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Using Graphic Novels and Video Essays to Critically Understand Socio-Political Events

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Using Graphic Novels and Video Essays to Critically Understand Socio-Political Events

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Ernest Morrell noted that critical English education should support students in developing "skills that allow them to create their own critical texts that can be used in the struggle for social justice" by drawing on the "everyday language and literacy practices of adolescents to make connections with academic literacies and to work toward empowered identity development and social transformation" (p. 313).

Morrell's conceptualization foregrounds the way I develop my de-tracked English I Honors course. Last year, I sought to expand the incorporation of graphic novels into my classroom. American Born Chinese was the premier text we read as a class for years, but reading a graphic novel was mostly siloed to the first few weeks of school. Inspired by the work of David Low (2017), I sought to strengthen the positioning of graphic novels as texts that can support the development of critical literacies.

I assembled a collection of graphic novels (see list at end) addressing socio-political events that I found many of my students were unaware of or had an incomplete view of. The socio-political events in the graphic novel selection span time and geography. However, I was still missing the second element of Morrell's writing-connecting students' literacy practices with academic content. Fortunately, a conversation with my friend and literacy professor Dr. Jeanne Dyches led me to consider how to make writing video essays part of my curriculum.

The goals of a unit on graphic novels began to enter focus:

Students deepen their understanding of major socio-political events by engaging in video essays and reading graphic novels.

Next students demonstrate their understanding of the major socio-political issues by creating their own video essays that synthesize ideas from the graphic novels and video essays.

Finally students craft thesis statements, curate images, and develop ideas with textual evidence in creating their own video essays.

In other words, they fulfill the mandates of the Common Core writing, reading, and speaking/listening standards while developing literacy practices that reflect the reality of our current digital landscape.

We started by refamiliarizing ourselves with the genres of graphic novels and video essays. I brought in several video essays from sources like Buzzfeed to use as a mentor text. We discussed how to identify the thesis statement and purpose of video essays without written text. The video essays students engage in provide contextualizing background knowledge about the socio-political event that is addressed in the graphic novels. Meanwhile, the graphic novels provide the human face and experience of the socio-political events.

It is my goal as a teacher to always foreground the experiences of humans in discussing any socio-political event.

I want students not to think of these socio-political events as a list of facts and dates, but rather as a narrative constructed of multiple people's experiences, as they try to make meaning around a shared event. Power dynamics and systemic oppression shape how individuals experience those events and whose stories are privileged and centered in the retelling of such events, which is why I selected graphic novels that speak against dominant narratives found in many classroom history books.

Students selected video essays to watch that aligned with the graphic novel they were reading. After collecting examples and making connections from across the texts, students outlined and recorded their own video essays, in which they articulated their understanding of the socio-political event being studied.

Although there are several ways to create video essays, it was easiest for my students to create Google Slides/PowerPoint presentations and use Screencastify to record themselves speaking over their presentation. Students' presentations required textual evidence from the graphic novel and video essays.

After watching and discussing video essays, students and I created guidelines for high-quality videos. Such guidelines included: engaging pictures, minimal written text on the presentations, and effective use of voice to emphasize key points.

Graphic novels and video essays are two texts that can be used to deepen students' understanding of major socio-political events. Songs, art, and film are other mediums that can be incorporated into the curriculum I outlined above. Regardless of the type(s) of texts, students are encouraged to consider how multiple types of writing construct our understanding of socio-political events.

Furthermore, students must consider the hierarchies of texts that schools perpetuate by adhering to only textbooks and written text, and how those hierarchies privilege certain narratives of socio-political events over other ones. The historical insight provided by the graphic novels listed are critical counters to what is published in many textbooks. Finally, in creating video essays, students construct their own understandings of socio-political events that can counter dominant, oppressive textbook narratives using digital literacy practices that are part of their daily lives.

Graphic Novel Titles

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld

Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White by Lila Quintero Weaver

Escape from Syria by Samya Kullab, Jackie Roche, and Mike Freiheit

Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale by Belle Yang

Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece

by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Vietnamerica: A Family's Journey by GB Tran

Works Cited

Low, D. E. (2017). Students contesting "colormuteness" through critical inquiries into comics. English Journal, 106(4), 19-28.

Morrell, E. (2005). Critical English education. English Education, 37(4), 312-321.

Cody Miller teaches ninth-grade English language arts at P. K. Yonge Developmental Research School, the University of Florida's affiliated K-12 laborator y school. He can be reached at cmiller@pky.ufl.edu or on Twitter @CodyMillerELA. He is also a PhD candidate in English education at the University of Florida.

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Using Graphic Novels and Video Essays to Critically Understand Socio-Political Events - NCTE

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Ernest Morrell noted that critical English education should support students in developing "skills that allow them to create their own critical texts that can be used in the struggle for social justice" by drawing on the "everyday language and literacy practices of adolescents to make connections with academic literacies and to work toward empowered identity development and social transformation" (p.

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Connecticut Digital Archive | Connect. Preserve. Share

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The Maurice Sendak Collection is on deposit at the University of Connecticut. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the Maurice Sendak Foundation. To obtain permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Wylie Agency by email at mail@wylieagency.com or telephone (212) 246-0069.

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I write "summer" in the headline here in spite of the fact that the temperature outside in the Evanston/Chicago area is hovering around the low 60s. And still onward we proceed!

It seems fitting that with the Newbery/Caldecott/Legacy Awards Banquet on the horizon this weekend in Washington D.C. that I should produce a list of some of the titles you might want to take a look at while on the conference floor. But before I begin, I would like to have a word with Canda.

Ahem.

Dear Canada,

Please export to America the following author/illustrators: Matthew Forsythe ( Pokko and the Drum) and Sydney Smith ( Small in the City).

While we do appreciate your lending us Christopher Paul Curtis and Jon Klassen (we'd totally send him back, but apparently he was lost in the mail, so I think that means we get to keep him now) we are perturbed by the fact that you keep producing talented creators that are unable to win Newberys and Caldecotts by dint of their whereabouts (i.e. not in the United States of America).

Also, if you could talk to Australia about passing on to us Caroline Magerl and Remy Lai, that would be awesome.

Most appreciatively,

Betsy Bird

Right. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's go about making predictions that will, in the end, only break our hearts when they turn out to be way off. And yet, there's is an off chance that one or two of these books really will make it to the finish line. Which ones? Let's see if you can figure it out . . .

2020 Caldecott Predictions
Bear Came Along by Richard T. Morris, ill. LeUyen Pham

I don't think librarians would consider themselves particularly superstitious folks, but try bringing up the possibility that an artist, who has been around for a while, might win a medal. You've never seen so much wood knocking, salt over the left shoulder throwing, lucky rabbit's foot carrying antics in all your livelong days. Now Ms. Pham has been around for a while. I always keep this little tally in my brain of the books a person should have won for already. Technically, she should have won a Caldecott for The Boy Who Loved Math by Deborah Heiligman, but if she wins for Bear Came Along instead I'd be perfectly fine with that. Now I am not always the best at understanding rudimentary principles of good book design (which may account for my past prediction failures). But from what little I've been able to absorb, this book is beautifully put together. There are wordless sequences, action, adventure, characters you love and identify with (Team Frog!), and then there's Morris's overall message, which isn't preachy or didactic in the least. Now where'd I put that salt shaker again
A Big Bed for Little Snow by Grace Lin

Sure. Last year Lin won a Caldecott Honor for A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Would it be too soon for her to win another medal all over again? Nope. In fact, and please don't quote me on this one, I do believe that this book is even better than Mooncake. Sacrilege to say, I know, but there it is.
Elvis is King! by Jonah Winter, ill. Red Nose Studio
I have a couple books on this list that I'm fairly certain can't win because the committee may not take them seriously enough. This is one of those. Models, in general, do not win illustration awards. They deserve to, but too often they're forgotten. For example, we all remember Yuyi Morales's magnificent from last year, but how many of us remember her model work on Tony Johnson's My Abuelita? It was amazing and while it did get a Pura Belpre Illustration Honor, I think the Caldecott committee should have shone a light on it as well. This year, Red Nose Studio presents us with his most complicated work yet. The sheer level of detail keeps you gasping. I love how scenes change from distant to close up, how he replicates movement, everything. Don't dismiss this one quite yet.
The Full House and the Empty House by LK James

Teeny tiny publisher. Debut author/illustrator. Picture book that feels like it should have some grand sweeping moral but, instead, lets you interpret everything on your own terms. This is one of those books that make me feel honored to be working, in some way, in the field of children's literature. It also makes me feel so grateful for the way in which Newbery and Caldecott Awards are chosen. Not every award is going to go to one of the big five publishers (remember ?). Maybe, just maybe, there's room for the little guy once in a while.
Going Down Home With Daddy by Kelly Starling Lyons, ill. Daniel Minter

I included this book in my Spring Prediction Edition earlier this year, but it wasn't until I reviewed the book that I realized why I'd done that. This is, far and away, Minter's best work to date. It flows from page turn to page turn. The emotions are real, the story is strong, and the chickens are awesome. That's right. You heard me. Best chickens in a picture book in 2019. Aw, yeah! I said it! Come at me!
Hey, Water! by Antoinette Portis

Talk about a slow burn. This one creeps up on you. It looks so simple on a first glance. Then, after a while, you realize what Portis is doing. Watch the focus of the book. How she zooms in and pulls back, and does it so effortlessly that you'd be forgiven for missing it. The book can be read by older readers (if you do the full text) or younger (if you just read the large font-ed definitions). I mean, I've loved Portis's art for years, but now that she's paired with Neal Porter I think she's been given a form and a direction that's truly amazing.
My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero, ill. Zeke Peña

There are two books that my library's 101 Great Books for Kids Committee cannot stop talking about and one of them is this Quinero/Peña pairing (the other book is Magic Ramen, but I'll talk about that some other day). There are a lot of remarkable elements to this book, but let's just look at it as a whole. The plot is just a girl zooming around with her father on his motorcycle. That's it. And yet, in the nooks and crannies of that rote description, you are sucked into an entire world. Peña has a gift for making a setting real. And the setting is, in a way, a prominent character in this book. Read it several times to see what you couldn't on a first go.
A Stone Sat Still by Brenden Wenzel

It's the book you've been waiting for all these years. At long last Wenzel has produces a companion picture book to his Caldecott Honor winner They All Saw a Cat. In spite of his previous win I am not inclined to recommend books from award winners. I may move them up in my To Be Read pile a little faster, but if I don't like what an author or illustrator is doing, no amount of shiny medals in their roster is going to convince me to recommend their book. This book? I recommend it wholeheartedly. It has some surface similarities to Cat but the art is truly out of this world. Best of all, it manages to work in a subtle ecological theme to the whole endeavor as well. This is a book that could easily win the Caldecott Gold and I wouldn't even blink. It's just that strong.
The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander, ill. Kadir Nelson

Just because Kadir is overdue for a Caldecott Award (he's won two Honors for Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroadand Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom) that doesn't mean a thing. Committees cannot consider whether an artist deserves an award based on their own personal merit. Everything comes down to the book in hand. Now when the committee considers this book they're going to sit down and have a long conversation about whether or not the images interact with the text adequately. My suspicion is that it may Honor (isn't it nice that the publisher put that circle on the cover - might as well just write in Please Place Award Sticker Here on it) in the end. I certainly hope it gets that much, at least. It's extraordinary.
Vroom! by Barbara McClintock

That's right. There's more than girl traveling at high speeds on the list today. I liken this particular book to Where the Wild Things Are, but only if Max had ditched his little boat so as to acquire a sleek, silver roadster. With minimal text, McClintock conjures up whole worlds here. I truly believe she should have gotten some recognition last year for Nothing Stopped Sophie, but math books rarely fare well. This book showcases McClintock's particular talents to a fine degree. Also, this book is ideal for the young fry. Limited words and fine tuned art.
Who Wet My Pants? by Bob Shea, ill. Zachariah Ohora

What? WHAT? You don't think it has a chance or something?
Why? by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

It's not a prediction list until you can work in at least one Laura Vaccaro Seeger book. Eschewing die-cuts and single word text, this book looks like something for your average fluffy bunny lover. But inside this is lovely, thought provoking, deeply touching tale about the discoveries of the young rabbit and the bear that will have to leave him (for hibernation) soon.

2020 Newbery Predictions
Eventown by Corey-Ann Haydu

Sometimes I worry that if I review or discuss a book too early in the year, it could end up forgotten in a couple months time. Happily, these prediction posts get to keep such books just a bit in the limelight after their release. I was impressed by Haydu's work on this story. Then again, I've a weakness for books about group-think and seeming perfection. This may well be the best book club book for 9-12 year olds I've seen so far.
A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée

What is the mark of a book that one might call "distinguished" and Newbery-worthy? Sometimes I'd the sweeping language. Sometimes it's the emotional toil it takes on the reader. But sometimes, if you are lucky, you might debate someone who believes that the more a book unpacks complex ideas in a straightforward manner (without talking down to the young reader) the more likely it is to win awards. Ramée's book is a slow burn. It starts off like any other middle grade novel and then, slowly over the course of the plot, it morphs into a book about taking personal responsibility, as a child, for social change in the 21st century. I may have to reread it just to figure out how the author managed to turn complex ideas into kid friendly ones. Remarkable.
The Line Tender by Kate Allen

Sometimes folks will mutter that a certain type of book is "Newbery bait". Like its mere prose is catnip to adults on committees. So yes, this is a book about grief and disaster. But the healing felt real, and I'm giving the book extra points for selecting this title ("The Line Tender") in particular. It's one I can always remember.
New Kid by Jerry Craft

I am by no means the first person to point out that this book would make for a brilliant book club title. I've come around to the notion of giving Newberys to comics more often. There are many other things that make librarians (even on commitees) happy. This is one of those very rare books starring a black boy without superpowers that's also a comic. Go on! Try to find a kid, any kid, who doesn't relate to it.
Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

I almost never include books on this list that I haven't read. That said, the buzz surrounding this particular book is so strong that I have succumbed. I include it here today because it is probably the top verse novel being considered for the Newbery this year. Certainly it wins in the Most Newberyish Sounding Title challenge. I'll be reading it soon, but I just wanted to get it onto your radar as well.
Queen of the Sea by Dylan Meconis

More comics! More, I say! And again, I would point out to you that Meconis does a magnificent job explaining everything you need to know about the characters. Our heroine befriends a captive woman on an island where every woman is a prisoner (whether she wants to be or not). I've mentioned before the degree to which I was blown away by this book, so I just wanted to bring it up here. Alternative history at its finest.
Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker

Let the record show that the likelihood of this book winning a Newbery is slim. That said, A Tale Dark and Grimm didn't win any Newberys either when it came out and it was similarly smart. For my part, I was entranced by this book from page one onward. It's just two little foxes confronting every fear you could imagine. It's terrifying and delicious. I hope the committee at least gives it a read.
Spy Runner by Eugene Yelchin

Because once in a great while, a weird weird book deserves to win.

That's all I have on my end. What have you liked?

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I write "summer" in the headline here in spite of the fact that the temperature outside in the Evanston/Chicago area is hovering around the low 60s. And still onward we proceed! It seems fitting that with the Newbery/Caldecott/Legacy Awards Banquet on the horizon this weekend in Washington D.C.

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Aztec empire

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AZTEC EMPIRE is a new graphic novel series written by Paul Guinan and illustrated by David Hahn. It recounts the story of how Hernando Cortés and 500 Spanish mercenaries managed to conquer the Aztec civilization, a unique tale in human history.

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An introduction to graphic novels: what they are, a brief history, how to develop a collection, and facing challenges.

This ongoing feature from CBLDF provides specific resources for librarians and educators who may need to justify and defend the inclusion of the book in library and classroom collections. Each column provides specific information about a book, including a summary of challenges it has faced, reviews, awards and other recognitions, and additional CBLDF resources that educators and librarians can provide to their administrators when they want to add the book to their collections.

Inspire kids to become lifelong readers with Panel Power, a CBLDF resource that provides an introduction to comics and background on why they're good for kids! A tool for battling misconceptions about the format and filled with information about the benefits of comics, activities, and reading recommendations for engaging kids with comics, Panel Power is an essential resource for retailers, educators, librarians, and parents! Panel Power features all new cover artwork by Matthew Loux ( SideScrollers, The Time Museum). Read Panel Power below and at comiXology, or pick up a copy at comic book stores around the country! Bundles are also available in the CBLDF Rewards Zone.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is proud to offer Raising a Reader! How Comics & Graphic Novels Can Help Your Kids Love To Read!, a resource for parents and educators about the learning benefits of comics! This resource is written by Dr. Meryl Jaffe, with an introduction by three-time Newbery Award honoree Jennifer L. Holm ( Babymouse, Squish) and art by Eisner Award winner Raina Telgemeier ( Smile, Drama) and Eisner Award nominee Matthew Holm ( Babymouse, Squish). Graphic design was handled by Brooklyn-based designer David Herman. Raising A Reader! was made possible by a grant from the Gaiman Foundation.

Using Graphic Novels in Education is an ongoing feature from CBLDF that is designed to allay confusion around the content of graphic novels and to help parents and teachers raise readers. In this column, we examine graphic novels, including those that have been targeted by censors, and provide teaching and discussion suggestions for the use of such books in classrooms.

Given their visual nature, comics are easy targets for would-be censors. CBLDF Discussion Guides are tools that can be used to lead conversations about challenged graphic novels and to help allay misconceptions about comics. CBLDF Discussion Guides can be used by librarians, educators, retailers, or anyone who wants to lead a conversation about a graphic novel.

The CBLDF Banned Books Week Handbook is a free resource that gives you the scoop about what comics are banned, how to report and fight censorship, and how to make a celebration of Banned Books Week in your community! CBLDF's Banned Books Week Handbook is an essential tool to assist librarians, educators, and retailers in planning their Banned Books Week celebrations, while also being a vital reference to help readers everywhere fight censorship.

Learn how to start and make the most of book clubs for comics and graphic novels with the Comic Book Club Handbook, a resource produced by Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in collaboration with Comic-Con International! Designed for librarians, retailers, and individuals alike, the Comic Book Club Handbook goes inside the how's and why's of creating a graphic novel book club. The handbook provides proven strategies for getting started, selecting books, engaging your community, managing discussions, and much more, including a helpful table of books to get you started!

The Manga Book Club Handbook is invaluable resource, created in partnership with VIZ Media, that will help you start and make the most of book clubs for manga! The Manga Book Club Handbook lays out the basics of manga and provides the tools you need to start a book club for manga, including suggested readings to get you started!

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An introduction to graphic novels: what they are, a brief history, how to develop a collection, and facing challenges. This ongoing feature from CBLDF provides specific resources for librarians and educators who may need to justify and defend the inclusion of the book in library and classroom collections.

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Search results from Digital Collections, Cartoons (Commentary)

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Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum

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Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 23, 2019 Ollie Harrington Collection Acquired by Ohio State's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum has acquired a rare collection of materials by the late Oliver "Ollie" Harrington. Arriving from Germany, Ollie Harrington's collection includes original published cartoons, along with roughs, sketchbooks [Read More...]

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The decade beginning with the late 1930s is known as the Golden Age of comic books. Many of the superheroes from today's blockbuster franchises, including Batman, Superman, and Captain America, emerged during this period, and the industry grew into a commercial powerhouse. Following a sales dip during the early 1950s that marked the end of the Golden Age, the Silver Age began (circa 1956) and lasted for some fifteen years.

During this era, superhero comic books initially lost steam - letting stories of horror, romance, and crime grow in popularity - before emerging triumphantly once more with characters like Spider-Man and The Flash. While copyright remains very much in effect for such titles, a slew of comic books from the same period, many of which have narrowly missed attaining such iconic status, are available online at Comic Book Plus.

Similar to the Digital Comic Museum, which we wrote about last week, Comic Book Plus contains a near inexhaustible quantity of Golden and Silver Age comic books. The collection's timespan ranges from the late 1930s through to the early 1960s, and includes many thousands of comic books in the Superhero, Sci-Fi, and Horror genres.

Those hankering for something a little more unusual will also be in luck. Desperate to read about a hospital romance? Why not give Linda Lark Student Nurse a read in the Medical Love category? Sick of landlubbers hogging all the attention in comic books? Head to the Water/Boats section, where you can read all about Davy Jones, the navy lieutenant who lives in Atlantis and does battle with the evil Dr. Fang, in Undersea Agent.

