favorites: graphic novels

I recently did a short presentation for the Sonoma State Summer Reading Academy- a two week literacy camp to develop confidence and joy in acts of reading and writing for elementary school students.  During graduate school I had the pleasure of teaching in the Summer Academy two summers in a row as part of my credits toward earning a MA degree in Reading and Language.  This year I was honored to be asked back as a presenter.   I decided to present on the use of graphic novels to teach Language Arts.  My professor and mentor asked me to write a little blurb about my favorite books.  After much thought, here's what I came up with:

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Although my all-time favorite song will likely never change, my favorite books do. 

They change, as I grow older. 

They change with my moods and phases.

They change during times of camaraderie.

They changed during times of solitude.

My favorite books change with experience.

My current top 3 are all graphic novels. 

The first two are fit for adults, or older young adults.  The topics are real, pertaining to the horrors of war, very graphic and often heartbreaking. The third book is an autobiographical account of a girl entering middle school who falls and knocks out her two front teeth.  What follows are fours years of dental drama woven into the trials of growing up and discovering her truest passions, and her truest friends.

1. Maus- by Art Spiegelman

2. Persepolis- by Marjane Satrapi

3. Smile- by Reina Telgemeier

Like any high-quality picture book, graphic novels aid in the construction of meaning with highly detailed graphic cues.  But comic book and graphic novels specialize in this method of reading instruction.  Each panel contains an illustration for virtually every sentence in the written text.  Readers have the chance to read the story in different ways supported by text rather than dependent on text to make meaning.  Fortuitously, graphic novels tend to appeal to young readers, so getting them into their hands is rarely a challenge.  Professional cartoonists, who are also great writers, created all of the artwork in these three graphic novel selections. 

The other thing my three selections have in common is their Autobiographical nature, which puts them into the category of non-fiction. It’s true that when I look at the books on my shelves and the stack on my nightstand, fiction outnumbers nonfiction.  But the following are also true: I’m an avid fan of the science program Radiolab; I read all sorts of blogs and online digests and I don’t mind waits in doctors’ offices as long as I can read People magazine.

All this qualifies me as a reader of nonfiction, though, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about what I do as a nonfiction reader until this year with so much talk about Common Core, and the shift toward nonfiction.   Next year I plan to explore more nonfiction with my sixth graders using graphic novels as a frequent medium.

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