of a comic book) bringtogether text and image in a way thatseems to capture students’ imaginations.Right now, there is little more thananecdotal research about how graphicnovels can be used within specificmiddle school and high school disciplines. But as we wait for the research tocatch up, we can learn a great deal fromlooking closely at the graphic novelsthemselves to see how they might meetteachers’ and students’ needs.Why Use Graphic Novels?Some of the best artists and writersworking today are focused on thisnew and exciting format. Take a lookat offerings likeRapunzel’s Revenge byDean Hale, ShannonHale, and Nathan Hale(Bloomsbury, 2008);George O’Connor’sexcellent series onGreek mythology (FirstSecond, 2010); T-Minusby Jim Ottaviani, ZanderCannon, and Kevin Cannon(Alladin, 2009); Satchel Paige:Striking Out Jim Crow by JamesSturm and Richard Tommaso(Hyperion, 2007); and Logicomixby Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H.Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, andAnnie Di Donna (Bloomsbury, 2009)to see the potential of graphic novels toengage students in literature, culture,science and engineering, history, andmathematics.Because graphic novels use imagesand text closely integrated together,reading them builds within studentsthe same skills they need for readingwebsites and magazines. At the sametime, they may also help students learntraditional reading skills. Strong readersuse their imaginations to turn wordson the page into images in their minds.Graphic novels may offer students whoare still developing imaging skills a wayto build these skills by giving themsome images but requiring them toimagine what happens between panels.Finally, graphic novels can be aneffective way to engage students whoGraphic novels arerelevant to teachers andstudents in almost anycontent area.don’t yet know that they love thesubject you are teaching.Dumbing Down?Like any format for telling stories andpassing on information, graphic novelsinclude a range of reading levels. Thematerial can be as rigorous as a physicstextbook or as vapid as a tween movieadaptation.Often, the images can act as a wayof making difficult concepts or textsmore comprehensible. For example,Journey into Mohawk Country is thediary of Dutch explorer Harman Vanden Bogaert’s 1634 journey amongthe Mohawk people in what is nownorthern New York State and Ontario todetermine why the Mohawk preferredtrading with the French over the Dutch.Van den Bogaert is not exactly a prosestylist; his diary is matter-of-fact andoften dull. Consider this entry:ASCD /Boerman-Cornell.indd 73WWW.ASCD.ORG732/1/13 11:50 AM

When we, by my estimation, had coveredeleven miles, we came at one hour intothe cabin one half mile from the firstcastle [village]. No one was there butwomen. We would have continued on,but I could not move my feet because ofthe rough going. So we slept there. It wasvery cold, with a north wind. (O’Connor& Van den Bogaert, 2006)The graphic novel adaptation byGeorge O’Connor (First Second, 2006)includes all the original text of thediary, but the images provide contextthat make the text more engaging andinsightful. For example, one sequenceshows the American Indian guidedrawing open the hide covering the hutClearly, the explorers are violating somesort of cultural taboo. Their guide isembarrassed. Throughout the rest ofthe book, the Dutch explorers displaycultural insensitivity again and again,which may explain why the Mohawkare not interested in trading with theDutch. Extensive notes at the end ofthe graphic novel describe O’Connor’sresearch.Guiding Graphic Novel ReadingBefore students read a graphic novel,their teacher needs to introduce someof the basic conventions of such novels.These conventions might include theusual arrangement of panels from left toThe term graphic novelis a misnomer. Not allgraphic novels arenovels; many of them arenonfiction—biography,memoir, or straightinformational nonfiction.that the group has approached. Whenthe guide sees there are only women inthe hut, he replaces the hide, looking atthe Dutch explorers with an expressionthat clearly indicates that this is not agood place for them to stop. In the nextpanel, the Dutch talk while the guidelooks on with a stern expression. Thenext panel shows the explorers pointingto their tired feet, and the guide hashis head down and a hand covering hiseyes. The next panel shows Van denBogaert entering the women’s hut, hiseyes wide.The images give students the contextthey need to draw some conclusions.74right and top to bottom, as well as waysof navigating alternative panel arrangements; the conventions of speech andthought bubble borders (smooth equalsnormal speech, jagged indicates anexcited voice, square or boxy indicatesa mechanical sort of speech, and so on);and the shading of text boxes to indicatewhich character is narrating the story.New graphic novel readers needto learn to make predictions on thebasis of not only the text, but also theimages. For example, the facial expressions of a character in the presence ofanother may imply a not-yet-revealedanimosity or friendship, and an image ofa potential hazard may portend a laterplot turn.Teachers should read the graphicnovel they intend to teach several timesand observe how these conventionsare used. The teacher does not need tobecome an expert, however. In graphicnovel book clubs I have conductedwith students in 3rd grade throughmiddle school, I have been amazed athow students have noticed storytellingtechniques that I missed in five or sixreadings.While students read, the teachermight ask them to show how they reada page, using