Comic Book Plus also has a terrific selection of foreign comic books, including impressive collections in German, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. You can see Super Ho

Finally, the site contains a number of U.S. government educational pamphlets, including Bert The Turtle Says Duck And Cover, a guide to surviving atomic bomb blasts.

For further reading, head on over to Comic Book Plus. You can preview all materials without registration. But you will need to register (for free) if you want to download the various comic books.

H/T to Yocitrus for making us aware of this archive.
Ilia Blinderman is a Montreal-based culture and science writer. Follow him at Related Content: Download 15,000+ Free Golden Age Comics from the Digital Comic Museum Free Comic Books Turn Kids Onto Physics: Start with the Adventures of Nikola Tesla Read Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story: The Influential 1957 Civil Rights Comic Book The Pulp Fiction Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Stories That Entertained a Generation of Readers (1896-1946) @iliablinderman, or read more of his writing at the Huffington Post.

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Download Over 22,000 Golden & Silver Age Comic Books from the Comic Book Plus Archive

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The decade beginning with the late 1930s is known as the Golden Age of comic books. Many of the superheroes from today's blockbuster franchises, including Batman, Superman, and Captain America, emerged during this period, and the industry grew into a commercial powerhouse.

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Digital Comic Museum - Free Public Domain Books

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The best site for downloading FREE public domain Golden Age comic books. Free file downloads, online comic viewer, plus a helpful, knowledgeable community.

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Sponsored by Chill Expeditions and Kiddom

Have you heard the whispers about one-pagers in the online teacher hallways? The concept of a one-pager, in which students share their most important takeaways on a single piece of blank paper, has really taken off recently.

The one-pagers I see on Instagram draw me in like a slice of double chocolate mousse cake. The artistry students bring to representing their texts on a single piece of paper, blending images and ideas in creative color, is almost hypnotizing for me. Perhaps you've had the same experience.

But it's the very beauty of the models that get posted that can drive students and teachers away from the one-pager activity. Sure, it's great for super artistic students, we tend to think, but what about everyone else?

Turns out it CAN be great for everyone. As long as you know how to structure it.

What Is a One-Pager?

Let's backtrack a bit and talk more about what a one-pager is. It's pretty simple, really. Students take what they've learned-from a history textbook, a novel, a poem, a podcast, a Ted Talk, a guest speaker, a film-and put the highlights onto a single piece of paper. AVID first developed this strategy, but now it's widely used in and out of AVID classrooms.

But why is this seemingly simple assignment so powerful?

As students create one-pagers, the information they put down becomes more memorable to them as they mix images and information. According to Allan Paivio's dual coding theory, the brain has two ways of processing: the visual and the verbal. The combination of the two leads to the most powerful results. Students will remember more when they've mixed language and imagery.

Plus, one-pagers provide variety, a way for them to share what they've learned that goes beyond the usual written options. Students tend to surprise themselves with what they come up with, and their work makes for powerful displays of learning. Plus, they're fun to make. Let's not pretend that doesn't matter.

So, assuming you're sold on trying this out, you're probably wondering what exactly goes into a one-pager?

Students might include quotations, ideas, images, analysis, key names and dates, and more. They might use their one-pagers to make connections to their own lives, to art or films, to pop culture, to what they're learning in their other classes. They might even do it all. You'd be amazed at how much can fit on a single piece of paper.

Many teachers create lists of what students should put inside their one-pagers. Knowing they need two quotations, several symbolic images, one key theme, etc., helps guide students in their work.

The Art Problem

When creating one-pagers, artistic students tend to feature more sketches, doodles, icons and lettering. Students wary of art tend to feature more text, and can be reluctant to engage with the visual part of the assignment at all.

It was this issue-the issue of the art-haters-that first drew me into one-pagers two years ago. I had seen some stunning one-pagers posted in my Facebook group, Creative High School English. But the comments that followed were always the same. "That's amazing work! But so many of my students don't like art...."

Those comments struck a chord with me. For years I had dealt with comments from some of my own students about their distaste for artistic materials when I would introduce creative projects. No matter how much I explained that it was the intention behind their choices that mattered, I always got some pushback if there were any artistic elements involved in a project.

Was there a way to tweak the one-pager assignment so every student would feel confident in their success?

Another problem was one of overall design: Though they knew they needed to hit all the requirements their teachers listed, students still seemed to be overwhelmed by that huge blank page. What should go where? Did colored pencils really have to be involved?

A Simple Solution: Templates

As I thought about the problem, I wondered if students would feel less overwhelmed if they knew what needed to go where. If the quotations had to be in the middle, the themes in the upper left, the images across the bottom, etc. I began to play around with the shapes tool in PowerPoint, creating different one-pager templates.

Then I began shaping my requirements, correlating each element with a space on the paper. Maybe the border could be the key quotations. The center would feature an important symbol. The themes could go in circles around the center. I developed a bunch of different templates for varied ways to respond to novels. Then I tried podcasts. Films. Poetry.

As I shared these templates with other teachers, I kept getting the same feedback: "It's working!"

That little bit of creative constraint actually frees students to use their imagination to represent what they have learned on the page without fear. They know what they need to put down, and where, but they are also free to expand and add to the template. To choose their own colors. To bring out what is most important to them through their creativity and artistry. And those super artistic students? They can just flip the template over and use the blank page on the back.

Beyond Novels

There are so many ways to integrate this creative strategy into your classroom. While one-pagers lend themselves beautifully to final assessments after reading independent novels, literature circle selections, or whole class novels, that's really just the beginning.

You can use them to get to know students better, as with a name tent or "about me" one-pager at the beginning of the year. One school used templates to have every student create a one-pager about their own lives, collecting them all into hallway displays as part of a project they called "Tell your Story."

You can also use them to help students focus in on the most important information in nonfiction articles and books. One EFL teacher in Croatia used the templates to have students share key takeaways from articles they read about social media. Not only did students have to analyze the text deeply to figure out what was most important, but the dual-coding theory suggests the process of creating the one-pagers will help them remember the information better.

Another great use for one-pagers is to keep students focused while absorbing media. When students are watching a film, listening to a podcast, or even attending an assembly with a guest speaker, they can be creating one-pagers as they listen, a kind of formalized version of sketchnotes.

Simple Steps for One-Pager Success

Whenever you're considering your options for assessment, throw one-pagers into the mix. The steps below should help you in creating an assignment for which every student has a roadmap to success.

1. Choose the elements you want your students to put onto their one-pagers. For example, quotations, key themes, literary elements, discussion of style, important characters or dates, connections to other disciplines, connections to their lives, connections to modern culture.

2. Create a layout using the shapes tool in PowerPoint or something similar (or grab a free set of templates here or here).

3. Connect your instructions to your layout. Make it clear which elements should go in which area of your template.

4. Create a simple rubric with the key categories you want your students to succeed with. With literary one-pagers, I use "Textual Analysis," "Required Elements," and "Thoroughness."

5. As you introduce the assignment, show students some examples of one-pagers to give them a sense for how they might proceed.

6. Give students time to work on their one-pagers in class so they can ask you questions. Consider providing some artistic materials if you can, or inviting students to bring them in. You can always let them complete the work at home if necessary.

7. Do a gallery walk of the one-pagers before you collect them, or have them present to each other in small groups. The students will learn a lot from seeing each other's representations.

8. Create a display after you grade the one-pagers with your rubric.

You can find more of Betsy's great ideas on her website, Spark Creativity.

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A Simple Trick for Success with One-Pagers

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These visual tools allow students to synthesize learning, but some kids don't think they're talented enough to make them. A bit of creative constraint helps.

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Teaching for Change carefully selects the best multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators.

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Grades

5 - 9

Lesson Plan Type

Standard Lesson

Estimated Time

Seven 50-minute sessions

Lesson Author

Publisher

Student Objectives Session One Session Two Session Three Session Four Session Five Session Six Session Seven Extensions Student Assessment/Reflections
STUDENT OBJECTIVES

Students will:

focus on illustrations within a book to help spark their imagination and ideas for creative writing.

develop their creative writing skills to plan, draft, edit, and write a final version of a mystery.

present their mystery to other students in the class for feedback and discussion.

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Session One
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1. Introduce students to the idea of mystery and have a class discussion about mysteries that your students have read, written, or tried to solve.

2. Explain to students that today they'll be learning about The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and trying to solve the mysteries within the book.

3. Begin reading the book aloud to your students, beginning with the Introduction. After finishing the Introduction, read page-by-page through the book, pausing to show the pictures on each page and reading the title and caption that go with each image. You may choose to display large, poster-size images from the book, which are available in the portfolio edition of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.

4. Allow students to comment about each picture and caption as you read the book aloud to help spark their imagination for the writing they will be doing.

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Session Two
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1. Explain to students that their job as detectives is to unravel the mystery from one of the pictures in this story. They must write a creative mystery that goes with an image of their choosing from the book.

2. Tell students that once their stories are written, they will be read aloud to the class and the other students will be responsible for figuring out which image from the book their story represents.

3. To prepare for writing, introduce students to the Mystery Cube student interactive. This tool will be used to help students develop outlines for their own mystery stories.

4. Complete a Mystery Cube as a class to familiarize students with the tool and what is expected of them. Allow the class to choose one of the images in the book (and the caption that goes with it) for which to create the class Mystery Cube.

5. Allow time for students to peruse the images in the book and/or the larger portfolio images to read the captions and decide on which image they'd like to write about. After students have decided on an image to write about, they should begin brainstorming ideas for their story and using the Mystery Cube Planning Sheet to flesh out their ideas. They will use this information to create their Mystery Cube in the next session.

6. If the Mystery Cube Planning Sheet is not completed during the time allowed, it needs to be finished out of class in preparation for the next session.

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Session Three
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1. Take students to the library or computer lab and allow time for them to create their own Mystery Cube based on one of the stories from the book. Make sure students have their Mystery Cube Planning Sheet from the previous session to help guide them. If computer access is not readily available, you could print out the cube (prior to this session) and provide each student with a paper copy on which to write.

2. Remind students to print their Mystery Cube when they are finished. This interactive is not able to be saved on the computer.

3. Allow time for students to assemble their Mystery Cube. These will be used in the next session to help guide students as they begin their story writing.

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Session Four
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1. Before starting the writing process, share the Mystery Writing Rubric with students and discuss how it will be used to assess their writing. Using the class Mystery Cube as a guide, write a short mystery as a class. This can be done on a computer (to be projected onto a screen), or written directly on an overhead projector.

2. To show the how the students will be graded on their own mysteries, use the Mystery Writing Rubric to grade the rough draft that the class created together. Go through each section step by step and ask for/allow student input on what the score should be and why.

3. Students should now understand what is expected of them for this writing assignment. They will begin writing their own mystery in the next session.

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Session Five

1. Students may begin writing their own mystery story. They should use their Mystery Cube and the Mystery Writing Rubric for guidance as they write.

2. Once students are done with their first draft of their story, they may begin self-editing and peer-editing. They may use the Editing Checklist for Self- and Peer Editing to assist them and a partner when they are ready to edit.

Session Six

1. Allow students to finish their self-editing and peer-editing from the previous session, using the Editing Checklist for Self- and Peer Editing. After their stories have been edited by themselves and a peer, students may begin writing their final draft of their mystery story.

2. Their final draft should be completed prior to the next session. When students have completed their final draft, they should turn in their rough draft, completed Editing Checklist for Self- and Peer Editing, and their final draft for the teacher to check for completion of all of the steps. Return each student's story to him/her before the next session begins.

Session Seven

1. Display the images from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick in front of the class if you have poster-size images, or display one or more copies of the book.

2. Organize a class read-aloud where each student is given the opportunity to read his/her story aloud to the rest of the class. Allow the other students in the class time to discuss/comment on each story and decide which image/caption from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick it belongs to.

3. Use the Mystery Writing Rubric to assess students' creative stories and attention to detail.

EXTENSIONS

Have students create their own Stapleless Book that is full of mysterious images and corresponding captions. Students could then write stories to go with these images and captions, much as they did in the lesson.

Around Halloween time, have a classroom spook-session! Invite other students and family members to come to your classroom for read alouds of the students' mysteries. Try reading these stories in the dark with only a flashlight and decorating your classroom like a haunted house!

Have students submit their stories to the Houghton Mifflin's Harris Burdick Book Site. New stories are posted each month, and periodically writers are selected at random to receive books autographed by Chris Van Allsburg and other Burdick-inspired items.

STUDENT ASSESSMENT/REFLECTIONS

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The Mysteries of Harris Burdick: Using Illustrations to Guide Writing - ReadWriteThink

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Mysteries are a great way to hook students into writing about fictional happenings. In this lesson, students engage themselves in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by examining the illustrations in the book and choosing one for which to create a Mystery Cube and then a creative writing piece.

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About · Webcomics, Print, and Digital Culture

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This is the shell site for the exhibition of work from an English 1102 first year writing course researching webcomics. Collections explore particular sub themes related to the subject.

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LibGuides: Mock Awards Program: 2019 Mock Caldecott

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Run through the Curriculum Resource Center, this is a program that focuses on attempting to guess what books will win coveted literary prizes awarded by the American Library Association. Guide for the Mock Caldecott

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Resources For Creating And Using Graphic Novels In Your Classroom

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Resources For Creating And Using Graphic Novels In Your Classroom

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Teaching Guides (some free, some paid)- Includes March, Lumberjanes (both free) & more

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Teaching Guides (some free, some paid)- Includes March, Lumberjanes (both free) & more

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Graphic Novel Teaching Guides | Pop Culture Classroom

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© Copyright Denver Pop Culture Con | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy Website Design and Digital Marketing Services Provided by Denver Brandworks in Partnership with KDesign Original Artwork and Graphic Design by Matt Strackbein

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Fantastic Characters: Analyzing and Creating Superheroes and Villains

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Fantastic Characters: Analyzing and Creating Superheroes and Villains

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Fantastic Characters: Analyzing and Creating Superheroes and Villains - ReadWriteThink

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Students analyze characterization by creating their own superheroes or super-villains, complete with related gadgets and settings.

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ReadWriteThink couldn't publish all of this great content without literacy experts to write and review for us. If you've got lessons plans, videos, activities, or other ideas you'd like to contribute, we'd love to hear from you.

Find the latest in professional publications, learn new techniques and strategies, and find out how you can connect with other literacy professionals.

Teacher Resources by Grade

More

Home › Classroom Resources › Lesson Plans

Lesson Plan

Grades

9 - 12

Lesson Plan Type

Standard Lesson

Estimated Time

Two 50-minute sessions

Lesson Author

Publisher

Featured Resources From Theory to Practice
OVERVIEW

Certain kinds of texts ask for both descriptive and instructional writing: comic book scripting requires the writer to give the artist detailed, descriptive instructions while also crafting exciting dialogue and otherwise rich language. In this lesson, students encounter an authentic writing experience designed to get them thinking about their choices as writers and how they can best get their mental images out of their head and on the page. After exploring how comic books are made and learning terms and techniques associated with the genre, students write their own comic book scripts. They then pass their script to another student, who draws the script as close to form as possible based on the information the writer provided.

Although students interact with story elements such as plot, character, and setting as well as with the writing process in brainstorming and drafting, the major focus of this activity is on revision.
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FEATURED RESOURCES

Comic Book Primer: This handouts gives an overview of the roles involved in creating a comic book, as well as the parts of a comic book.

Comic Book Scripting Techniques: This handout offers detailed directions and examples of how a comic book is scripted.
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Comic Vocabulary Interactive: This online tool offers illustrated definitions of various vocabulary terms associated with the comic book genre.
Further Reading
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Moffet says of sensory writing that "Whatever the material, it must already appeal to them [students]" (32). Comics are very popular with students, especially the various Manga series. Moffet recognizes scripting as a "flexible learning means that can very effectively teach many aspects of writing and discourse-more than teachers yet appreciate" (46). Teacher still need help recognizing the educational value of comics as well, so this activity can help educate every member of the classroom. Most comics today are produced via the DC Comics-style or "full script" style, where a writer completes a full script and then passes the work along to the visual artists. As well, Moffet asserts that "Practical tryouts remain for all scripts the best entrance into discussion and revision" (54), so we have a formula for an authentic writing activity that really packs a punch. Pow!
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Moffet, James. 1992. Active Voice. (2nd ed.) Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Heinemann.

Carter, James Bucky, ed. Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2007. Print.

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The Comic Book Show and Tell - ReadWriteThink

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ReadWriteThink couldn't publish all of this great content without literacy experts to write and review for us. If you've got lessons plans, videos, activities, or other ideas you'd like to contribute, we'd love to hear from you. Find the latest in professional publications, learn new techniques and strategies, and find out how you can connect with other literacy professionals.

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How to read a picture book, the Caldecott edition

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How to read a picture book, the Caldecott edition

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1. Look at the cover. Feel the cover. Imagine the sticker.

2. Take the paper jacket off and check out the inside cover. I am sure there is a word for this part of the book, but I only have my non-librarian training to fall back on. Note whether the inside cover is is different from the paper jacket or the same. (I am looking at Frog Song right now, and the enormous frog on the inside cover made me burst out laughing. Such a contrast from the serious red jacket frog.)

3. Now, examine the end pages. Those are the pages that are glued onto the hard cover. Sometimes the endpapers are illustrated or decorated, sometimes they are simply solid heavy paper. Note that. Are the back endpapers the same as the front? Do the choices make sense? Is anything important going to be covered when the book is processed in the library? (If so, this book is in Serious Jeopardy. A moment of silence for one of my favorites during MY year.)

4. Title page is usually next for me. Decorated? Plain? I am never sure who decides on endpapers and title page design, but these are important decisions. If it's dull, I take note. Since the title page often has a lot of white space, this is when I usually notice if the paper choice works for the book.

5. Read the book all the way through without reading the words. I know. But this has to be essentially a visual experience. Does it hold up with no words? (This is NOT to say the words don't matter, it's just important - at least to me - to see how the book works without words.) LOOK AT THE PICTURES VERY SLOWLY. This was the hardest part for me when I started reading and evaluating picture books. You just don't want to miss any detail. Read from left to right, paying very close attention to the page turns. Pay attention to white space and pacing.

6. Read the book with the words. Do the pictures play well with the words? Do the illustrations extend the text? How does the illustrator tell her story? (I know, I know, most Caldecott winners are men, but maybe the feminine pronoun will subliminally influence the committee.) How does line, color, texture, white space, etc. tell the story? Is the art consistent from page to page? Always notice the page turns.

7. Go back and check every single gutter. The Caldecott committee members take a pinky swear to examine every damn one of them. Does the art match up across the gutter? Is a main character sliced in half by one? If something "gets lost in the gutter," murmurs of disappointment will cause the chair to sigh deeply. The nominator of the book might wipe away a tear.

8. Caldecott committee members get seven nominations each. That's all. (Look at our fun and fabulous preliminary list. Only seven could remain for our mythical committee member when December rolls around.) So, for a book to move forward in an individual committee member's mind, it has to "beat out" all the others that have been submitted and suggested. So, things get serious at step 8. It's here that a reader has to look at that part of the criteria that talks about things that detract from the illustrations: "Such other components might include the written text, the overall design of the book, etc." I refer you to my rant last year.

9. At this point, the initial reading is over and the real fun begins.

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How to read a picture book, the Caldecott edition

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1. Look at the cover. Feel the cover. Imagine the sticker. 2. Take the paper jacket off and check out the inside cover. I am sure there is a word for this part of the book, but I only have my non-librarian training to fall back on.

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I am a historian and, a few years ago, I collaborated with the artist Liz Clarke to produce a history in comic-book form. Together, we created Abina and the Important Men (2012), a graphic history of a 19th-century court case in colonial West Africa. Dozens of graphic histories have been produced in English since then. They showcase both the particular interpretive and communicative advantages of the genre, and the work that remains to grasp those opportunities.

Recently, a skeptical colleague gleefully shared an American comedian's scathing witticism that only a country that thinks comic books are important could have elected Donald Trump. The opinion that comics dumb down our discourse is one I've heard before. It's not all that surprising, really, given the resistance that faced documentary films and digital data visualization when they were first presented as ways to interpret the past. But the value of historical comics has already been affirmed in other parts of the world.

Shigeru Mizuki's series Showa (1988-89) on Japan's 20th-century history and his manga memoir Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths (1973), which details his experience in the Japanese army, are practically canonical in that country. Jacques Tardi is seen as something of a laureate in France for his visceral account of civilization turned to savagery during the First World War in It Was a War of the Trenches (1993). And Art Spiegelman's Maus (1991), a reflection on the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust, had a lasting and broad impact on American culture. Each of these books directly helped people learn about, recognize, and grapple with the trauma and history of devastating conflict.

