Why Graphic Novels Belong in Classrooms

From Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean

     As is practically always my way, I'm going to start off somewhere close to my mark before -eventually- getting to my mark.If you want to skip the preamble, read the bolded font paragraphs.
     There are many reasons which help to explain why watching something on TV or YouTube is chosen over reading. Among the more salient, I feel, is that watching is far less taxing on our focus than gathering meaning from long strings of words. Why try to wrestle with an author's words and conjure up a shared image of a field of wheat or heated argument between two characters, when moving images on a screen can quickly and easily do this for us?
     I get that.
     We all get that.
     And this is precisely the reason why graphic novels have a place in classrooms.
    
     I take great care to explain to my students how I believe graphic novels differ from TV and comic books.Comics are generally serialized and have no expected end. Comic book themes  tend to travel in similar circles -good beats bad, crime doesn't pay, and so forth. I inform my students that a graphic novel for the classroom is different from this, with all due respect to the noble efforts of Superman and Spider-Man.(* See my comics note below.)

     In class, I begin by harping on the second word, novel. Time is spent discussing the word novel, a surprisingly slippery word to pin down.  The general understanding we end up with is that a novel is a complete story which aims to deliver a thoughtful message and/or theme. A graphic novel is essentially just that, a novel. I show them several books we've read and point out that both graphic novels and novels have words of narration and dialogue. The graphic novel just happens to have a lot of carefully created art to go with it.  On the subject of graphics, we don't work from a definition so much as from some central questions: How does the artwork support the events or text? Why have these color tones been selected? Why has the artist broken down this scene into so many (or so few) panels? These work-in-progress definitions, genre attributes if you will, for the graphic novel form are important to our studies and discussions. Students can then put aside any misgivings or preconceived notions they hold about graphic novels and focus on reading for meaning -as well as enjoying some great stories.
     So, where's the support for graphic novels belonging in a classroom? Why, the next paragraph of course.

Harry Houdini: The Handcuff King

   
     Reading is a complex activity at any age. For young adults it's less about decoding the words and far more about making deeper meaning and connections; still no less complicated. As teachers, we begin to assume that because our students can decode and give us the literal information they read, we can toss them into the deep end of the Reading-For-Meaning Pool, offering little assistance. That end of the reading pool is oftentimes difficult to tred in for long, as the young mind get bogged down with challenges like unfamiliar vocabulary, following a flashback scene, following multiple characters, or hearing a character's tone. Sarcasm is and example of something tough to grasp in writing.
     With graphic novels, so many of the aforementioned difficulties are tempered. Like a movie, graphic novels are less taxing to one's focus. A story setting can be taken in visually and doesn't need to be built within the mind, the way character expressions are drawn can make a muttering tone easily understood, and multiple characters are distinguishable and effortlessly categorized. The net result is that young readers and their (we hope) helpful teachers can push students into the deep end of the reading comprehension pool for longer periods of time. Students can focus more on themes and symbolism because the art has removed so many of the other potentially dangerous pitfalls to understanding.
     Most recently, I've worked with a few groups to examine the graphic novel genre. We read Ghostopolis, Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean, and Harry Houdini: The Handcuff King. In each case, we were able focus our time on higher level concepts that might have proven far more difficult without the graphic element. Ghostopolis became the focus of how we determine author theme. We studied what the character problems were and how they were resolved. Symbolism also rose to the forefront of our discussions. With Amelia Earhart, we discussed parallel story structure. How the situation of one of the novel's young characters mirrored Earhart's. And with Houdini, the group worked at understanding characterization, a slice of life in the early 1900's, and what remains the same in our culture even 100 years later.
     Of course, all of these things can be and are tackled in traditionally thought of word-only novels, but there's always the risk of young minds getting sidetracked or lost in what we experienced readers consider the basics. Graphic novels help reduce the choppy waters to building meaning at let young readers look engage higher level thinking more easily. They belong in classrooms.

* NOTE I am a comic book enthusiast. So any remarks you see about them are not meant to be disparaging. I am also well aware that many graphic novels begin as comic books and that comics have matured in many ways from its humbler beginnings.

  

Ghostopolis: Good for 12 & 44-Year-Old Readers

                Ghostopolis has been floating around for a couple of years now and for some strange reason –strange because I very much enjoy graphic novels- I hadn’t turned my attention to it until recently. Even then, I trotted the book out for use with a group of my students thinking to use it as a bridge to more “serious” texts. Well, shame on me -especially, me! I’ve been a fan of words married to pictures, comics and graphic novels, my entire life and I fell into the prevailing bias so many seem to have for these authored works –that they’re something to pass the time, not worthy of heavier examination and reflection. Ghostopolis set me right. More importantly, it connected with many of my students, helping them go below mere surface reading.
                Ghostopolis is the story of Garth, a boy who has an incurable disease, and is accidentally pulled into the world of ghosts. There he meets his grandfather who looks almost as young as he does. His grandfather provides Garth with the lay of the land: how Ghostopolis came to be, why many ghosts sneak back to live among the living, how Vaugner (our villain) rose to power, and how Garth as a living being among the non-living has amazing abilities as long as he employs his imagination.
                While the plotted events in the novel are straightforward, the story message is less obviously given; and those students who opted to read Ghostopolis soon learned to become careful examiners of what was depicted and what was repeated. Ghostopolis, because of its illustrations, helped my developing readers examine the literary elements of theme and symbolism more readily. They were able to identify the repetition of loss in the story and eventually connect it to character redemption by the end. Characters clothed in pilot outfits were looked at much differently once they began to consider the symbolic qualities behind such uniforms. (These are people we trust to help us reach a destination.)
                While much of this may seem heady and dour, Doug Tennapel did a terrific job of weaving in plenty of humor. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if younger or less scrutinizing readers mistook the book for simple, comedic adventure. Better still, the novel left my students clamoring for more. Each wanted to know if there was a sequel. Is there a better complement for a book than having readers desiring to read more of it? I think not.