their finger to indicatewhere their eye is going to check panelflow. The teacher might also ask questions about particular images, just ashe or she might about the words in atext-only story: What is that character’sattitude here? How can you tell? Also,just like with text-only works, asking astudent to summarize the story will givethe teacher a clear idea of whether thestudent is following the narrative.Graphic Novelsin the Content AreasThe term graphic novel is a misnomer.Not all graphic novels are novels; manyof them are nonfiction—biography,memoir, or straight informational nonfiction. Teachers in almost any discipline can find graphic novels for use intheir classes.MathLogicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis,Christos H. Papadimitriou, AlecosPapadatos, and Annie Di Donna(Bloomsbury, 2009) and Suspended inLanguage by Jim Ottaviani and LelandPurvis (G.T. Labs, 2004) illustratethe lives of mathematicians BertrandRussell and Niels Bohr. T-Minus by JimOttaviani, Zander Cannon, and KevinCannon (Alladin, 2009) is an amazingnarrative of the United States’ and SovietUnion’s race to the moon in which theengineers and mathematicians are asEDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2013Boerman-Cornell.indd 742/1/13 11:50 AM

much the heroes as the astronauts.Besides telling fascinating mathrelated stories, graphic novels can alsomodel mathematical problem solving.In T-Minus, an American engineer usesgeometry to figure out that the Sovietshadn’t really linked up two spacecraft inorbit; they just used perspective to makeit seem that they had done so. BertrandRussell’s explanation in Logicomix ofhow a tautology can be logical but notreally convey any information couldbe useful in lessons on mathematicallogic. Some graphic novels also employcryptography. Andrew Donkin andGiovanni Rigano’s graphic novel adaptation of Artemis Fowl (Hyperion, 2007)by Eoin Colfer is one example.Perhaps the greatest potential forteaching math through graphic novelslies in their ability to illustrate mathematical concepts by combining imageswith equations and explanations ofthe concepts under consideration. Suspended in Language is particularly goodat this.Social StudiesWineburg (1991) has suggested thatmiddle school and high school studentsshould be able to do more than justmemorize dates and names of famouspeople; they should be able to contextualize, corroborate, and source different historical events and documents.Graphic novels can help students withall these skills, although some graphicnovels do this better than others(Boerman-Cornell, 2012).Graphic novels are most effective atcontextualization. Images can providequick social, economic, and culturalcontext through their depictions ofclothing, buildings, transportation, andinterpersonal interactions during different periods in history. They also canuse panel divisions, parallel images,and text boxes to make quick yet cleartransitions from place to place and timeto time. This allows a graphic novelcreator to juxtapose similar momentsfrom several different events separatedby time.For example, the graphic novel Still IRise by Roland Laird and Taneshia NashLaird (Norton, 1997) depicts AfricanAmerican slaves’ choice between servingin the loyalist army or the revolutionaryarmy during the American Revolutionas a fork between two dangerous paths.A similar image appears 20 pageslater, when African Americans in the1960s have the choice between joblesspoverty and joining the army to fight inVietnam. The image encourages readersto consider similarities between the twomoments.Graphic novels canbe an effective wayto engage studentswho don’t yet knowthey love the subjectyou are teaching.Graphic novels also offer opportunities for corroboration by gatheringmultiple eyewitness accounts into asingle narrative. Joe Sacco, in both SafeArea Goražde (Fantagraphics, 2002) andPalestine (Fantagraphics, 2001), usesmany eyewitness reports. Sacco givesus a close-up of the face of the personwhose account we are going to read,coupled with a text of his or her name.The panels that follow, whether 2 or 20,are part of that person’s account.Graphic novels can also assist withcorroboration by requiring readers tointeract with primary sources and otherdocuments that traditional historybooks usually place in sidebars andappendixes that seem incidental to themain text. The late Howard Zinn, inA People’s History of American Empire(coauthored by Mike Konopacki andPaul Buhle [Metropolitan Books, 2008])embeds documents, newspaper articles,maps, charts, timelines, and more in thenarrative.Although some graphic novels carefully list sources, most do not do as wellwith sourcing as they do with the othertwo elements. Students could considersources on their own by examiningmultiple stories from the same period.For example, Art Spiegelman’s Maus(Pantheon, 1986), which tells a story ofWorld War II from the perspective of aHolocaust survivor, could be contrastedwith Carla Jablonski and Leland Purvis’sResistance (First Second, 2010), whichcovers the same period from the pointof view of French resistance fighters.However, nothing about graphic novelsseems to make them any better suitedto comparing sources than a regular textversion of a story would be.ScienceDisciplinary thinking in science requiresstudents to understand processes, usethe scientific method, and pay particularattention to the value of observation.Graphic novel creator Jay Hosler focuseson observations of both small andlarge processes. His Clan Apis (ActiveSynapse, 2000) follows the life of aASCD /Boerman-Cornell.indd 75WWW.ASCD.ORG752/1/13 11:50 AM