It was teaching that led me to Abina and the Important Men. I was trying to help my students to understand the ways that history amplifies some voices and experiences and silences others, and the ways in which historians, working in the margins of history, can find these stories and retell them. Looking for a suitable pathway for the students to experience this for themselves, I turned to a court case I had found in the National Archives of Ghana, in which a young African woman took her master to court for illegally enslaving her under British colonial law. As we read Abina Mansah's testimony together, it became clear just how incredible and important her voice could be.

Captured by an Asante general in one of many wars in the region for control of the profitable palm-oil trade, she was sold as a slave multiple times before she ended up in the British Gold Coast Colony and Protectorate in 1876, two years after enslavement had been criminalized. After only 10 days, she ran away from the man who had purchased her, and managed to convince a Euro-African translator to help her to prosecute him. Her master, Kwamina Adu, was a wealthy man. The British magistrate was reluctant to prosecute him, and he managed to hire a well-trained lawyer. Yet neither Adu, nor his lawyer, nor the magistrate could stop Abina from speaking her truth in court. The resulting testimony is both moving and a significant source for understanding the experiences and perspectives of enslaved women in West Africa, and perhaps beyond.

Abina's testimony gave me the most successful teaching moments I had ever had, and I knew that I had to share it further. I did not want to lose the power of what we had achieved in that classroom. I wanted to find a way to produce and publish a democratic work that would reach an audience beyond the few academics who would read a peer-reviewed journal article. I needed to build my readers' sense of identification with Abina, and also to force them to do some intellectual work themselves to hear the messages she communicated in her testimony. I also wanted readers to understand that my analysis was just an interpretation of a very real experience, an attempt to get at a deeper truth creatively, but - because of the very nature of the sources - it was not an authoritative history.

I settled on a graphic history because I believed that the art-and-text combination of the comic medium could draw out readers' empathy, force them to participate in the story, and convey lessons and meanings that are difficult to express in text alone. Like documentaries, or monuments, or museum didactics, graphic histories represent an interpretation of the past for the public. They cannot represent every story or historical inquiry, of course. Each type of medium has its own set of attributes that befit certain interpretive projects. Comics, for example, work best with character-driven narratives that engage the empathy of the reader. Humans recognize and relate to faces more viscerally and easily than to names on a page.

Bringing art and words together produces unique opportunities to render a milieu for readers. It opens objects, places, and people to investigation. However, it also introduces new challenges of representation, demanding attention to details - clothing, environment - which might be peripheral to the historian's goals or difficult to reproduce. Comics also ask readers to work. Their negative space - the gutters between panels - require that readers make connections to understand the broader story. This attribute builds reader engagement, but also reduces authorial control over the reader's interpretation. Indeed, the author of a graphic history has to share power over the story with the artist, the reader and the historical subjects. It makes for a crowded workspace.

When these attributes are taken into account, graphic histories can become excellent vehicles for specific kinds of stories of the past. They are particularly useful for accounts that focus on individual stories that exemplify wider social issues. They are also especially suited to histories that deal with trauma or transformation, which can be represented graphically. Finally, they are excellent vehicles for histories that raise tough questions of interpretation, especially when the art and text are juxtaposed in ways that highlight contrasting theories or understandings of the past.

Two major problems face creators of graphic histories. The first is how to make the visual representation equal to the history. The images and the words together must be greater than the sum of their parts. Verisimilitude is also essential. The narrative and image-centered medium induces the creator to speculate, to fill in, and to introduce both fictional text and visuals of uncertain veracity. A comic can be beautiful but of dubious history, or a solid history but aesthetically lacking. The best historical comics find ways to address these challenges and utilize the medium to its best advantage.

Ari Kelman and Jonathan Fetter-Vorm's Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War (2015) is a good example. A study of the transformative quality of violence, the book unfolds from a series of historical artifacts - objects, photographs and documents - interposed with comic-style representations of their origins or the experiences they represent. Much of the dialogue that Kelman and Fetter-Vorm created is between fictional characters, for they didn't want to invent conversations for real historical actors. Kelman explains that, in a book about the impact of violence, they wanted to avoid doing violence to the past.

Marek Bennett's The Civil War Diary of Freeman Colby (2016) faced a similar problem. The diary of this New Hampshire teacher gave Bennett rich material for a graphic history, but we have no actual portrait of Freeman Colby. So Bennett's work uses stick figures with generic faces to portray his story.

Michael G. Vann and Liz Clarke's The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (2018) is a graphic history that exemplifies the possibilities of using art and text together to ask historical questions. The book engages the segregation of colonial Hanoi and its connection to the wider world, and the design of each page reinforces these themes. Gutters cut through the middle of some pages, dividing Vietnamese and French characters whose speech balloons are drawn in different colors. On other pages, chains or ropes present visual metaphors connecting individuals and street-level views of the city to regional and global maps.

Comics can make great history books. They can convey the meaning of the past to the present as effectively as a good textbook or the most detailed monograph. Of course, compared with textbooks, graphic histories will always be a more democratic and multiform genre. The comic book can bring both knowledge and joy to many. Creators of graphic histories can facilitate this experience by taking seriously both the medium and the discipline, and by studying and applying the opportunities, languages, and limitations of comics and history together. Readers can help by demanding graphic histories that engage their senses and their intellects, as both scholarship and art.

This article was originally published by Aeon, a digital magazine for ideas and culture. Follow them on Twitter at @aeonmag.

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I am a historian and, a few years ago, I collaborated with the artist Liz Clarke to produce a history in comic-book form. Together, we created Abina and the Important Men (2012), a graphic history of a 19th-century court case in colonial West Africa. Dozens of graphic histories have been produced in English since then.

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Using Graphic Novels to Help Struggling Readers

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Using Graphic Novels to Help Struggling Readers

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Meryl Jaffe is an author specializing in kid-lit and promoting verbal and visual literacies through the use of comic books, traditional prose texts and multi-media integration.

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Using Graphic Novels to Get Your Kids Interested in Classic Literature (blog post)

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Using Graphic Novels to Get Your Kids Interested in Classic Literature (blog post)

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To start in a seemingly off-topic place: I like to tell my students that we study Shakespeare in an adapted format more often than we study Shakespeare in his original, intended medium.

Shakespeare intended his plays to be performed and experienced primarily as a play. His scripts were written to distribute to actors so that they could learn their lines, and over the years he made changes to plays. For example, Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy in the 1603 "Bad Quarto" opens, "To be, or not to be, aye there's the point"; it is changed a year later to the better-known "To be, or not to be, that is the question." It is partially this reason why the job of directing a Shakespearian play requires the director to not only decide upon stage direction, but to decide upon which script of the play to even use. Were we to study Shakespeare in the format he originally wished us to experience his works, we would not read his scripts, but see a performance.

To be upfront, there are many excellent reasons to read Shakespeare's script before seeing the play in a theater or film. Shakespeare's language is dense and at times difficult to decipher when simply watching it; it's far more difficult looking at a vocabulary list as spoken dialogue is simultaneously happening. Reading a script would allow students to experience and understand his work at their own pace instead of the pace set by the director and actors. Further, students reading the script can imagine how they would stage the play. Which brings me to a larger point: using different media to teach can create different outcomes. In this post, I'll be talking about using graphic novels to get your students interested in classic literature.

If you're reading this, I suspect that you, like me, are an unapologetic bibliophile. At some point in your life, whether or not you explicitly remember it, you became convinced that books and literature open doors to new, somewhat strange, and perhaps magical worlds. Immersed in these settings with believable and all-too-human characters, you can begin to more deeply understand "the human condition" and imagine what a life well lived might or might not look like. In short, you believe in the power of literature.

If only all your students shared that worldview. Motivation is a fickle thing, and not all of our students are convinced that classic literature is worth their time or effort to enjoy, much less understand.

I have found in both academic research and my own teaching experiences that graphic novels are fantastic motivators. Students are more interested in reading graphic novels more than prose texts, students reported being more interested in reading prose after reading a graphic novel, and students report increased interest in a subject if presented through a graphic novel than a prose text. In my upcoming book with Dr. Meryl Jaffe, Worth a Thousand Words: Using Graphic Novels to Teach Visual and Verbal Literacy, we talk about using graphic novels to motivate students by breaking routines, appealing to students' artistry, creating opportunities for group work, and appealing to students' other interests and affinities through popular culture. In this post, I'll talk about a few strategies to successfully use graphic novels to enrich your class' interest and understanding in classic literature.

Pair classic li terature with a graphic novel that complements or contradicts the themes you want your class to discuss. For example you might pair:- Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird or Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" with Rep. John Lewis' autobiographical graphic novel - Avi's girl-coming-of-age-on-the-high-seas novel The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle with Hope Larson and Rebecca Mock's graphic novel Compass South; or
- Art Spiegelman'sMaus with Elie Wiesel's Night.

In these comparisons, graphic novels can be used not only as a foil for your prose texts (although it bears saying that such thematic comparisons can be done to great success), but the images found in graphic novels can be used to contextualize and enrich students' understanding of the world of both texts. For example, March is particularly good at depicting anti-black violence that Lewis and others like MLK faced as Black Civil Rights advocates in the 1960s. For example, use the following panel from March: Book 3 to have students imagine what it must have felt for John Lewis to be arrested in Selma.

Notice how uncomfortable his hands seem in handcuffs or how close they are to being clenched as fists. Notice the tilted frame of the large image to give a reader a sense of unbalance. Notice the chaos and violence of the large panel. Then, use that conversation to introduce MLK's "Letter from Birmingham Jail": the Reverend Dr. King just went through an experience not too different from John Lewis. How might he feel? Do those emotions show in his letter from Birmingham jail? What might MLK be trying to accomplish in that piece?

Pair classic literature with a graphic novel adaptation or several graphic novel adaptations to discuss how the graphic novels interpret the original text. Graphic novelists, as they move panel to panel, slow the reader down. Certain elements of texts are harder to skim-or skip-over. If the language in the original text is tricky, breaking up a paragraph or extended piece of prose into several panels gives students images to hint at the text's meaning, and the smaller chunks aid students' ability to comprehend and follow along with the prose. I particularly like doing this when discussing Shakespeare. Beyond the reasons I just provided, Shakespeare wrote very little stage direction, leaving open a lot of interpretation for both the graphic novelist and the reader. This opens up conversations about the universality of Shakespearian narratives.

For example, consider the following two adaptations of Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy. The first is from the first graphic novel adaptation of Hamlet. The second was from Hamlet on a Rooftop, created by Will Eisner and is around half a century more recent. This comparison allows students to imagine Shakespeare's costuming, the staging (while Eisner's adaptation is much easier to read and piece apart, the amount of movement Hamlet is doing in such a short period of time is perhaps a bit much), the pacing (perhaps Hamlet is moving that much because he pauses to think in between each panel), and other topics. Which Hamlet is more relatable? Which Hamlet do they think is truer to Shakespeare's text? Which adaptation do they think is overall "better" (and what does it mean to be better)?

After looking at a sample graphic novel adaptation (or several), have students create their own adaptations of scenes from a classic work you're studying. Ideally, they will pair their adaptation with a written reflection explaining what choices they made in the process of making their adaptation. In a way, this is a fairly logical extension of pairing a classic work of literature with its graphic novel adaptation. For students who enjoy drawing, this gives them an opportunity to distinguish themselves in ways generally not open to them in Language Arts or Social Studies classrooms. For those, like myself, who are not confident artists, there are several ways to engage them, more thoroughly discussed in my upcoming book. However, here's something I created using Pixton (a website that allows individuals to create comics in an easy-to-use way), adapting the first few lines of the "Dagger" soliloquy from Macbeth Act 2, Scene 1.

Ideally, you would want students to explain the choices they made: how their comics reflect their understanding of the text. For example, looking at the final two panels of my adaptation of Macbeth, the dissonance of seeing but not being able to hold this dagger makes Macbeth reflective, and he turns to think even more deeply about this in panel 5. It is then that his thoughts return to what he was doing in the first place-attempting regicide, and he winces in Panel 6. I'm interpreting in this section of the soliloquy that Macbeth still has reservations about killing King Duncan, I believe that his attitude shifts as he continues to think and talk about this dagger.

One final point: you may reflect that I'm having fun as I'm writing this, and I am. I find critically reading graphic novels fun. Pedagogical theorizing stipulates that learning is particularly effective when students are in a state of play. Ultimately, I think that graphic novels are so affective precisely because they seem different and more playful than what is normally used in a classroom. While the classics have become, well, classic for a reason, our strict adherence to the written word may in fact be unduly slowing us down, keeping students focused on the upcoming assessment instead of playing with it. After all, if we so steadfastly believed in experiencing the classics in their intended format, why do we so regularly teach Shakespeare in adaptation?

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Using Graphic Novels to Get Your Kids Interested in Classic Literature | Pop Culture Classroom

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To start in a seemingly off-topic place: I like to tell my students that we study Shakespeare in an adapted format more often than we study Shakespeare in his original, intended medium. Shakespeare intended his plays to be performed and experienced primarily as a play.

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Using Graphic Novels to Help: How and Why to Advocate for Graphic Novels in your Curricula

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Using Graphic Novels to Help: How and Why to Advocate for Graphic Novels in your Curricula

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Meryl Jaffe is an author specializing in kid-lit and promoting verbal and visual literacies through the use of comic books, traditional prose texts and multi-media integration.

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Author Website for "Worth A Thousand Words: Using Graphic Novels To Teach Visual And Verbal Literacy" (also has book lists & lesson plans)

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Author Website for "Worth A Thousand Words: Using Graphic Novels To Teach Visual And Verbal Literacy" (also has book lists & lesson plans)

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Meryl Jaffe is an author specializing in kid-lit and promoting verbal and visual literacies through the use of comic books, traditional prose texts and multi-media integration.

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Gene Yang: why comics belong in the classroom

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Gene Yang: why comics belong in the classroom

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Comic books and graphic novels belong in every teacher’s toolkit, says cartoonist and educator Gene Luen Yang. Set against the backdrop of his own witty, colorful drawings, Yang explores the history of comics in American education -- and reveals some unexpected insights about their potential for helping kids learn.

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Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel (Chp 1) 

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Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel (Chp 1) 

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McCloud, Scott. _Blood in the Gutter_ (Understanding comics, Ch 3).pdf

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Graphic Novels in the Classroom: Suggestions for Appropriate Multimodal Writing Projects in Graphic Novel Units

By Michael P. Cook and Jeffrey S.J. Kirchoff

[pdf version here: Cook-Kirchoff-Graphic Novels in the Classroom]

Abstract

While the NCTE (2008) definition of 21 st century literacies is several years old now, the role of the ELA teacher continues to include helping students learn to read and make meaning from a variety of texts and text-types. However, much of the use of multimodal texts in ELA classrooms remains centered on reading and not on student composition. In this article, we address the multimodal composition component of NCTE's definition, by including reading and writing. We argue for using graphic novels within instructional units, and as mentor texts, to create multimodal texts. First, we discuss the current literature on graphic novels in the ELA classroom. Next, we provide reading suggestions for students, as they learn to interact with and make meaning from graphic novels. Then we offer suggested multimodal composition projects teachers can utilize within a unit including graphic novels. Finally, we discuss options and considerations for multimodal assessment.
Introduction
As both educators and perpetual students of English studies, it is important to understand-and embrace-how our discipline, particularly what it means to be literate in the 21st century, is changing. Recently, the National Council of Teachers of English posited that proficient 21 st century readers and writers should able to "create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts" (par. 1). While this does not explicitly mark the end of the traditional text-that is, printed/bound alphabetic texts such as books and student essays printed on 8.5 by 11 inch paper-it does indicate that as responsible educators, we should start to challenge what reading, writing and analyzing texts currently means. As Bronwyn Williams writes in his introduction to Multimodal Composition, "we should [...] regard the ability to use multiple modalities of communication as a call to examine how new ways of conceiving of literacy and composing produce new possibilities for different rhetorical situations" (xi).

As such, educators have a responsibility to help students understand not only how to consume, compose and communicate in multimodal ways, but also the possibilities and importance of consuming, composing and communicating in a multimodal manner. To that end, we should strive to create units-or at least build in multimodal aspects-that can help our students read, interpret, and construct texts beyond the traditional novel and essay to become literate in a 21 st century world.

One possibility for crafting such a unit would be to center it on graphic novels, as graphic novels consistently blend image and word (two distinct modalities) to form a cohesive narrative, story, or argument; several ELA teachers are already doing this, which can be seen through several stalwart texts, including Katie Monnin's Teaching Graphic Novels: Practical Suggestions for the Secondary ELA Classroom (2013), Maureen Bakis's The Graphic Novel Classroom (2012), and James Bucky Carter's Building Literacy Connections With Graphic Novels (2007), among others. However, the published research primarily examines graphic novels as a text that supports students' ability to critique and analyze multimodal texts. While this is certainly an important use for graphic novels-and an important skill for students-it does not completely address NCTE's definition of the 21 st century literate individual. That is, NCTE also demands that 21 st century individuals be able to create multimodal texts. Given the nature of graphic novels, we assert that a complete unit on graphic narrative and multimodality should not only teach students to read and critique this kind of text, but also be able to produce a multimodal composition. As such, in this article we argue that units including graphic novels can also serve as a mentor or gateway text to get students composing in multiple modes. First, we address the literature on graphic novel use in the classroom to show the value of units centered on such texts; secondly, we offer suggestions for student-appropriate readings regarding how to understand graphic novels; thirdly we offer multimodal writing project ideas that would complement a unit centered on the graphic novel; and finally, we discuss options for assessing these text-types.
Literature Review-Graphic Novels in the ELA Classroom
Currently, research examining the potential benefits of graphic novels in the English language arts (ELA) classroom is on the rise. Over the previous two decades, scholarship has increased, as multiple voices-including English educators and teachers-have created a dialogue surrounding the use of graphic narratives in education. One of the more enduring strands of graphic novel scholarship focuses on how graphic narratives can be used to teach traditional literary elements, such as protagonist and antagonist, conflict, point of view, plot, motif, and so forth (see the work of Nancy Frey and Gretchen Schwarz for sound examples of this argument). Robin A. Moeller asserts that graphic narratives can also foster interest in and appreciation for literature, by meeting students' needs and helping them to engage in narrative and literary study (482). To that end, Francois Mouly suggests that graphic narratives provide visual contexts for unfamiliar concepts and words, helping students to use visual context clues for understanding (13).

Perhaps one of the more dominant conversations on graphic narrative focuses on how this text-type can serve as both traditional and multimodal literacy sponsors for adolescent readers. Rocco Versaci argues that graphic narratives, by their very nature, require readers to actively participate in literacy practices and facilitate literary analysis at multiple levels: standard literary devices (e.g., point of view, conflict, theme, etc.) and multimodality (i.e., the combining of-and effect of-texts and visuals) (63-64). As traditional literacy sponsors, graphic narratives can engage students, teach them analytical and critical thinking skills, and allow them to take stances on literature and literary merit. Dale Jacobs describes the advantage of this literacy sponsorship as the ability to transfer value to other forms of literacy and literacy practices (i.e., transfer of skill, which is given huge import in education) (188).

Additionally, graphic novels have become what Jacobs describes as complex, sophisticated sites of multimodal literacies (185). Students today live in a visual culture, and Schwarz suggests teachers can capitalize on these components of graphic narratives to help students become visually literate and multimodally literate (262). Versaci reminds us that creating meaning from words and images (multimodal texts) is a high-level, complicated task (62). Engaging with the medium of graphic novels, for example, can foster development of media literacy by helping students to analyze the use of images to display stereotypes, the ways in which angles and points of view affect perception and the use of color and line to depict emotion and tone (Schwarz 263).

Recent research also suggests the potential benefits of graphic narratives with regard to student reading comprehension. To date, two empirical studies (both dissertations) have been conducted which specifically investigate the relationships between graphic narratives and students' reading comprehension. Alex Russell Kaulfuss found in 2012 that students who read a graphic novel scored significantly higher on a reading comprehension test than their peers who read a traditional text (78). Likewise, he found a positive correlation between student engagement with graphic texts and reading comprehension scores (83). Similarly, Michael Cook found that students reading a graphic text, whether in isolation or in conjunction with a traditional text, had significantly higher reading comprehension scores than those students who only read the traditional text (86).

Graphic novels have certainly received increased attention over the previous few years. The research and discussion to date offer a good starting point and rationale for both teachers and English educators to begin experimenting with graphic novels in their ELA instruction to scaffold instruction and facilitate learning in all students, not simply with reluctant readers (see the work of James Bucky Carter; Douglas B. Fisher and Nancy Frey; and Maureen Bakis, among others). However, the literature shows how much of the conversations are focused on the benefits that graphic novels have for comprehending, critiquing and analyzing both multimodal and traditional texts; comparatively fewer studies have been composed that addresses how graphic novels can serve as mentor texts to multimodal writing. The pedagogical suggestions offered within this article are meant to further these discussions by providing practical examples for teachers to consider when implementing graphic narratives into their existing instruction and curricula.
Reading Graphic Novels
Though the primary focus of this article is to help instructors construct multimodal writing projects that further the inclusion of graphic narratives in units, we think it is important to examine strategies for introducing students to graphic novels and, by extension, multimodal composition/multiliteracies. While it is common knowledge that adolescents live in a multimodal world and interact with multimodal texts daily (and hourly for that matter), it is equally clear that many students have not been taught to interact with (i.e., read) graphic texts. Because of this and before any educator drops graphic narratives into their current literacy instruction, teachers must provide students the know-how and the preparation to read graphic novels in meaningful ways. First, providing this instruction gives students who are unfamiliar a primer on reading comics and graphic novels. Second, it equips a class with a universal vocabulary to talk about graphic narratives. Third, it will give students the critical tools necessary to talk about the relationship between image and text.

Providing this instruction can take many forms. Teachers know their students and their literacy skills and are, thus, best suited to make relevant pedagogical choices. It is, however, important to offer readers suggested texts and starting points in making the transition from a traditional ELA classroom to what Bakis describes as a graphic novel classroom. There are numerous texts and voices out there, each capable of contributing to the multimodal literacy instruction of students, but a comprehensive list is outside the scope of this article. Instead, we offer a range and variety of texts teachers can evaluate against the needs of their students in selecting the appropriate text(s) for their own classrooms.

One very popular and useful text is Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. In his groundbreaking text, McCloud provides readers a detailed look at specific aspects of graphic narratives (e.g., gutters, transitions, speech bubbles) and the ways in which readers should approach these texts. For example, teachers might find it helpful to use chapter 2, "The Vocabulary of Comics," to provide their students with the necessary vocabulary for discussing comics. Likewise, Mario Saraceni's text, The Language of Comics can provide a wonderful starting place for teaching students to read graphic narratives in ELA classrooms. In chapter 2, "Words and Pictures," Saraceni provides students an age-appropriate and complete look at making meaning from both words and images in comics. Similarly, in chapter 3, "Between the Panels," he offers students helpful information on the organization of panels as well as making inferences between panels. Alternatively, Hollis Rudiger's article, "Reading Lessons: Graphic Novels 101" offers an engaging and informative look at how to analyze and make meaning from the layout of graphic texts. Specifically, Rudiger draws from the language of photography and film to show how students can read a comic book page cinematically; this particular piece is especially accessible and might be a good choice for teachers who are seeking a short, time-friendly piece for reading comics.
Graphic Novels as Mentor Text: Multimodal Projects Inspired by Reading Graphic Novels Multimodal Assignments
To further the discussion of multimodal texts, such as graphic novels, in the classroom, we offer three possible writing projects that work to evaluate what students have learned from graphic novels, while also fostering an understanding of and awareness about multimodal design and composition. The first, wikis, is intended to represent a "during-reading," formative assessment method. The second, graphic narratives, offers students the opportunity to put "theory" into practice. Third, multimedia presentations, can be used to have students add yet another communicative mode to an already multimodal text. To facilitate each project, we suggest pairing students with a peer to increase opportunities for learning. Together, partners can discuss topic, purpose, and audience (among other topics) to collaborate in the creation of multimodal texts. These projects are meant to allow students to manipulate language by using a range of modes and media to make real world connections within their English curriculum. As part of these assignments, students have the opportunity to learn new platforms/modes for composing, while thinking about potentially familiar technology in new ways, as opposed to simply relying on the technology (and ways of utilizing it) the way they use it outside of school.

For those who are unfamiliar with wikis, they are websites anyone can edit. Matt Barton writes that "communities rather than individual authors author them [...] wikis seem to offer the most to writers interested in collaboration and consensus-building" (178). Wikis, then, are a platform for students to collaborate, while striving for consensus and a communal voice (Barton 178). In most wikis, any individual can write or edit an existing wiki; additionally, there are usually spaces for discussion and conversation to place in the editing page. This allows individuals to debate content, while also creating a sort of "to do" list.

Wikis have been used with great success in the ELA classroom. Michael Glassman and Min Ju Kang use wikis to create learning networks, foster abductive thinking and problem solving, while also focusing students on the process of thinking (104). Additionally, Janet Murphy and Robert Lebans found the use of wikis in classrooms to increase student engagement (141). In their examination of the use of wikis with secondary school students, B. Mak and D. Coniam found students produced substantially more text than expected, writing increased in complexity, students were greater involved in the writing process, confidence in writing was boosted, and student creativity was tapped in new ways (452-453).

It is important to note, given the focus of our article, that wikis can be multimodal in nature. Though contributors to a wiki page primarily work with one mode-the written, alphabetic text-many wiki entries contain images as well (examining a random Wikipedia entry will support this assertion). Students contributing to a wiki, then, must decide a) when it is appropriate to add an image to an entry, b) what kind of image (e.g. chart, graph, photograph, cartoon, graphic, and so forth) to include c) how many images are reasonable to utilize in one entry and d) deduce the appropriate placement and size of the image. These are important discussions to have, as students will be guided to reflect on how images may best facilitate meaning-making for the reader.

Using WikiSpaces (wikispaces.com), a popular, free wiki site, students can engage in rigorous, during-reading assessments that allow teachers a formative look at their learning. Focusing on the use of wikis as collaborative spaces in a literacy program, S. Ferris and Hilary Wilder found wikis to be beneficial to students in multiple ways-to create and share information, as customized project spaces, etc.-and fostered student consideration of how to organize information, ultimately helping them to better understand print text (pars. 21-23). Thus, one use of the wiki-space would be for students to collaboratively create a wiki based on the graphic narrative they are reading. They may be asked to model Wikipedia entries on literary works, which often include plot summaries, an overview of characters, a brief examination of criticism, and perhaps even a dabbling in theme. Perhaps more exciting-and more directly related to the graphic novel -students would be forced to make some interesting and important decisions regarding which panels (or panel sequences) to include in their wiki to make their entry truly multimodal. Students would be asked to consider which panels best represent a character, or which panels best represent a theme. These are interesting choices for students to make, and shows not only their ability to critique a multimodal text (the graphic novel), but also create a multimodal text (inserting images to support, complement, or exemplify the written word).

Yet another possibility for the wiki would be to have students collaboratively create a wiki that serves to analyze the graphic novel the class read together. For example, we've asked students to create a wiki that explicates McCloud's theory for reading comics, paying particular attention to his six transitions (aspect-to-aspect, moment-to-moment, scene-to-scene, subject-to-subject, action-to-action, and non-sequitur) and then finding examples from the text that demonstrate the aforementioned transitions. This not only helps determine how well students are able to critique and analyze a multimodal text, but it also forces students to create a multimodal text themselves. In this respect, we'd use the wiki platform for students to create collaborative, analytic hybrid essays.

We've found wikis to be a low-stakes activity to gradually help students become comfortable composing with multiple modes; many students are already familiar with the wiki platform, as consumers of Wikipedia or Wikibooks. It is important to scaffold, as we cannot assume our students are comfortable or will immediately gravitate towards this method of creating texts. Starting with a platform that students are at least peripherally familiar with lessens the intimidation factor, which cannot be overstated. Moreover, students have appreciated the collaborative nature of the wiki.
Graphic Narrative
Perhaps it seems overtly obvious that a unit including a graphic narrative text would also ask students to compose a graphic narrative themselves. In Teaching Visual Literacy: Using Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Anime, Cartoons, and More to Develop Comprehension and Thinking Skills, the editors Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher note that award-winning teacher Jerome Burg has had students craft graphic narratives based on traditional narratives with great success, as he finds it demonstrates their understanding of a work (12). However, we have found that a similar assignment can be utilized following the reading of a graphic narrative. While there are numerous options for this assignment, a sample prompt for the multimodal essay might read as follows (this was following a unit on the hero, which included Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns):

For this assignment, you will craft a short, graphic narrative. Specifically, you are being asked to respond to one of the following four short prompts: (1) provide one additional scene to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, (2) re-write one of the scenes in the graphic novel, (3) craft an epilogue to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, or (4) create a short original graphic novel that takes on the same themes as Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Regardless of which option you pursue, consider how the themes we discussed this unit are fleshed out through multiple modes (language, image, color, sound, etc.) and how each of these contributes to your understanding; then use these same concepts to help your audience better understand your multimodal text.

While we chose Dark Knight Returns as our graphic novel, please note that there are a range of texts that would work well for a unit on graphic novels as multimodality (for instrance, see Diamond Comics' list for suggested graphic novels in K-12 classrooms). We chose Dark Knight Returns because it is a text that (a) actively challenges students' pre-conceived notions of heroism and super-heroism and (b) it challenges the potential of graphic narrative through its unique panel layout.

Not only does this assignment help us better understand how students interpreted the overall tone of the text, but once again it gets students thinking about crafting a multimodal text. This is a slightly more advanced multimodal project, as it asks students to consider how many panels per page they need, what kind of panel shapes they should use, what kind of panel transitions are appropriate, which images will best convey a single moment, how to best present any written text (captions or word balloons), how color should be used, and so forth. Essentially, we're asking students to put the theory they read-whether McCloud, Saraceni, Rudiger, or another appropriate primer on reading comics-into practice.

Though the above project may seem advanced, there are several free resources and tools available to students that can simplify the graphic novel composing process. One such tool is Comic Life; though typically Comic Life is a software that comes with a nominal fee, there is a free thirty-day trial period that should be sufficient for this project. Comic Life is an extremely user-friendly software that operates on the "drag-and-drop" principle. Comic Life offers authors a wide array of page and panel layouts, so students do not have to use a stock 4 x 4 grid. Similarly, Comic Life offers users a wide array of speech balloons and captions; the result of these options is that authors can easily customize their comic book to be exactly what they desire. Usually, photographs are used as the images, though students can also upload their own drawings, scanned images from other texts (such as magazines or pre-existing graphic novels), and so forth. These images can simply be dragged onto the interface and dropped into the panel you desire. Comic Life then gives the author several artistic filters (e.g. "black and white," "sepia," "colored pencil," "stained glass window," "night-vision") to choose from, which allows users to give their image a "comic book" feel. Given the ease of using Comic Life, more time can be spent on rhetorical decisions, such as the aforementioned page and panel design, and how to best manipulate their images to achieve a desired effect.

Another possibility would be Toondoo (toondoo.com). Toondoo is a free comic strip creator offering hundreds of stock characters, settings, props, text bubble and box types, and clip art. Users can also upload their own images and then edit by reshaping, distorting, and so forth. Additionally, students can create their own characters-digital versions of themselves or of literary characters they have read about. Unlike Comic Life, Toondoo offers a wider array of image usage options, which more advanced students may find useful.

Like Comic Life, students are provided panel number, size and layout options, allowing them the freedom to make intentional design and composition decisions that best address their purpose. Through a user-friendly interface, coupled with an impressive array of edit tools (including drag and drop), students are provided multiple style and layout options, including horizontal and vertical layouts of between one and four panels of varying sizes. Panels can be combined to form individual comic strips or books (i.e., collections) of multiple comics. As part of Toondoo, students can publish and share their graphic narratives via URL and/or embed codes. Classmates can also read and comment on one another's strips using the feedback tool. One consideration for teachers is that Toondoo requires the creation of an account (by providing an email address). Teachers, however, can register an entire class by contacting Toondoo administration if individual registration is an issue.

We have found this to be an extraordinarily valuable project. Though we do not expect perfection from our students-and indeed, we have found it useful to reassure students that we are not grading on artistic ability-it still allows us to see how they are able to craft a graphic narrative/multimodal composition of their own-making key rhetorical decisions focused on image selection, word selection, and so forth.
Multimedia Presentation
Using the affordances of multimodal presentations, students can explore the unit theme by creating layered projects that combine an array of modes (e.g., visuals, audio, and alphabetic text). There are several useful tools that each offer unique possibilities for this type of assessment (for example, Prezi, VoiceThread, digital essays, etc.). For our purposes, we suggest and discuss using Microsoft PowerPoint, an oft-used tool that is easily accessible, user friendly, familiar to teachers and students, and amenable to multiple modes of communication. Research supports the use of PowerPoint as multimodal projects. Nancy M. Bailey, examining the use of PowerPoint with ninth grade students to create and present multimodal presentations, found that students better learned the curriculum and began to see themselves as better understanding their own literacy practices (215). In addition, teachers reported curricular value in the new literacy formats. Examining the use of technology to promote students' engagement in new literacy practices, Cathy Burnett et al. found that students were engaged and interested in the challenge of working with technology to create multimodal texts (26).

Certainly, teachers could consider assigning the traditional PowerPoint presentation that asks students to analyze a theme or character within the graphic novel. However, we've also found that the following assignment has proven to be quite successful:

For this project, you will be asked to take one scene from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and turn it into a multimedia presentation. Specifically, you will be asked to narrate the panels, while also adding any relevant sound effects. Time will be spent in class showing students how to record narration onto slides and how to add sound-effects using Microsoft PowerPoint.

In our multimedia project, we're asking students to take an already multimodal composition-graphic narrative-and add another modality to it: sound. Additionally, we encourage students to consider playing around with PowerPoint's transitions and timings to also give their remediated graphic narrative an element of motion. A bit of preparation is needed for this project, though, as we need to help students scan images from the graphic novel into PowerPoint; in this regard, this contributes to students' functional computer literacy. An important component to this prompt is leading informal or formal class discussion that invites students to reflect how sound (and potentially motion)- additional modalities-added or detracted from the original telling of the story. This, then, allows students to begin discovering which modes are the most effective for certain text-types and purposes.
Benefits of Multimodal Writing Assignments
Students experience myriad benefits from engaging in multimodal composition projects. One such benefit is that for some, multimodal composition better parallels the lives students lead away from school. Frank Serafini, among many others, points out the disparity that exists between the literacy education students receive in school and the literacy practices they engage in outside of school; incorporating multimodal texts and composition allow teachers to intentionally bridge that gap (348). Asking students to compose in multimodal ways requires that they harness the affordances of each mode to maximize their ability to communicate (Kress and van Leeuwen 11). In other words, the use of varied modes (e.g., text and image) working together allows students to create sophisticated and complex compositions (Brooks 233).

Richard Selfe and Cynthia Selfe provide four reasons for using multimodal composition with students: (1) multiple modes of communication drive our interactions and learning daily; (2) literacy is dynamic, rather than static; (3) literacy and the ways in which we communicate in the workplace have and continue to evolve; and (4) we live and communicate in a global world (84-86). Through multimodal composition, students gain a deeper understanding of what they can accomplish with their writing (George 12). An additional benefit of multimodal composition stems from the advantage of incorporating multiple rhetorical devices (e.g., words, images, sound, etc.) to enhance communication (Anderson et al. 59). Likewise, Serafini suggests that students benefit from three components of working with multimodal texts; these include composition, perspective, and visual symbols (346). Furthermore, using digital tools and multiple modes to compose helps teachers begin to recognize the importance and utility of multimodal composition to engage their students (Doering, Beach, & O'Brien 58).

We would close by encouraging instructors considering multimodal units to intentionally and carefully choose projects. While the projects we outline all make use of digital tools, it is important to note that not all schools-or indeed, not all students-will have access to computers to work on these kinds of digital projects. Thus, we find it imperative to emphasize that there are print-options for multimodal projects. That is, teachers interested in implementing multimodal units need not shy away due to limited digital tools. For instance, in lieu of creating a graphic novel using Comic Life or ToonDoo, students could craft a graphic novel by hand (even if using stick figures) and still think about the relationship between word and image.
Assessing Multimodal Writing
Multimodal writing projects support students' new literacy practices. Questions and challenges, however, exist with regard to assessing students' multimodal products. Traditional methods of assessment create some of these challenges. Because of this, creating and using assessments like the ones we have described above will require that teachers rethink and develop new assessment methods. With that said, it is important to consider elements beyond the traditional when assessing students' multimodal creations. The creation of multimodal rubrics can help with the transition. Considering the question of how to assess multimodal texts, Claire Wyatt-Smith and Kay Kimber suggested six concepts that provide possibilities for assessing multimodal texts: design, visualization of literacy, modes and modal affordances, transmodal operation, cohesion, and staged multimodality (72-80). They also provided three principles for multimodal assessment: (1) students (and teachers) require a common language and metalanguage; (2) assessment should involve dynamic tools; (3) assessment should involve the learning process, not just the product (87).

With regard to rubric creation, there are multiple elements to consider: content, organization, cohesion, rhetorical moves, informed selection of modes, narrative, process, and so forth. Using rubrics to assess student work can serve both formative and summative purposes and allows for teachers to provide meaningful, useful constructive feedback. While there are numerous rubric design options available, we offer one suggestion for designing a rubric. Here, we describe four elements to include.

First, linguistic design is important to include. While multimodal projects can potentially include non-traditional modes, traditional, alphabetic text will always hold importance in literacy, communication and English curricula. When considering linguistic design elements, it is important to examine whether or not the text was coherent, well structured and logically organized, and beneficial to purpose and communication. Second, visual design parallels students' engagement with the graphic narrative and is therefore a useful design element in students' multimodal products. When assessing students' uses of visual design, teachers should examine the ways in which the visuals used add to cohesion and the construction of meaning in the text, as well as how they added to each student's ability to effectively communicate. Third, given that one of our suggested assessments was a presentation, which includes narration, the ability to assess auditory design becomes useful. With regard to the assessment of sound use, it is important for teachers to examine how sound is incorporated with regard to author purpose. Similarly, assessment should include how the use of auditory design partners with other modes to create a cohesive and meaningful text, and the ways in which it ultimately affects communication. Fourth, when designing multimodal rubrics, teachers should consider the overall design of the product. The purpose of using multiple modes, after all, is to create a layered and coherent text. When assessing overall design, teachers should consider whether or not the author made informed decisions and how those decisions created a combination of modes which led to a coherent (successfully tied together) and thoughtful text. Finally, the use of additional elements in the design of a quality rubric may prove helpful. For example, teachers may be interested in assessing students' use of spatial design and their own writing process(es).

For the purposes of quantitative assessment, we suggest the use of a continuum-style scale (e.g., Likert). Using a scale of 1 to 5, total scores, out of 25 can be calculated and easily converted to a traditional 100-point scale that better matches school practices. The proposed scale would range from 1 (poor cohesion) to 5 (excellent cohesion). This scale can be applied to each of the rubric elements (linguistic, visual, audio, and overall, as described above).

In addition to using multimedia project rubrics for teacher assessment, students can use the rubrics for self- and peer-evaluation. Empowering students with the knowledge and opportunity to assess themselves and their peers increases the opportunity for learning. First, it fosters an understanding of and awareness about multimodal design. Second, through self- and peer-evaluations, students begin to develop a metalanguage to use when reading, discussing and writing about multimodal texts.

A description of multimodal assessment and rubrics would not be complete without a discussion of the potential constraints that come with such an assessment. Evaluating multimodal products is difficult, in large part because of the lack of familiarity with non-traditional writing in schools today. Likewise, the creation and use of multimodal assessments and rubrics involve complex decisions and design. As a result, questions often arise regarding what to assess and how to ensure the assessment method matches the literacy task and mode(s) being used. To achieve success, teachers must intentionally design and implement new, multimodal literacy projects. One additional note of importance: rubrics are not necessarily transferrable between tools, modes and assignments.
Conclusion
In this article, we've argued that units centered on reading graphic novels should also include a multimodal writing project. By doing so, we believe that at the end of such units, students will be able to not only critique and analyze multimodal texts, but also produce rhetorically savvy multimodal texts. It is important to note that our proposed projects do not need to only be done in conjunction with a graphic narrative; rather, we've found these three projects to be effective conclusions to a unit on multimodality. It has helped our students meet the challenge put forth by NCTE to critique, analyze, and create compositions that utilize multiple channels of communication. Moreover, our suggested projects can foster further discussion of appropriate and relevant methods of assessing students' engagement with and understanding of texts of varying modes. Furthermore, our rubric design suggestions are meant to provide teachers with an example by which to contextualize their own classroom, students, and writing assignments.

Works Cited

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Doering, Aaron, Richard Beach, and David O'Brien. "Infusing Multimodal Tools and Digital Literacies Into an English Education Program." English Education 40.1 (2007): 41-60. Print.

Ferris, S. and Hilary Wilder. "Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom." Innovate 2.5 (2006): n.p. Web. 10 Jan. 2015.

Fisher, Douglas and Nancy Frey. Engaging the Adolescent Learner: Making the Most of Graphic Novels in the Classroom. Urbana, IL: International Reading Association, 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2014.

Frey, Nancy. "Reading and Writing with Graphic Novels." The California Reader 44.1 (2010): 15-22. Web. 10 Jan. 2015.

Frey, Nancy and Douglas Fisher. (Eds.) Teaching Visual Literacy: Using Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Anime, Cartoons, and More to Develop Comprehension and Thinking Skills. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2008. Print.

George, Diana. "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing." College Composition and Communication 54.1 (2002): 11-39. Print.

Glassman, Michael and Min Ju Kang. "The Logic of Wikis: The Possibilities of the Web 2.0 Classroom." The International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 6.1 (2011): 93-112. Print.

Jacobs, Dale. "Marveling at 'The Man Called Nova': Comics as Sponsors of Multimodal Literacy." College Composition and Communication 59.2 (2007): 180-205. Print.

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Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996. Print.

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Moeller, Robin A. (2011). "Aren't These Boy Books?": High School Students' Readings of Gender in Graphic Novels. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 54.7 (2011): 476-484. Print.

Monnin, Katie M. Teaching Graphic Novels: Practical Strategies for the Secondary ELA Classroom. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House, 2013. Print.

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Saraceni, Mario. The Language of Comics. London: Routledge, 2003 Print.

Schwarz, Gretchen E. "Graphic Novels for Multiple Literacies." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 46.3 (2002): 262-265. Print.

Selfe, Richard and Cynthia Selfe. "Convince Me! Valuing Multimodal Literacies and Composing Public Service Announcements." Theory Into Practice 47 (2008): 83-92. Print.

Serafini, Frank. "Expanding Perspectives for Comprehending Visual Images in Multimodal Texts." Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 54.5 (2011): 342-350. Print.

Versaci, Rocco. (2001). "How Comic Books Can Change the Way Our Students See Literature: One Teacher's Perspective." English Journal 91.2 (2001): 61-67. Print.

Williams, Bronwyn. "Forward." Multimodal Composition. Ed. Cynthia L. Selfe Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2007. ix-xiii. Print.

Wyatt-Smith, Claire and Kay Kimber. (2009). "Working Multimodally: Challenges for Assessment. " English Teaching: Practice and Critique 8.3 (2009): 70-90. Print.

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Graphic Novels in the Classroom: Suggestions for Appropriate Multimodal Writing Projects in Graphic Novel Units

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Graphic Novels in the Classroom: Suggestions for Appropriate Multimodal Writing Projects in Graphic Novel Units By Michael P. Cook and Jeffrey S.J. Kirchoff [pdf version here: Cook-Kirchoff-Graphic Novels in the Classroom] Abstract While the NCTE (2008) definition of 21st century literacies is several years old now, the role of the ELA teacher continues to include...

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"There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics"
It's time to look at graphic novel sales in 2018. Implausibly, this is the sixteenth annual report of something that is hard to exactly perceive and understand: the size and shape of the sales of graphic novels and trade paperbacks through the book store market, as seen through the prism of BookScan.

To read about our methodology, what Bookscan measures, and other technical details of how these reports have been made, you can go to the end of the piece, Bookstores that have POS systems are able to report their sales to BookScan, a subsidiary of The NPD Group (they bought it from Nielsen).

BookScan tracks the specific sales to consumers through its client stores. I had several well trained spies who have, for many years, provided me with access to the BookScan reports at the end of each year. However, I am very excited to say that we are now getting the BookScan reports directly from The NPD Group, with no filter or middleman! This is our second year of doing so.

However, getting "official" detail has brought a major change this year: NPD Group no longer wants us releasing the complete data in chart form, although we are allowed to quotes numbers. Even the pretty tight "Top 750" as has been our historical practice, will no longer include total sales outside the top 20. I am fairly certain that, if you know how to search the internet, you could probably turn up previously published links from 2003 through 2017, but going forward, you will have to trust my abstract of the charts, rather than seeing the charts themselves. So sorry!

(For points of comparison, try these links to the earlier pieces:

2017: My Analysis

2016: My Analysis

2015: My Analysis

2014: My Analysis

2013: My Analysis

2012: My Analysis

2011: My Analysis

2010: My Analysis

2009: My Analysis

2008: My Analysis

2007: My Analysis

2006: My Analysis

2005: My Analysis

2004: My Analysis

2003: My Analysis)

2018 Overview

The main thing that has to be done in editing the data I am sent is removing all of the things that are not comics. I literally hand-checked thousands of items against Amazon's "Look Inside" feature" to say "is this a comic or not?" I defined "comics" like this: either a) it has multiple panels sequentially producing a narrative (those don't have to be on ONE PAGE, so someone like Mo Williams is certainly comics) OR b) a single image that, taken entirely by itself, provides a complete thought. So, "The Far Side" is comics, but, no, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is NOT (but very glad to see that number as a comparative)

Using my new working definition, I have decided to cut some items that had previously been kept in: chief among those is Rachel Renee Russell's "Dork Diaries" - they have words, they have pictures, but they don't work together in the way I'd think we'd commonly agree is "comics". I also removed prose-driven books like DK Publishing's "Marvel Encyclopedia", which, while nominally about comics or comics culture, is factually an encyclopedic prose book with pictures. Or "Wonder Woman: Warbringer" which is a straight-up prose novel that happens to feature a comics character, or " DC Super Heroes: My First Book of Girl Power" where the Amazon "Look Inside" clearly shows is an illustrated reader for 2 nd graders. There is clearly an enormous market for this kind of material - in fact, in many cases a larger market than for the actual comics themselves - it just isn't the "comics" market, as I would define it.

Here's the big picture for just the Top 750 in 2018:

I want to remind you that while I asterisk 2015-2016 in terms of the sheer number of data points that I was getting was probably edited, it appears to be that the top 750 itself was fairly rock solid.

The trend for print books in general (not just looking at comics) through bookstores, according to the NPD group and BookScan appears to be a general growth of 1.3% in 2018, while the US Census Bureau According to Bookscan data, comics/graphic novels are outperforming the rest of the market and were up 7.5% in units from 2018 over 2017.

(For what it is worth, overall book [only] sales through Diamond in the Direct Market appear to be down by about 8%, (in dollars, ComicChron isn't calculating pieces here) so the book market performed significantly better in the book category. Diamond only directly reports the Top 300 best-sellers each month, and those Top 300s in the DM sum up to $73.56m worth of books sold, though obviously there's a LOT of periodicals on top of that [another $319m]. Deep deep into the micro, my own individual sales in the book category were down about 5.4% in dollars at my main store in 2018.)

As I noted in the intro boilerplate, I primarily write about the top 750 because a) that's all the data I was initially leaked back in 2003, b) it's a "manageable" chunk of data, and c) "as above, so below" - the top 750 represents about half of sales. However, since 2007, I've received the "entire" database, which now gives us a solid ten years of data to track. Sometimes we refer to this as " the Long Tail ".

Here's what the sales of all comics sales BookScan tracks in this category looks like - but, seriously, let me remind you that the dataset changes enough each year this is a kind of meaningless set of comparisons! Even putting aside "the asterisk years", prior to 2013 this didn't include Walmart, for just one example of the lack of direct comparison.

Overall, this is out Topline conclusion for BookScan 2018: Up 9% in total books listed, up 9% in Units Sold, and up 5% in the calculated retail value if all books sold for cover price (they didn't, not in the "bookstore" market)

Let's take a look at the Top 20 best-selling graphic novels on the 2018 chart; it looks like this, including sales

Nineteen of the twenty are aimed at younger readers - only "The Adventure Zone" breaks through the kids-orientation. The first Manga book in the charts isn't until #25 ("My Hero Academia v1") and the first Superhero comic comes in at #29 ("The Infinity Gauntlet")

Clearly, Dav Pilkey and his "Dog Man" series of books are the current Rulers of comic sales in the bookstores. What's critical to remember about this is that Scholastic is also presumably selling a metric shedload of these books through the Scholastic Book Fairs, to elementary and middle school libraries, and any number of other places that don't report to BookScan. This here is just the tip of the iceberg.

So strong is Pilkey's hold on the current charts that he takes the first Six spots on the charts. The #1 best-seller ("Dog Man and Cat Kid") sells almost 717k copies. No, that's not a misprint - almost three quarters of a million copies are sold through BookScan reporters.

At #2 is "Lord of the Fleas" (693k), #3 is v1 just titled "Dog Man" (317k), #4 is "Unleashed" (317k), #5 is "A Tale of Two Kitties" (315k), and #6 is "Brawl of the Wild" with just under 200k copies sold. Any one of those, in any other year, would be an insanely high number by itself - add them all together and you have 2.6 million copies of one single series sold in one single year.

Let's underline just how insane this is: these six volumes together represent thirteen percent of all comics sold through BookScan.

If Pilkey is the current King of comics sales, then the Queen can't be anyone other than Raina Telgemeier, because her books take up the next swath, including #7, "Drama" (175k), #8 with "Smile" (150k), #9 with "Sisters" (133k), #11 with Ghosts (109k), and #13 with v1 of "The Baby-sitter's Club" adaptations for 101k.

The only thing that breaks these two author's hold on the top 10 is also a "Baby-Sitter's Club" adaptation, this time from Gale Galligan where v5 ("Dawn and the Impossible Three") is #10 with 113k sold. Galligan is also spot #12 with "Kristy's Big Day", which comes in at 108k.

This also means that publisher Scholastic has completely locked up the first thirteen spots of the charts - an unprecedented achievement in all of the time we've tracked these things.

Coming in at #14 is the first book aimed at adults "The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins" by the McEllroy's, featuring a new adventure spinning out of their extremely popular D&D-based podcast. They rack up 94k copies sold of the book.

Then the next five slots get back to nothing but kid's comics - #15 is something I previously knew nothing about: a Minecraft-based comic (but illustrated, not screencapped) "PopularMMOs Presents: A Hole New World" which sells 93k copies.

#16 is "Positively Izzy" by Terri Libenson (91k), #17 is the eight volume of Kazu Kibuishi's "Amulet:, "Supernova" (88k), #18 is Lincoln Peirce's "Big Nate" in "Silent But Deadly" (84k), #19 is v1 of Dana Simpson's "Pheobe and Her Unicorn" (82k), and #20 is the first volume of the "Wings of Fire" adaptation: "The Dragonet Prophecy" (81k)

If I were you, I would consider the fact that not one of these books was created "for" the traditional Direct Market audience, and that the DM (as represented by Diamond at least) does a mediocre job stocking or selling any of these books - in fact, of the top 500 DM best-sellers in 2018, only two of the BookScan top 20 even appear at all - "The Adventure Zone" at #144 (4k copies) and "Amulet v8" way down at #309 (2800 copies). And there is at least one ("PopularMMOs Presents: A Hole New World") that has never been carried by Diamond at all.

How about if we sort things by author? Here are people who sold more than 100k copies in the Top 750:

These eighteen people represent fifty-eight percent of sales in the Top 750!

What you can take from this is that only a small number of creators drive the majority of the business in comics (and books in general, I think); and conversely, this probably means that the numerical majority comics aren't actually significantly profitable any given year.

Let's switch our attention to looking how publishers performed.

As a way to make the publisher breakdowns more readable, I split the chart into "eastern" (Manga) and "western" comics, because I think there are a few clear market distinctions between those categories. So, without further ado:

2018 Manga

Overall sales are up a bit for the Manga category in 2018 - about 8% in pieces within the Top 750, and just over 1% in calculated dollars.

Here's a year-to-year comparison chart for the Top 750:

All three indicators are up for the category in 2018, but things are still far from their heights ten years ago. In part this is likely driven by the near-exclusive domination of series in the manga world - when there's not a strong anime driving sales, manga tankobon series start to perform more like periodicals than books (albeit over a much wider horizon); rather than building a strong core backlist that sells forever, year-in-and-year out, manga tends instead to ebb and flow with culture and fashion.

Being "hit driven" in that manner makes things a bit more volatile in the manga space, and a single hit can have an outsized impact on sales. This year's "It" manga was clearly "My Hero Academia", with v1 being the year's best-selling volume of manga, hitting just under 61k. Compare that to 2017's winner, "Tokyo Ghost" - in 2017 the first volume of that only sold a bit over 34k, a pretty large difference. "My Hero Academia" has seven volumes that exceeded 30k in 2018 - the only series to cross that particular "band", and every volume of the series (including the spinoff "My Hero Academia: Vigilantes") places within the top 750; with none doing under approximately 12k in unit sales.

In fact, the success of "My Hero Academia" means that roughly one-in-five manga books sold in 2018, within the Top 750, was a volume of this series.

One other thing that the nature of multi-book series means that there tends to be less diversity overall in what's being promoted - of the 299 different "manga" books, I only counted only eighty-one distinct "series" this year. This is down from eighty-four in 2017.

Manga, as a category, has a "long tail", where we're looking at all sales for the year, and not just within the Top 750 best-sellers:

I want to make sure that you've read all of the methodology to understand what you're seeing in this chart, and the ones below. It's really clear that my '15 and '16 data was incomplete now! It appears to be on the lower end of the charts - the "onesie, twosie" sellers - which leads me to conclude that my giver did some level of "currently in print?" pass those years. Thankfully, that's no longer a problem.

Without "My Hero Academia" turning into a broad hit in 2018, the bottom line "long tail" numbers for the category would likely have gone negative.

Viz controls the manga charts as they have for a very long time now. It is nearly impossible envisioning anyone really challenging them substantially for that role because they are closing on being four times larger than their nearest competitor in their segment (!) Just to give you a sense of scale here, while every manga competitor places at least one book selling over 10k, not one of them sells over 15k. Meanwhile, Viz has thirty-nine releases that sold over 15k.

As noted, Viz's #1 Best-seller is "My Hero Academia" - v1 sells about 61k, v2 is at 42k, and it has five more volumes that place over 30k, and seven more after that which beat 20k. All sixteen volumes make the Top 750, as do both volumes of the spinoff series "My Hero Academia: Vigilantes". Nothing sells under 12k, and even that one only had a bare two months of release. Eight of Viz's Top 10 are "MHA", as are fourteen of the Top 20. It's a success, selling nearly a half-million books combined this year! This is dramatically up from about 134k combined in 2017.

Viz's second best-selling series is "Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess v3" coming a bit under 29k. The other three volumes of the sub-series all sell something pretty close to 17k, while nine "Zelda" books place in the Top 750 altogether, totaling a bit more than 125k pieces.

Viz's third best-seller (coming in at #10 for overall manga sales) is "Tokyo Ghoul" at a bit under 28k. This is down from 34k in 2017 when it was the #1 manga of the year (and it did 54k in 2016). If you include the spin-off series of "Tokyo Ghoul: RE", all twenty-three different volumes of the series place within this year's Top 750, summing to over 261k in unit sales (down from 272k in 2017)

Fourth for Viz (#13 in overall manga sales) is RWBY, with a hair under 25k. Four volumes of this series place in the Top 750, summing to a bit over 64k

At fifth for Viz is "Splatoon" (nearly 21k for v1, #15 best-selling manga overall). Five volumes chart for almost 60k in combined sales.

At sixth is "Dragon Ball Super v2", also selling close to 21k (#17 best-selling manga overall) - between the three different series, "Dragon Ball" places eleven volumes in the Top 750, totally a bit over 100k.

And "bringing up the rear" (as the #20 manga overall) is "One Punch Man", with v13 racking up 20k sold. There are fourteen volumes of "One Punch Man" in the Top 750, selling a combined 141k copies.

Also worth mentioning for Viz is the success of the Junji Ito books - "Uzumaki" comes in at #26 with 18k copies sold, while "Shiver" does about 17k at #32. Other books selling over 10k include "Death Note" (v1 of the "black edition" does nearly 17k), "Assassination Classroom" (v1 does almost 15k), Naruto (v1 of the 3-in-1 edition does about 14k), "Fullmetal Alchemist" (v1, also of the 3-in-1 editon, does about 13k), as well as "Super Mario Adventures" (just under 13k), and, of course, "Pokemon" with 12k of $55 (!) boxed set of "Red & Blue"

Let's take a look at the "long tail" of Viz?

Their long tail is outpacing the front of the market, which is a perfectly fine place to be. Viz in 2018 has one book over 60k, another over 40k, five more over 30k, thirteen more over 20k, and thirty-eight more over 10k. I'd call that a healthy midlist.

Kodansha's licenses formerly were both the original backbone of Tokyopop, as well as being the majority of Del Rey Manga. Kodansha pulled Tpop's license in March of '09 and Del Rey in October of '10. You may want to look at those publisher's listings below to get a better historical overview.

Kodansha's current best-seller is "Fairy Tail", where v1 is at just under 15k (this was 17k last year). As there are an astounding sixty-four volumes of this series in print, but only five of those are in the Top 750, this continues to be a clear example of the "Hammock Principle" in practice. Briefly stated, books in a series generally sell in a sales pattern that looks like a hammock if you chart it out: the first few volumes and the last few volumes sell the best, with the ends running down into the middle volumes which have the lowest sales, like the sagging part of a hammock. The problem with this, as both stores that don't have infinite rack space, as well as publishers that need a certain volume and velocity to keep things in print, that sagging middle becomes unsustainable for most series over time, and stores start to only carry the first and last few volumes - See also, "The Walking Dead" in a bit.

Coming in at #2 for Kodansha is v1 of the smaller inexpensive version of "Sailor Moon" - it sells almost 13k copies. The bigger, thicker editions also charts, with v1 there doing a bit under 7k

At #3 & 4 is "Attack on Titan", where v 1 drops to under 12k in 2018 - this volume did around 19k in 2017, 26k in 2016 and 34k in 2015. "Attack" is clearly a weakening brand, with just ten of the twenty-six volumes from the main series placing into the Top 750 - twenty-three of them placed in 2017.

And for #5, and their last book to chart over 10k copies, is "Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku"

These Long Tail figures are just for Kodansha-published titles, and they reflect that Kodansha, itself, first started publishing in 2010:

In 2018, Kodansha has just five titles that sell over 10k.

Seven Seas' main success is "The Ancient Magus' Bride", with v1 selling nearly 12k copies, and v8 hitting 11k (the "hammock", remember?) - all nine volumes in the series chart, for a bit over 62k combined.

Also just a bit under 10k is "My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness", a book my stores have done extremely well with, usually turning a copy every other week.

Seven Seas' Long Tail shows them with a very strong growth this year.

Seven Seas has just two titles that sell over 10k.

Yen's sole significant seller is "Black Butler", where v1 brings in just a hair under 11k in the bookstore market. They sell nothing else over 10k.

In the Long Tail Yen is down for the second year in a row.

Yen Press has only one title selling over 10k copies in 2018

The best-selling DH title continues to be "Berserk" v1, scoring just under 14k copies sold.

Looking at the Long Tail, this is what Dark Horse's (manga only!) recent performance looks like - it's down, but after three strong years of growth, it's probably fine. There is much more on Dark Horse down below in the "Western Publishers" section.

Dark Horse Manga has one book over 10k.

Their best-seller is "The Complete Chi's Sweet Home" with v1 selling just over 11k.

The Long Tail also declines

Vertical has a single book over 10k

There's only one other Manga title that places over 10k copies this year, this is from Ten Speed Press: "The Life Changing Manga of Tidying Up", which sells just a hair over that 10k sold.

There is nothing else in the Top 750 that isn't from one of the above publishers - it's looking more like a closed system every year.

2018 Western Publishers

When I say "Western" here, I mean publishers/work from Europe and America, as opposed to Asia, not publishers of the genre of "western" comics!

I'd like to continue to remind you that back in 2008 there was some sort of behind-the-scenes recategorization in what got sent to me - I now know this is probably a change in BISAC codes! - and most of the "cartoon-strip humor" books like "Calvin & Hobbes" and "The Far Side" suddenly disappeared, so there's kind of a not-strictly apples thing going on with the pre-2008 numbers here. Do keep that in mind when making comparisons both in the Top 750 chart, as well as the Long Tail.

BookScan itself does not try to control how data gets initially logged (or changed), leaving that all to publishers. I think that I understand this reasoning: the publisher is the customer, and they should have some level of control over how they are represented, but as a person who tries to decipher the data each year, I know that I would prefer some sort of internally-consistent (and externally-petionable!) method of categorizing titles that doesn't seem to change in some fashion from year-to-year - Books will appear and disappear, almost seemingly willy-nilly, and it makes showing you anything even resembling consistent data staggeringly difficult. All of this is a function of how publishers assign BISACs and in what order - see the preamble above!

Another observation I have is that BookScan tracks (theoretically at least, since again, publishers set their own BISACs) Adult reading distinctly from YA and Kids. I don't. Part of this is that I'm a bookseller, and I'm rather agnostic about who specifically buys books as a result. But I have to be certain to make this point as clearly as I can: the market for who is buying comics is changing, and it is changing for the wider and the better. The eight year old who is inhaling Dav Pilkey in 2018 is going to be the comics-literate adult of 2030 (or whatever), which is going to change what comics readers in the '30s will want or expect from comics. The kids reading comics in 1965 totally imagined what the 1980's comics scene could and would be, which is why we're where we are today, but the shape of the Western industry in the future is absolutely what today's children read and see.

Ignore this at your peril.

OK, enough editorializing, let's look at the market!

Here's the Top 750 over time:

Up 16% in pieces, up 10% in calculated retail dollars, the highest totals in this tranche that we have ever seen - it's a very good year for Western comics, as reported to BookScan in 2018!

If we were to look at the entirety of BookScan's reported numbers for the total 27,853 "Western" comics, things look generally like this - there are 1236 publishers listed in the 2018 chart, but only 13 of them manage to capture more than 1% of the market

This is not quite as lopsided as the Manga chart.... But it is getting there a little?

Let's start with a look at the Long Tail for Western publishers collectively:

Fantastic collective performance, and one that really points out the errors in the '15-'16 data - as noted above, I now believe that the leaked data those years was only for "in print" books. Comics are pretty clearly a growing medium, by like a million copies a year (!) Compare that first year of long-tail to the current one: more than 400% growth in pieces, wow!

The challenge for the market is for how we grow and adapt to the changes in taste that are becoming clear: "traditional" genres and sellers are starting to suffer in the face of a new widening of the market. From 20,000 feet this seems pretty healthy, even though it seems clear that every participant isn't going to be able to thrive. We'll cover that in the weeds, below!

Next, we'll survey each of the publishers, and their best-selling titles, ranking them by the number of pieces they sold this year with the Top 750 of BookScan. We'll also look at the "long tail" for each entry discussing the entirety of BookScan.

It is now the fourth year in the row that our #1 Western publisher in the Top 750 is Scholastic. This is no longer an amusing anomaly: this is the new reality. Look at the overall market, and pause and wonder at that dominating 33% market share of pieces sold. Consider for a moment that Scholastic has done this with only two hundred and twenty four books, total! Consider for a second moment that Scholastic only started "doing" comics in 2005.

Just limiting ourselves to the Top 750, Scholastic surges forward in sales this year by selling an absolutely staggering 4.5 million copies, from 58 placing books This is an unbelievable 67% growth from last year (2.7 million copies), which was up 42% from 2016 (1.9 million). In calculated retail dollars, we're looking at almost $53 million dollars in sales.

This is even more incredible when you start to think that these are sales to book stores (and Amazon) only - none of these numbers (as far as I know) include the direct-to-families sales that happen via the incredibly successful Scholastic Book Fairs. Nor does this count any sales that are being done to elementary and middle school libraries, numbers that likely exceed retail sales. Possibly by a multiple.

Also consider that the next largest publisher sold a combined 661k copies, less than a sixth of their volume.

Scholastic has several imprints - besides the Graphix imprint, they also publish Arthur A. Levine and Blue Sky.

In alphabetical order by imprint:

Arthur A. Levine places one book into the Top 750 just as they have for years, and it's the same book: just a bit over 9k copies of "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan.

Blue Sky is also just one book in the Top 750 - Dav Pilkey's "Ook & Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen" shifting 27k copies, much of that on the sidestream of the success "Dog Man".

The Graphix imprint has 43 placing titles, for just nearly 4.3m in sales, and is where the big hits live: the aforementioned "Dog Man" and all of Raina Telgemeier's books ("Sisters", "Smile", "Drama", and the first four "Baby Sitter's Club" adaptations), all of which are discussed up top. "Dog Man" alone shifts nearly 2.7 million books, to recap. Telgemeier sells "only" 916k.

The post-Telgemeier "Baby Sitter's Club" steamrolls without her - the two Gale Galligan-adapted books sell more than 220k copies.

Graphix also does fantastic with Kazu Kibuishi's "Amulet" - volume 8, "Supernova" sells nearly 88k copies. All eight volumes of the series chart, as well as various permutations of box sets - which, can I tell you, are giant dollar generators for Scholastic: I calculate the box set of #1-7 alone generated more potential retail dollars than the release of v8. Altogether, nearly 302k copies of Amulet books are sold within the Top 750.

The first book of the adaptation of "Wings of Fire", "The Dragonet Prophecy" flies in with almost 81k sold

They don't quite make Scholastic's Top 20, but Jennifer Holm's "Sunny" books do excellent as well: selling a combined 66k copies between the two books. There's also a notable launch of Jarrett Krosoczka's "Hey Kiddo" at just over 21k, as well as Kristen Gudsnuk's "Making Friends" at almost 17k

Jeff Smith's "Bone", which largely launched Graphix, places four of the nine volumes into the Top 750 this year. V1, "Out From Boneville", sells almost 13k copies this year.

Scholastic also publishes as " Scholastic ", straight up, and they place 13 more titles that way. The big hit is more Dav Pilkey, as "The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby" roars back with some 41k copies sold, while Jeffrey Brown's "Jedi Academy" books continue to score: the first volume of that perennial series sold about 22k copies this year

The Long Tail for Scholastic looks like this - more insane growth:

Scholastic has one book over 700k, one more over 600k, another three over 300k, eight more over 100k, six more over 50k, thirteen more over 20k, and another ten over 10k. Whew! Any other publisher would be satisfied with half of that.

Scholastic seems more and more like an unstoppable juggernaut to me: the vast majority of their portfolio is extremely likely to go on to "perennial seller" status. Can you even imagine what might happen if they decided to do two streams of revenue and serialized first?

In what I can only categorize as the first of several "complete upsets", the #2 publisher is now Andrews McMeel. Andrews is a publisher that sometimes has frustrated me by how they've been represented by BookScan - as I noted, it used to be that "humor" books like "Far Side" and "Calvin & Hobbes" used to rule the BookScan charts. Until, one day, poof! Almost of those books disappeared entirely from the dataset I was given, throwing off a whole lot of my comparables. And, for the most part, comic strip reprints have stayed out of these charts for half a decade. But, they've started creeping back into the listings for the last few years. I'm actually fine with comic strips and comic books co-existing in the same places - at least they're both comics - but the inconsistency just drives me nucking futz.

I found 34 titles from Andrews in the Top 750 in 2018, for 661k copies and $10.5 million in sales, but clearly that number would scale up to some large degree if it listed all of the strip collections they publish. What's interesting about Andrews McMeel is that, for the most part, their "graphic novels" are reformatted/repackaged newspaper strips. In other words, this is basically the other paid-for way one can serialize work: through syndicated newspaper pages

Lincoln Pierce and "Big Nate" is the big star player for Andrews McMeel - there are fifteen different "Big Nate" volumes in the Top 750, summing up to almost 340k copies combined. The best seller ("Silent But Deadly" sells around 84k copies)

The other big winner is Dana Simpson's "Pheobe and Her Unicorn" which does nearly as well, with v1 selling just over 82k copies, and placing all eight volumes into the Top 750, summing to 206k total sold.

There's also a smattering of "traditional" strips here: I can see the $100 "Complete Calvin & Hobbes" here (26k copies, which would make that the #6 dollar book in the entire chart) as well as the same for $100 "The Complete Far Side" (11k copies). There's also 16k copies of "Herding Cats" from Sarah Andersen's "Sarah's Scribbles" and almost 15k of a Trump-focused "Doonesbury" volume. But I'm still missing most of the rest of Watterson, Larsen, and Trudeau.

Andrews McMeel's Long Tail chart is just about the most useless one of all because they publish a whole lot of comics (humor strips, like "Calvin & Hobbes") where the BISAC changed to something we're having a hard time properly getting - almost certainly they're doing several times better than this chart would suggest because of those books. Further, things appear and disappear in a way I've never been able to make sense of - it might be them changing BISACs after the fact. Most of my comparatives are terrible and counterproductive here, and I really apologize for the weakness of my data in this specific instance.

Andrews McMeel has three books over 50k, four more over 20k, and seventeen others over 10k.

Like a lot of the "big five" book publishers, these companies have lots and lots of imprints built up over decades of publishing books. Penguin Random House, as best as I can tell, has thirteen (sheesh!) distinct imprints that appear in the Top 750 list for 2018 - Alfred A. Knopf, Ballantine, Clarkson N. Potter, Crown, Del Rey, Dial, Pantheon, Random House Books For Younger Readers, Ten Speed, Triangle, Tundra, Viking, and Yearling

They're also, in the long tail: ( deep breath!) Ace, Bantam, Berkley, Broadway Books, Doubleday, Dutton, Emblem, Golden, Gotham Books, G.P. Putnam & Sons, Grossett & Dunlap, Hudson Street, InkLit, McClelland & Stewart, Montena, New American Library, Penguin, Philomel, Plume, Price Stern Sloan, Puffin, Putnam, Razorbill, Riverhead, Schocken, Schwartz & Wade, Three Rivers, Villard, and Watson-Guptill. ( whew!) However, they are not (Brian writes down here so he remembers this research next year) the PRH-distributed-only Campfire, Frog In Well, Library of America, Overlook Press, Powerhouse, Quirk, Shambhala, Universe, or Verso

Looking at those imprints in alphabetical order:

Alfred A. Knopf Books For Younger Readers places two books into the Top 750, starting with "The Cardboard Kingdom" by Chad Sell, which sells 12k. There's also the first volume of Jarrett J. Krosocza's "Lunch Lady" series at a bit over 8k.

Ballantine places eight titles in the Top 750: Seven different "Garfield" volumes ranging from 4100-7200 copies each, as well Bryan Lee O'Malley's "Seconds", which sells just under 5k copies in its fifth year of release.

Clarkson N Potter does a huge 41k with Mari Andrews' "Am I There Yet? The Loop-de-loop Zigzagging Journey to Adulthood"

Crown Books for Younger Readers has a volume of Jeffrey Brown's "Lucy & Andy Neanderthal" ("Bad to the Bones") which does 4500 copies.

Del Rey publishes the Dave Wenzel adaptation of "The Hobbit" for about 7k copies.

Dial places two books by Victoria Jamieson: "Roller Girl", at almost 47k, and "All's Faire in Middle School" with 37k in its second frame.

Pantheon is their "literary" comics wing, and has some of PRH's best-sellers - but this year, hrm, I seem to be missing most editions of "Maus" and "Persepolis"? Why did I not notice this until I was halfway through writing? Ugh. Typically there are nine or so Pantheon books in the Top 750, but I only have two now: 23k copies of art spiegelman's "Complete Maus" in HC (but not the two softcovers that almost always sell much better), and just over 10k of the adaptation of "Anne Frank's Diary" by Ari Folman.
Random House Books For Younger Readers
Ten Speed Press brings us a single title, a comics biography of Alexander Hamilton, with just over 4k sold. (plus they have that single volume of Manga of the adaptation of "The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up", listed in the manga section.)

Triangle Square also places a single title: 5200 copies of "Sex is a Funny Word: A Book about Bodies, Feelings, and You"

Tundra has PRH's best-selling titles with Ben Clanton's "Narwahl: Unicorn of the sea" series, another juvie-aimed title. V3 launches at 52k, while the softcover of v1 does almost 44k. All together in all formats, it places 186k copies between six editions.

Viking comes along with "Caveboy Dave: More Scrawny Than Brawny" with just over 7k.

And finally, Yearling is (for some reason), the new home of the softcovers of Jeffrey Brown's "Lucy & Andy", with two volumes adding up to about 9600 copies.

Penguin Random House formed out of a merger in 2013 - prior to that they were separate publishers Penguin and Random House. Here's what the Long-Tail for the combined Penguin Random House looked like in 2017:

However, I'm not willing to pull an " We've always been at war with Eastasia " moment, so let's look at the individual pieces of the past. This is what Penguin Putnam (Ace, Berkley Books, Dial, Dutton, Gotham Books, Grossett & Dunlap, Hudson Street, InkLit, New American Library, Penguin, Philomel, Plume, Price Stern Sloan, Puffin, Putnam, Razorbill, Riverhead and Viking) used to look like alone)

This is what Random House (Alfred A. Knopf, Ballantine, Bantam, Broadway, Crown, Del Rey, Doubleday, Pantheon, Random House, Schocken, and Three Rivers) looked like alone:

Penguin Random House has one title over 50k, eight additional books over 20k, and another six books over 10k.

By imprint, we start alphabetically with Farrar Straus Giroux which has three placers in the Top 750: "All Summer Long" by Hope Larson (just over 19k), Emily Carroll's adaptation of "Speak" (about 12k), and the hardcover version of the "Wrinkle in Time" adaptation (about 6k)

Feiwel & Friends brings two volumes of "Wires and Nerve", with v2 moving 12k, and v1 about 5500 copies.

FirstSecond is their strongest imprint, with 24 books placing into the Top 750, and where they score their biggest hit with the McEllroy's "The Adventure Zone", which blows out a huge 94k copies sold in its debut year. They also do terrific with "Real Friends" by Shannon Hale (70k), Vera Brosgol's "Be Prepared" (38k), and Jen Wang's "The Prince and the Dressmaker" (about 21k)

Square Fish 's deal is cheaper repackaging from other imprints (I don't personally get this business model) and has four placing titles. The softcover of Hope Larson's adaptation of "A Wrinkle In Time" sells a giant 52k, while Gene Yang's "American Born Chinese" does almost 35k

Here's Holtzbrinck's Long Tail (again, I might have missed an imprint somewhere - trying to tease them all out is a difficult task from their Byzantine org chart). Another great year of growth for them.

Holtzbrinck has three books over 50k, three more over 20k, and five others over 10k.

Amistad has a single book: 4700 copies of "Monster: A Graphic Novel" by Walter Dean Myers.

At Balzer & Bray it is all about Terri Libenson, and "Positively Izzy" (a staggering 91k) and "Invisible Emmie" (77k). There's also a box set of the two which moves over 8k copies.

At the various Harper-named imprints, their biggest hit is from "Minecraft-inspired YouTube star PopularMMOs" with "PopularMMOs Presents A Hole New World" which sells a staggering 93k. The second best-seller is a similar YouTube-based comic from "DanTDM", with "DanTDM: Trayaurus and the Enchanted Crystal" (29k in softcover, and 16k in hardcover) They also do well with nearly 23k copies sold of "Everyone's a Aliebn When UR a Aliebn Too"

Harper also does great with "Warriors: Graystripe's Adventure" (almost 15k), Noelle Stevenson's "Nimona" (14k), a volume of Lincoln Pierce's "Big Nate" - "Triple Play" sells just under 13k. They also sell almost 12k copies of the adaptation of "To Kill A Mockingbird"

Nothing else is over 10k, so here is the Long Tail:

Harper has three books over 50k, two books over 20k, and another five more over 10k

Image Comics in now our #6 Western publisher via the BookScan reporters; Image has 42 titles placing within the Top 750 in 2018, that sell 402k copies and just a notch over $11m in calculated retail value. That's a huge drop from last year's 909k, and almost $7.6m.

Because Image is a primarily Direct Market retailer, we've always built a special year-by-year chart for them in the Top 750 (Hey! I have my biases!), and this is what Image's performance has looked like for the last sixteen years:

And, yeah, doesn't look good at all. In fact, its kind of a rout after years of flying high with volume down 56% from height, and dollars down almost 2/3. Ow.

Image's success is currently lead by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples' "Saga", where v8, the 2018 release with twelve full months of sales, racks up almost 45k copies. This is about the same as v7 did in 2017, so the book is clearly staying strong. V9 (released just in October) sells about 29k. Possibly troubling is that v1 "only" sells 17k (down from 20k in 2017), and that the "sag" of the "hammock" (discussed in the manga section) means that v3-6 have all dropped substantially under 10k for the first time. And I don't think anyone knows what is going to happen in 2019 and beyond while "Saga" is on a (at least?) one-year hiatus, but at least in 2018 "Saga" seems to be hanging in there. Image just needs a few more books that can hit those bigger peaks. Altogether, in all formats, "Saga" sells about 161k copies into the bookstores.

A large portion of Image's chart retreat, of course, is from the sinking sales of "The Walking Dead". Two years ago, "TWD" in the Top 750 placed 37 titles selling more than a half-million copies for $17.5 million calculated dollars, while this year only 13 "TWD" books make the Top 750, and sell only 115k copies for $3.1m in calculated retail dollars. That's an extremely sharp drop in velocity. Most of those calculated dollars come from the "Compendium" (the package with 48 issues for $60) - v1 barely tops 9700 copies in 2018, when it sold 19k in 2017 and a staggering 71k in 2016. This was all "free" money (being the fourth time getting paid for the same work), but its still got to hurt a little. 2018's best-selling individual volume of "TWD" was v29 (released in July '18) - it sells about 26k copies. For comparison v27 sold 36k in 2017 (released in March '17) - not exactly apples to apples, but it looks like the frontlist portion of "TWD" is starting to slow down too (it was 43k in 2016, for what it is worth)

If you look at the entire "long tail" for 2018, then there are 78 books in various formats (HC, SC, en espanol, covers, whatever) branded as "TWD". They sell 166k copies for $4.6m calculated dollars at full retail in 2018 - in 2017, that was 266k and $7.1m, so not all of the Long Tail pain below is "TWD" this year.

Image's #6 best-selling title is the first volume of Majorie Liu and Sana Takada's "Monstress", coming in at a bit over 16k. This is a large drop from 24k in the previous year.

"Paper Girls" by BKV and Cliff Chiang" is #7 in the book stores - that's 12k on v1. They also sell nearly 11k of v7.

Nothing else from Image sells over 10k this year - "Snotgirl" v1 shifts 7400 copies is as close as they come.

Only one other new Image volume manages to pull in sales over 10k this year: the first volume of Bryan Lee O'Malley and Leslie Hung's "Snotgirl", which almost pulls in 11k, along with another 4k or so from a Barnes & Noble exclusive cover. Series that were selling over 10k last year included the first volumes of "Descender", "Bitch Planet" and "Rat Queens", but the best-selling of these ("Bitch Planet") dropped to around 8k this year in the bookstores, and the others are even lower. Image needs to seriously develop a few more new hits.

Here's what Image's Long Tail looks like: just like from the top, it's a brutal cut this year. These are not happy numbers, for a second year in the row.

Image has three titles over 20K, and another eight over 10k.

Here is how Marvel looks in the Top 750:

I mean, dollars are up, so can't really call this anything bad, but, man when they are generating a billion dollars per movie now in ticket revenue, you'd think some of it would bleed over into sales of the source material - and it did help on the top (as you'll soon see), but the midlist is languishing which is where you want to some life.

Ultimately, I think the problem is that Marvel's backlist is kind of scattershot. Very few titles are truly perennial, and the branding and packaging is all over the map. New backlist releases are designed for maximizing revenue, rather than audience size, where price-per-page is very similar to the serialization cost. New backlist releases also have poor "hand", feeling very thin compared to other books on the shelves. Its hard to follow which sequence individual books come in, and they're not exactly committed to aggressively reprinting either. I honestly think that Marvel backlist should be selling significantly better than it does - it's very nearly the crown jewels of comics these days.

On the other hand, they passed DC this year, so you have to give them that.

However, they do for sure have at least one hit this year: "Infinity Gauntlet" moved nearly 54k copies in 2018 - that's up hugely from 16k in 2017.

Also doing extremely well is the first volume of Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet" - 36k copies, which is a rise on 2017's 28k, but with the billion-dollar Oscar-winning commercial this seriously should have pushed much further. V2 sells 13k, while v3 drops to 9400.

Marvel's third best-selling comic is "Infinity War", drafting off of #1. It pulls in a solid 16k.

Coming in at #5, and almost the only Marvel book in the Top 750 that has absolutely no movies advertising it, is "Ms Marvel v1: No Normal". Sure, people aren't looking for diversity. It sells 13k.

Slightly below at #6 (by like 125 copies!) is "Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe", while #7 & 8 are the most recent "Darth Vader" comic - 11k for v1, and 9400 for v2.

Finally, Marvel's #10 book is "Civil War" at about 8700 copies. I feel like this should sell twice that, right?

No other Marvel comics top 10k in the bookstore market.

Here is Marvel's Long Tail.

Marvel has one book over 50k, one over 20k, and another five that are over 10k.

Our #8 publisher in the Top 750 is DC Entertainment.

This is, frankly, shocking to me. For the first decade-plus I have been doing these charts, DC's attention to backlist had naturally rendered them the #1 publisher.... With a bullet! And even when, the last few years, they lost the #1 spot to Scholastic, they were still majorly, significantly always at least #2.

In 2018 they placed just 47 titles in the Top 750, for just over 360k units, and just under $7.8 million in calculated retail price. DC has four charting imprints: DC Black Label, DC, DC Zoom and Vertigo. Deep in the long tail we can still track Mad, Wildstorm, Paradox, Minx and CMX.

Here's a year-to-year comparison chart of the Top 750:

2018 is pretty ugly in the book stores for DC - they haven't had this tragic of a performance since 2005. And I'm still trying to wrap my head around it from 20,000 feet.

Now, there's no doubt that the rebranding from "New 52" to "Rebirth" simply did not work in the mid-term - it does not appear that the "civilian" audience understood why continuity was being "reset" again so quickly. And while the "Rebirth" GN numbers were OK to start, they very very quickly bombed out. Here's an example: the first "Rebirth" "Harley Quinn" launched at 13k in 2017. In 2018, it sold just 1818 copies. Kind of shockingly, v1 of the "New 52" "Harley" outsold it at 1894 copies. You can see this over and over again down the line: "Rebirth" "Batman" v1 sold 24k in 2017, and just over 5600 copies in 2018. "Nightwing" v1 sold 12k in 2017, down to 3k in 2018. In fact, not a single "Rebirth" branded book passes 10k in 2018, and it completely slaughtered the sales of the "New 52" editions as well.

I sort of get all of that, and how the mechanics of that can work... but what I don't really grasp is why the strong backlist, the stuff that has sold month-in, month-out for (in many cases now, decades), suddenly fell off the cliff, as you'll see.

To help with your trivia contests sometime in the future, "What is the first ' Black Label' book?" Well, it is "Batman: White Knight". It sells about 18k copies in the bookstores. My larger question is "what is 'Black Label' actually going to be?" is still unanswered, though. I think DC has sent extremely mixed messages. This is DC's #3 best-selling book over all, by the way.

There's also a single DC Zoom book in the Top 750 this year: "DC Super Hero Girls: Date With Disaster" - it sells just over 8k copies. I can't explain what makes this one, which is actually v5, sell so much better than the other volumes - the next one listed is out of the top 750, and sells under half at around 3600 copies - the same thing is true in my comic shop, this is the one that sells best. So odd.

There are six books branded as Vertigo. "Sandman" v1 does the best with 11k sold (it is DC's #7 best-selling book), and "Preacher" v1 does next best at about 5600 copies, way down from 11k the previous year.

The remaining 39 books are branded as DC Comics. The best-selling of these is "Watchmen" for 27k, but that's down from 31k last year. Why?

#2 is the paperback of "Dark Nights: Metal" just over 19k (while companion book "Dark Knights Rising" [#6] brings in almost 12k, and "Dark Days: The Road to Metal" [#9] does about 9500 copies)

At #4 for DC is "Batman: The Killing Joke", which moves almost 17k copies. That sounds good... but it sold 36k the year before, and 131k the year before that. Again: why the plunge?

#5 is "V For Vendetta" at 14k (18k the year before)

#8 is "Batman: Year One" at just under 10k - it's dropped from about 11k; #10 is v4 of the "Rebirth" "Batman" ("The War of Jokes & Riddles"), and fallen out of the Top 10 at #11 is Frank Miller's "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" with under 9k sold - dropped from over 11k.

I don't know, these are pretty depressing numbers. The layoffs make a lot more sense now.

Here's DC's Long Tail - this was not, even slightly, a good year for DC, and they are, year-over-year, pretty much worst performing major publisher in 2018, despite having one of the widest backlists.

DC now just has one books over 20k, and just seven more that come in over 10k.

JY is their strongest imprint, being home to Svetlana Chmakova's "Awkward" (57k), "Brave" (44k), and "Crush" (39k)

Little, Brown places six books into the Top 750, "Catstronauts: Mission Moon: is their best-seller at nearly 16k, and the later volumes all follow. They also sell 3447 copies of the first 3-in-one edition of Herge's "Tintin", which continues to be disturbingly low for one of the classic masters of the medium, if you ask me.

None of their other imprints manage to score any titles at 10k or over.

Here's the Long Tail of just the Western books for Hachette. It's going to jump a bit because we now add Perseus publishers (which they purchased in 2016) Basic Books, Public Affairs, and Running Press:

And if you add the Manga from Yen, the combined total looks like this:

Hachette has one title over 50k, two more over 20k, and two others over 10k, on the Western charts.

It is another fairly hard year for Dark Horse as they've lost access to several of the best licenses they had (Star Wars, Conan, Whedonverse), but they're having a hard time pushing creator-owned material and make it work. Rock and hard place.

Dark Horse best licensed property in 2018 becomes "Legend of Korra" as v2 of "Turf Wars" sells almost 18k. V3, which was released in September, sells 11k, and v1 is a bit under 8k.

They do nearly as well with the first release from "Overwatch", about 500 copies behind, though because of rounding, I call it "just over 17k".

One of Karen Berger's books is Dark Horse's 3 rd best-sellers in bookstores: "Anthony Bourdain's Hungry Ghosts" with just over 14k. RIP, man.

Dark Horse's previous #1 license, "Plants Vs. Zombies", is their #4 and 5 (and 7, 9 and 10 for that matter!) - 12k for v9, v10, 11k for v1. Everything else is under 10k.

Here's what Dark Horse's Western performance looks like in the Long Tail. They keep losing all of their best toys, but they're getting solid performance with no losses!:

Despite the weakening frontlist, in the Long Tail Western Dark Horse has its best year ever. Again!

Dark Horse's Manga offerings are up in that section. Dark Horse is one of the rare publishers that does a significant business in both Eastern and Western comics, and I'm sure they'd prefer all of their numbers to be represented together. In which case, their Long Tail actually looks like this:

Dark Horse has one title over 20k on the Western charts, and seven more over 10k.

That is it for the top ten publishers, but there's a few more publishers it's worth singling out for attention because they have a historical value, they're significant for either the book or comics markets, they are growing, or there is otherwise something of note about them!

Since this is a report on bookstore sales, let's start with the last of the mainstream book world's "Big Five": Simon & Schuster. They only have three placing titles in the Top 750, none of which hit 10k.

Much of this is my decision this year to not count illustrated novels as "comics", which loses Rachel Renee Russell and "Dork Diaries" and others.

Simon has several imprints, including Aladdin, Atria, Atheneum, Free Press, Margaret K. Elderberry, Gallery 13, Pocket, Scribner, and Touchstone. Their best-selling comic this year is from Simon proper, and is "Fake Blood", at about 6300 copies.

Here is Simon & Schuster's Long Tail, which includes the imprints that I'm aware of.

Almost all of the 2018 drop is my dropping Rachel Renee Russell as "comics", so this is on me, not them!

Simon & Schuster has no books over 10k this year.

If I kept counting past the Top Ten publishers, Henry N. Abrams would have come in at #11 - they place 17 titles, for 210k pieces and $2.9m in calculated retail sales.

They publish as Abrams Comicarts, Henry N. Abrams, as well as Amulet Books. They're not considered one of the book world "Big Five", but they're not a traditional Direct Market publisher either.

Their best-selling book is "El Deafo" which does fantastic at 50k. The next best seller is the eighth volume of "Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales" - just over 23k copies of "Lafayette!" All eight chart, and six of them sell over 10k.

Here is your long-tail; solid performance:

Henry N. Abrams has one book over 50k, two over 20k, and four more over 10k.

While not one of the "Big Five", there are several other publishers that I would consider both "significant" as well as bookmarket-first who did well in the Top 750. In straight alphabetical: Bloomsbury (3 titles), Candlewick (3), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2), and Hyperion/Disney Press (8), Joe Books (3), and Skyhorse (8)

The first up is Bloomsbury, which marks its very first appearance here in building a long-tail. They place 3 books into the Top 750, for a total of almost 21k. Roz Chast's two memoirs ("Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant" and "Going Into Town") both sell over 10k copies - with 100 copies of each other!

First time long-tail:

Bloomsbury has two titles over 10k.

Also here for the first time is Candlewick. They also place three titles, for just over 50k. The best selling is "Flora & Ulysses" which is mostly prose, but does have a significant enough comics section in it to be on "this side" of the line for the category. It sells 29k copies. They also move about 15k copies of "Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made"

Here's a Long Tail:

Candlewick has one book over 20k and one over 10k.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishes comics both as HMH and Mariner. They place two titles into the Top 750 that total about 27k

The best-seller is Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home" which does 22k. They also place about 4200 copies of Bechdel's "Are You My Mother?" into the Top 750.

The Long Tail:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has just the one book over 20k.

Hyperion/Disney Press is, like Marvel, also owned by Disney. Technically, that probably means I should fold them together, but I resist, how I resist (largely because they are distributed separately). Hyperion has eight placing titles, doing 104k. The best-selling title is 54k copies of "Gravity Falls: Lost Legends", but they also shift 16k copies of the adaptation of "Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief"

Hyperion has one book over 50k, and another over 10k.

Joe Books mostly just do screen-cap fumetti (Or as they call them, "cinestory"). Their best-seller in 2018 is the first volume of "Gravity Falls", at 6700 copies. Three titles total place, for all of 17k copies. However, at press time I just found out that Joe Books has just ceased operations, so this may well be the last time we see them on these charts. I'd built the long-tail already, so here it is.

Joe Books has two titles over 20k, and three more over 10k.

Skyhorse (placing eight books for just over 71k total) is here on the strength of screencap fumetti comics taken from "Minecraft" published in their Sky Pony imprint. All of these comics are "unofficial", however, as they're not licensing the Minecraft brand or engine to do so. The best-seller, "Saving Xenos" is their sixth "unofficial" Minecraft GN, and does almost 13k copies, and they have two others which also top 10k. I don't really have anything else to say about them, though!

Here's their long tail, such as it is:

Skyhorse has three books over 10k.

Outside of those bookstore-native publishers, we've got several Direct Market-native publishers who placed more than three titles into the Top 750. Those would be: IDW (7), Oni (7), Boom (5), Archie (3), Drawn & Quarterly (3), Fantagraphics (3), and Nobrow (3)

IDW Publishing places seven books for a total of 84k sold. Representative John Lewis's "March" trilogy, his memoir about the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, is absolutely their biggest hit. Volume 1 sells 35k, v2 sells 13k, and v3 sells just under 10k, while the boxed set of the whole trilogy shifts 11k through BookScan reporters. I will never ever understand why, for a historical-driven series like this there's such a wide spread between v1 and v3.

They have no other books over 10k this year.

IDW moved their bookstore distribution over to Penguin Random House (and away from Diamond Books) in 2017, joining DC and Dark Horse. This doesn't seem to have helped them, judging by their long tail - double digit decline this year. Here is IDW's Long Tail:

IDW has one book over 20k, and two more over 10k.

Oni Press is our next publisher, with seven placing books for about 38k total. "Rick and Morty" is their biggest hit, with v1 selling a bit over 6600 copies

Here's Oni's Long Tail

Oni has no books over 10k.

Boom! Sells five titles into the Top 750, for almost 27k, using the imprints Archaia, Boom, Boom Box, Boom Town, and Kaboom. Four of the five of those placing titles are "Lumberjanes", with v1 the strongest at 9200 copies.

The Long tail:

Boom! just has no books over 10k.

Archie Comics places three books in the Top 750, selling 17k copies. It is probably not a surprise that the best seller is "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina", which sells about 9500 copies

Here's Archie's Long Tail:

Archie has no books over 10k

Drawn & Quarterly places three books into the Top 750, for about 21k copies. Their best-seller is 12k of "Sabrina" - no not the Netflix show, the Man Booker award finalist by Nick Drnaso. First time a comic has ever been up for that prestigious award!

Drawn & Quarterly has one book over 10k.

Here's something slightly surprising: this is the first time Fantagraphics has placed enough books into the Top 750 to get a write up - they place three books for about 22k total, with the most successful title being the amazing "My Favorite Thing is Monsters" by Emil Ferris with 13k copies sold.

For the first time ever, here's Fantagraphics' long tail!

Fantagraphics has one book over 10k

Also the first time we're building a long-tail, here's Nobrow (which only started in 2011, can you believe?) - they have three books placing for just under 20k total. They are all volumes of "Hilda", drafting on the Netflix animated adaptation, with "Hilda and the Troll" selling just over 10k.

Here's the Nobrow long-tail:

Nobrow has the one book over 10k.

No publisher that has not been mentioned placed more than three titles within the Top 750, which leaves me with fourteen more books from twelve different publishers.

Only two of the remaining placing books sell over 10k copies. First is The Fantastic Flatulent Fart Brothers Big Book of Farty Facts which sells, gosh, 16k copies. It is published by Top Floor Books. Also over 10k is the wonderful Sheets by Brenna Thummler, and published by Lion Forge.

After that, none of the remaining books sell 10k, so they don't get individual write ups (I'm tired! This is over 20k words already!)

A few final bits of number-crunching for fun before we go for the year!

First and foremost: I'm sure you noticed that one of the columns on the BookScan chart is listed as "publishers". I've never been able to understand why: that column is clearly the distributor column, with the (very very) weird exception of DC Comics. DC (and Dark Horse, and IDW, and others) are distributed by Random House in the bookstore market, not Diamond. Marvel is distributed by Hachette. Boom! is distributed by Simon, and so on. Now most analysis that I do I get fairly rigorous about going in and fixing problems, but this is a simple search. So who are the leaders for distribution?

Turns out it looks like this in 2018:

Not what you pictured in your head, was it? This chart is one of the reasons why it is hard to call Diamond a true "monopoly", despite their presumptive domination in the Direct Market.

Lastly: if we look at the entirety of the 38k-long "Long Tail" BookScan list, how do the publishers stack up in 2018? This is everything, including both "east" and "west" comics, and we'll sort it by Calculated Retail Value, and rounding everything to the nearest hundred-thousand just for ease of presentation - Scholastic is strongly the biggest publisher in the Book stores, followed by Viz, then DC. Marvel is now within striking distance of that #3 spot. This is a pretty radical change from previous years.

#1 Scholastic Books $54.6

#2 Viz $44.4

#3 DC Comics $31.8

#4 Marvel $29.7

#5 Hachette $17.6

#6 Image $15.0

#7 Dark Horse $13.0

#8 Kodansha $12.6

#9 Andrews McMeel $11.9

#10 Macmillan $11.7

Or, if you'd prefer a visual chart?

How does it look to you?

Methodology:

"Direct Market" stores (also known as "your Local Comics Shop") buy much of their material for resale from Diamond Comics Distributors (though, not, by any means, all of the material your LCS has for sale - many DM stores are also buying from book-market wholesalers, or directly from publishers and have been for years). While many DM stores have Point-of-Sales (POS) systems, because our market buys non-returnable what we track in our side of the industry is what sells- in to the store, not what sells- through to the eventual consumer. In a very real way, this means that the DM store owner is the actual customer of the publisher, as opposed to the end consumer.

The bookstore market, however, buys their material semi-returnable, where they can send back some portion of titles that don't sell (but not, usually, all unsold product). Because of this, sell-through is the data that is tracked and trended. Bookstores that have POS systems are able to report their sales to BookScan, a subsidiary of The NPD Group (they bought it from Nielsen).

BookScan tracks the specific sales to consumers through its client stores. I had several well trained spies who have, for many years, provided me with access to the BookScan reports at the end of each year. However, I am very excited to say that we are now getting the BookScan reports directly from The NPD Group, with no filter or middleman! This is our second year of doing so.

However, getting "official" detail has brought a major change this year: NPD Group no longer wants us releasing the actual data, even the pretty tight "Top 750" as has been our historical practice. I am fairly certain that, if you know how to search the internet, you could probably turn up previously published links from 2003 through 2017, but going forward, you will have to trust my abstract of the charts, rather than seeing the charts themselves. So sorry!

For some historical context, we have three "eras" of data: 2003-2005 numbers are "what is YTD sold, IF it made the chart in the last week of the year?"

2006-2016: the full "here's everything that sold throughout the entire year", but filtered through a leaker - almost certainly accurate, but absolutely missing some bits due to methodology changes and differences, even year-by-year. Important: in 2015 and 2016 I received lists that appeared to be lightly edited, potentially down to "books that are in print at the publisher level only" (obviously, there's still stock out there on the shelves of stores and in warehouses that is not "in print" per se). Those two years are asterisked to reflect that!

2017-now: "Everything" sold in the calendar year, with no filter. (Though see further notes below!)

Just bear this all in mind if you compare the various "eras" against one another. These are not inherently apples-to-apples comparisons as a result! This year's percentages are likely to be wacky compared to 2016, but moving forward there should be a much deeper consistency of data.

The biggest and most obvious difference when doing straight comparisons will be in the lower ends of the chart. This year, the "worst selling" book in the Top 750 is just about 3800 copies (about flat from the same 4k in 2016 and 2017, and up from about 3600 copies in 2015 and 2900 copies in 2014) In '03-'05 there would be many items that didn't have YTD sales in anything like that amount.

Also of major note is that starting in 2007, I have had the "full and entire" BookScan listing, down to books that have only one copy sold YTD. However, I've never tried to really analyze that entire list because that's too much data, even for a data-junkie like myself. I've cut the list off at 750 items because that's what we've historically reported. Still, I have the deeper data, and I'll summarize it as we go along. As long as I continue to get that much data going forward, I should be able to tell you a few things about " The Long Tail ". In 2018, I possess data on over 38,422 items! We'll talk more about this later in some depth, including the methodology of how these are generated.

This is important, however: this is not a list of every book that sold through every book store - the report is limited to those stores that report to BookScan. According to BookScan, more than 16,000 retail locations report to them, but this still leaves many venues that don't.

Nielsen claimed in 2013 that approximately 85% of retail, physical book sales are tracked through them, though this number appears very much in doubt as an actionable percentage for any specific individual book. A quick internet search can find any number of cases of authors saying that BookScan numbers show half or less of their royalty statements. There's some really excellent discussion on why and by how much BookScan numbers might be off right here.

BookScan says "Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Costco, General Independents, Hastings, Target, BJ's, K-Mart, Hudson Group, Meijers, Follett Books, Books-A-Million, CEO Read, Powells, Toys R Us, Shoprite, SuperValu, Sam's Club and Walmart are among our many data providers."

What sales do BookScan not track? Among others, this would include libraries, schools, specialty stores (like comic book stores!) and book clubs and fairs. BookScan does report sales from the indie bookstores of the American Booksellers Association-data represents sales from roughly 1,200 locations. For many books those are very very important sales channels, and thus, BookScan under-reports by some potentially significant degree, and don't, in any way, represent all physical book sales or even all "book stores" selling comic book material.

There's also a certain amount of miscategorization going on. As an example, for the last sixteen years the purely-prose novel Bloody Crown of Conan appears on my list, while other books (see; Dork Diaries in a few paragraphs) might appear one year, and disappear another. I do not know what the actual extent of miscategorization might be and how it would impact any of the general data analysis! There are simply too many potential data points to possibly connect them all together in the time I have to assemble this column.

I've done the best I can to try and root out any items "of significance" that should be on the chart that I'm given, but are not - for example, I have to have The Complete Persepolis and Maus manually pulled for me every year because of how BISAC codes work. Because this relies on me catching these titles to get them on to the list this means there's almost certainly comics material missing that I didn't catch. If you can think of a book I might have missed, please email me, and I'll try to track down the sales for it, and update my listings for the future! Even with my multiple safeguards, the datastream is too wide for me to not make mistakes. I make constant mistakes, as you'll see further down in the body of the column.

Either way, what I'm trying to get across to you is that this really is entirely unreliable data in terms of the absolute and total number of books sold, and is only able to give the broadest possible outline of what's happening in book stores, based upon the data-set that I'm being given, which is in no way comprehensive. I still think that's much much better than having no information, so I persevere in writing this each year. Also, now that I am getting directly from the NPD Group, I feel much more confident that I at least know where the potential problems generally are.

Again, I want to stress that I'm doing my primary analysis on the Top 750 items: the reason for this is that is all that I was able to get in the first four years of this analysis, and otherwise the percentage changes I'm discussing will be even more wrong than they would be otherwise. The Top 750 represents more than half of the total of the full list, and has consistently for years - in 2018 the Top 750 was roughly 11.8 million books sold; the bottom thirty-eight thousand-ish represents just about 8.2 million books sold. While there are significant sales below the Top 750, the Top 750 probably represents the majority of items you'd be able to "easily" find on the shelf of a bookstore in America. I'd love to analyze the full "long tail" list, but I'm afraid that this might take these little essays to triple their current size, and keeping your attention just through this seems hard enough to me! Maybe if someone paid me by the word...

Finally, it is probably worth mentioning that although I'm analyzing primarily units sold, I also have some calculations that are purely my own of dollars that they would have been if they were sold at full retail. BookScan does not report on the price that a book actually sold for, so the extrapolation of dollars that I made could be dramatically overstated. More than "could be": it probably is... because Amazon sells so many books, often at crazy steep discounts. In no way should you take any "Calculated Retail Value" as TRUE - these are just to provide a series of benchmarks, and to help you see the impact and differences that "cover price" can make in sales.

If it was not obvious, this only counts physical books, and does not include any digital sale of any kind; it does however, include all physical books sold through Amazon.

One of the things I really never talk about is how I get this data each year. certainly don't have a BookScan account (they're pretty expensive!), so I have historically dependent on leaks from industry sources. But this means that the methodology with which the data was generated may actually be very different from year to year. The thing is, since don't generate these, BookScan methodology is still largely a Black Box to me. For a guy who writes these reports for 16 (!) years, I still have only really a passing knowledge of how things work. I am learning, slowly, though!

Now that the NPD Group is directly providing us data, we can assume that the methodology itself will not change going forward. I got a lot more data this year than is usual (one of the reasons this is so much later than usual!), with nearly 47k data points which took some substantial cleaning to get down to the 38k we're actually using.
A Bunch of Information about BISAC codes and how this report is generated!
Here's where we learn a little bit about the Book Industry Standards and Communications (or "BISAC") codes. It turns out that the publishers assign them themselves, and that publishers are allowed to assign up to four different BISAC codes per item. For example: "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is classified as "Juvenile Fiction: Humorous Stories"; "Juvenile Fiction: Comics & Graphic Novels: General"; and "Juvenile Fiction: Social Issues: General". But the kicker is that BookScan reports will only spit out for the first BISAC listed for any given book. That is why "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" never ever showed on any of our previous reports, because the "comics" designation of the BISAC is listed second for that series! Conceptually I could also ask for "Juvenile Fiction: Humorous Stories" report, too - but that's going to have thousands and thousands of prose-only, not-even-slightly-comics items on it, and working to cut those would quintuple the hours I spend on this (no thanks!) This is also why I have to manually ask for titles like "Maus" or "Persepolis" or "Understanding Comics" each and every year - not because they don't contain the BISAC for comics ("CGN00xxxx" are the primary ones, for the record), but because that BISAC isn't listed first!

Now, historically, this has really been opaque to me, to the point where I didn't even really know what BISAC was what, but The NPD Group has been incredibly forthcoming in 2017, and I'm learning enough that I almost understand it. First and foremost, we're now having the report generated using the codes for "Comics & Graphic Novels" (CGN), as well as the "comics" portions of "Juvenile" fiction (JUV) and nonfiction (JNF), and Young Adult Fiction (YAF) and non-fiction (YAN). Please note that the J and Y series of codes extend far past "comics", but our search is for the narrower section. In addition to that, the NPD Group pulled records for three prominent authors that seldom showed up without intervention: Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, and Scott McCloud (As well as a small handful of books that I crosschecked against my own best sellers)

So you know, there are more than seventy-five "main" BISACs that we're pulling in full.

Again, the publishers are the ones who assign the BISACs, and they can assign up to four per book. But reports can only generate (for now) from what the first BISAC code is listed - The NPD Group tells me they're working on fixing that, but it's a limitation of the current tools. That's why they pulled by Author for Art Spiegelman - and look at how MAUS breaks down: the first individual volume has a primary BISAC of HIS022000 ("History: Jewish"), while the complete hardcover is BIO006000 ("Biography: Historical"). But the box set of the two paperbacks is BIO000000 ("Biography: General"), and METAMAUS (the book, with supporting documentation) for some reason is categorized as LIT017000 ("Literary: Comics & Graphic Novels") which I'm not at all certain how that is different from CGN006000 ("Comics & Graphic Novels: Literary") - but my point is that you have essentially one book that the publisher itself doesn't really know what the "primary" BISAC should be.

There's also more than a few dumb-ass choices, like the best-selling book in JUV008010 (Juvenile Fiction: Comics & GNs/Manga) being the not-even-slightly "manga" HILO by Judd Winick. These kinds of categorization problems pepper the entire database.

Additionally, only (apparently) the publishers can change BISACs, so even if I find errors year after year (god damn that BLOODY CROWN OF CONAN!!!), it's very very difficult to convince folks that it matters enough to devote man-hours to fixing up, even if the folks at The NPD Group agree.

If you want to learn more about the theory and practice of BISAC codes, you can go and follow this link. (It's a trap!)

The main thing to know is that while BISAC is a pretty good system for categorizing books because it is solely in the publisher's hands it has some pretty extreme limitations when creating reports with it as the sole basis. There is not, however, any other way to generate this data without using those limitations, to the best of my knowledge.

Either way, prior to 2017 numbers, the exact methodology from my leakers is slightly different every year and sometimes we got weird spikes and discrepancies. For example, as far as I can tell, in 2014 and prior we were always getting every book that sold one copy anywhere, then in 2015, and slightly in 2016, we're getting a lightly edited list that only listed in-print books from some (but not all!) publishers. I put an asterisk on 2015 and 2016 because it was missing several thousand data points... But those very strongly appeared to be datapoints that may not materially affect the actual bottom-line health of dollars and pieces the charts (you'll see this year, I think). Either way, I really must once again urge you to treat every datapoint presented here as only part of the possible picture!

Anyway, we received a list this year that had the primary AND secondary BISACs on them, which helped a lot, but still didn't capture everything. And, heckfire, I forgot to handcheck for some of the problematic ones before starting writing the report this year. This is mostly because I had about 20% of these that had to get stripped out - audiobooks and things without prices and print-on-demand coloring books and such. I think I've got a system set for next year to eliminate most of this work, but we're still figuring our way through it all in 2018. Well, you'll see....

OK, that's the boilerplate and background out of the way, let's start looking at the data.
Brian Hibbs has owned and operated Comix Experience in San Francisco since 1989, was a founding member of the Board of Directors of ComicsPRO, has sat on the Board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and has been an Eisner Award judge. Feel free to e-mail him with any comments. You can purchase two collections of the first Tilting at Windmills (originally serialized in Comics Retailer magazine) published by IDW Publishing, as well as find an archive of pre-CBR installments right here. Brian is also available to consult for your publishing or retailing program.

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Tilting at Windmills #274: Looking at Bookscan for 2018

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"There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" It's time to look at graphic novel sales in 2018. Implausibly, this is the sixteenth annual report of something that is hard to exactly perceive and understand: the size and shape of the sales of graphic novels and trade paperbacks through the book store market, as seen through the prism of BookScan.

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What makes a good picture book?- Video interview with Tomie DePaola

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What makes a good picture book?- Video interview with Tomie DePaola

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Graphic Novels Belong in Your English Class. Here's How to Use Them

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Graphic Novels Belong in Your English Class. Here's How to Use Them

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When I think about certain books, I am transported back to milestones in my life the way other people are brought back by smell or song.

I turned 11 along with Harry Potter as I read The Sorcerer's Stone. I found The Perks of Being a Wallflower at exactly the right time-in the midst of the new frustrations and freedoms of high school. The Book Thief sang to me during my first year of teaching. I bought A Prayer for Owen Meany during the weekend of my sister's wedding.

When I think of the books that shaped me, I'm struck by nostalgia and appreciation. But now, as a library media specialist, I've also come to a realization: Not a single one of these texts was a graphic novel.

Where were they? Graphic novels certainly existed when I was in school. But looking back, I don't remember picking up any books with pictures after hitting middle school. Perhaps I thought of them as books for a younger audience, something to start with before you ascended to "real" books. This is a sentiment I occasionally hear echoed by educators. Perhaps I thought they only dealt with superheroes. I definitely did not foresee the graphic novels of my future.

My Awakening to the Genre

I first became aware of graphic novels while teaching high school English in Redding, Conn. A colleague and friend of mine introduced a graphic novel into her journaling course: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, an account of the author's childhood in Iran. Our department also purchased a few copies of The Odyssey, a graphic novel by Gareth Hinds, which depicts Odysseus' journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

But still, I was very surprised when I made the transition to middle school media specialist last year and witnessed the storm of interest in graphic novels. Our 6th through 8th grade students, regardless of reading level, flocked to the graphic novel section, the only area separated by genre in our fiction section. I was intrigued and began flipping through them as well.

These books were by no means intended for surface readers. While short on text, many were rich in complexity. My teacher mind immediately switched into overdrive. How can we use graphic novels as tools to benefit our curriculum and provide our students with new ways to access text? How can teaching graphic novels elevate the rigor of our classrooms?

Introducing graphic novels into the classroom provides a unique opportunity to teach a different type of literacy: visual literacy. Students can be taught to "read" and analyze not only text, but color, shape, texture, layout, and more. This skill (also noted in the Common Core State Standards) is going to become increasingly important in their world of digital media. It can also be transferred to text-based novels.

After observing colleagues implement successful lessons working with visual literacy, I started using a process that worked well. Here it is:

A Process for Teaching Graphic Novels

Begin by presenting students with a spread of graphic novel pages and asking them what they notice about the figures included or emphasized, the colors used, the arrangement of text and images on the page. Students can work in pairs or as a whole class to gather observations.

For example, in Paige by Page by Laura Lee Gulledge, a story about a girl facing anxiety after moving to a new home, one image features the main character, Paige, with a new sketchbook she has bought. One panel shows a close-up of her clutching the sketchbook; in the next, she holds both the sketchbook and a tin can to her ear. Students will notice that Paige is alone: The tin can is connected to a string, but no one is on the other line. In the next panel, the background suddenly appears blank, and Paige wonders to herself, "So I bought a sketchbook ... maybe it can help."

Once students gather observations, the class is then ready for analysis, to draw meaning from what they noticed. How are we meant to feel while looking at this image? Overwhelmed? Sad? What do you think the author/illustrator's message is? What evidence do you have? In the example from Paige by Page, students will ultimately recognize the loneliness of the main character, and her hope that art can help her to create meaningful bonds.

This same observation-analysis process can be applied to a quotation, poem, or passage.

Teachers can also juxtapose graphic novels and their text-based counterparts. For example, Jane, the Fox, and Me by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault interweaves the story of ostracized, modern-day student Helene with scenes from Jane Eyre.

Ask students: Why would the author/illustrator select this particular scene from Jane Eyre and include it at this moment (over others)? Does this visual representation of the original novel differ from the way you envisioned it? Do you think this author/illustrator effectively preserved characterization? The tone and mood of the scene? The author's message?

Students should be pushed to defend their responses using evidence from both texts. Students could also be challenged to create and defend their own graphic panel of a particular scene from a text-based work, which would challenge them to make important decisions regarding selection of images, text inclusion, color, and shading. This lesson promotes skills like developing a claim and supporting a claim with evidence, while also encouraging creativity.

Finally, graphic novels are an excellent resource for struggling readers and English-language learners. By providing students with the graphic novel version of a scene or chapter from a text-based novel prior to reading, students will have a general understanding of plot beforehand, and can focus on details. Alternatively, providing the graphic chapter after reading the text-based novel also supports comprehension. Students can reflect on their own learning: What had they missed or misunderstood before that became clear? What important plot points or ideas from the text have been reinforced in the graphic novel?

As an educator, I wish I could return to my child-self and whisper, "Hey, there's a whole other world of reading out there!" My hope is that we start to view graphic novels not as poor substitutions for text-based novels, but as opportunities to engage and challenge our students.

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Graphic Novels Belong in Your English Class. Here's How to Use Them (Opinion)

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When I think about certain books, I am transported back to milestones in my life the way other people are brought back by smell or song. I turned 11 along with Harry Potter as I read The Sorcerer's Stone.

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Omeka

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Library Guides: Omeka Exhibit Building: Build an Exhibit

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Library Guides: Omeka Exhibit Building: Build an Exhibit

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MeWe: The best chat & group app with privacy you trust.

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Brilliant features with no BS. No Ads. No Spyware. MeWe is the Next-Gen Social Network.

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Building Graphic Literacy: Graphic Novels and Picture Books (

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"A picture is worth a thousand words." As teachers look for ways to build a passion for reading, graphic novels and picture books merge the power of words with the power of illustrations. In this workshop, teachers will explore the role of graphic literacy in a classroom, build their classroom libraries, and create strategies for teaching graphic novels and picture books.

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Special thanks to member Laura M. Jiménez for her time and expertise in reviewing and adding additional resources for this blog post.
This summer members highlighted the need for more diversity in graphic novels. We've looked around the internet and compiled a list of suggested resources to check out. You will find some overlap between the titles suggested within these resources, but we've tried to find various lists that offer characters, authors, and illustrators from many places, with varied backgrounds, identities, and abilities.

At the end of this post, you will also find some research and additional reading on diversity and representation in graphic novels.

Book Lists

Teaching for Change carefully selects the best multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators as part of their Social Justice Books project. This graphic novel booklist is just one example of the lists available.

Each year, the Young Adult Library Services Association branch of the American Library Association announces their top graphic novels list. Check out the 2018 Top 10 list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens. You can find nominees for the 2019 list here and previous years' lists here.

From Electric Literature's list of 14 Diverse Graphic Novels About Coming of Age: "From an Iranian girl rebelling against the oppression of post-revolution Iran to a 'tomboy' refusing to conform to gender norms, these 14 graphic bildungsromans blend gorgeous artwork with the written word to create a diverse multiplicity of narratives telling of the confusion, joy, and hardship of growing up."

On her website American Indians in Children's Literature, NCTE member Debbie Reese compiles a list of Best Graphic Novels by Native Writers, which includes reviews that she's published, articles about graphic novels, and links to author sites and Native bookstores.

NCTE member and graphic novel scholar Laura M. Jiménez uses critical race theory in reading and evaluating graphic novels. She shares a list of keepers on her blog.

In honor of Will Eisner Week (March 1-7), which is held to "celebrate graphic novels, sequential art, free speech, and the amazing legacy of Will Eisner, one of the most innovative figures in the history of comics and graphic novels," the Teen Library Toolbox from School Library Journal put together a list of graphic novel titles featuring characters, authors, and illustrators from many places, with varied backgrounds, identities, and abilities.

Diversity in YA was founded in 2011 by authors Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo and celebrates young adult books about all kinds of diversity, from race to sexual orientation to gender identity and disability. These blog posts feature diverse graphic novels, including posts by the novel authors themselves.

While a bit older, this podcast from ReadWriteThink is still relevant and offers an introduction to graphic novels and some suggested titles to check out.

In this post, blogger Meet the World compiles a list of 30 diverse graphic novels that prioritize #ownvoices.

In this list from School Library Journal 's Good Comics 4 Kids, the compilers share comics and graphic novels that reflect America's cultural diversity. Some titles address issues such as race, religion, and discrimination, while others present "diversity as a simple fact of American life."

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has compiled lists of graphic novels to bring racial diversity to classrooms and libraries. Many recommendations also include suggestions on how to use the graphic novel in the classroom.

This list from the Virginia Library Association includes winners and honor books for their 2017 Graphic Novel Diversity Award.

This article from Teaching Tolerance shares recommendations for bringing Native cultures, stories, and perspectives out of the margins of your curriculum with comics by and about Native people.

Although not restricted to graphic novels, We're the People Summer Booklist 2018 features graphic novels by #ownvoices authors that span ages and reading levels.

Research and Additional Reading

In light of the recent focus on diversity in books for youth as exemplified by movements such as "We Need Diverse Books" and "Reading Without Walls," in "Drawing Diversity: Representations of Race in Graphic Novels for Young Adults" from School Library Research, the authors sought to understand how race is depicted in graphic novels for teens.

In this article from English Journal, Kate E. Kedley and Jenna Spiering argue that the format and content of LGBTQ graphic novels make them effective pedagogical tools for engaging students in critical discussions about gender and sexuality. By using two exemplar texts, the authors offer teachers a vocabulary and method for engaging in these conversations

In "Perspectives on Practice: Alfonso Jones Matters," Tony Medina shares a personal narrative detailing his construction of a protagonist for a graphic novel that encapsulates the quest for justice at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement.

To better understand the creation and philosophy behind the #ownvoices movement in children's and young adult literature, you should read Corinne Duyvis's blog post about how and why she proposed the hashtag.

Ellen Oh, one of the founders of We Need Diverse Books, has an interview on the Reading While White blog on the creation and ongoing work of the organization. They are truly trying to change the face of publishing.

Research by Laura M. Jiménez found that comprehending graphic novels requires some unique reading skills. Just as with other forms and genres, graphic novel reading comprehension should be taught in order for students to have access to all that this complex form has to offer. This Reading Teacher article shows teaching and learning with graphic novels in a classroom.

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Special thanks to member Laura M. Jiménez for her time and expertise in reviewing and adding additional resources for this blog post. This summer members highlighted the need for more diversity in graphic novels. We've looked around the internet and compiled a list of suggested resources to check out.

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Use the online comics strip generator (storyboard that.com) to depict one moment in the classroom. This moment might be an average day, an aha! moment, or a struggle.

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Twenty-First Century Informational Literacy: Integrating Research Techniques and Technology

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Twenty-First Century Informational Literacy: Integrating Research Techniques and Technology

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Twenty-First Century Informational Literacy: Integrating Research Techniques and Technology - ReadWriteThink

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Students develop their reading, writing, research, and technology skills using graphic novels. As a final activity, students create their own graphic novels using comic software.

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Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel (Book summary)

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Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel (Book summary)

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Non-Member Price: $29.99

NCTE Member Price: $23.96

Author(s): James Bucky Carter

Edited by James Bucky Carter, this collection of essays by classroom teachers demonstrates how to pair graphic novels with classic literature (including both canonical and YA lit) in ways that enrich students' understanding of both and that thoroughly engage them in literacy.

Level(s): Secondary, Middle

ISBN/ISSN: 9780814103920

Stock No.: 03920

Description

Winner of the inaugural Excellence in Graphica in Education Award

As teachers, we're always looking for new ways to help our students engage with texts. James Bucky Carter and the contributors to this collection have found an effective approach: use graphic novels!

Carter and his contributors tap into the growing popularity of graphic novels in this one-of-a-kind guidebook. Each chapter presents practical suggestions for the classroom as it pairs a graphic novel with a more traditional text or examines connections between multiple sources. Some of the pairings include:

The Scarlet Letter and Katherine Arnoldi's The Amazing "True" Story of a Teenage Single Mom

Oliver Twist and Will Eisner's Fagin the Jew

Young adult literature and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

Dante's Inferno and an X-Men story

Classic fantasies (Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and Alice in Wonderland) and Farel Dalrymple's Pop Gun War

Traditional and graphic novel versions of Beowulf

These creative pairings open up a double world of possibilities-in words and images-to all kinds of learners, from reluctant readers and English language learners to gifted students and those who are critically exploring relevant social issues. A valuable appendix recommends additional graphic novels for use in middle and high school classrooms.

Packed with great ideas for integrating graphic novels into the curriculum, this collection of creative and effective teaching strategies will help you and your students join the fun.
164 pp. 2007. Grades 7-12. ISBN 978-0-8141-0392-0.
No. 03920 Click here for related ReadWriteThink lesson plans by James Bucky Carter.
James Bucky Carter is an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso. In 2009 he was awarded the first Excellence in Graphica in Education Award.

* Sample files are typically provided in PDF format and can be opened using the free Adobe® Reader® program or a comparable viewer. Click here to download and install the most recent version of Adobe Reader.

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Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel

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Non-Member Price: $29.99 NCTE Member Price: $23.96 Author(s): James Bucky Carter Edited by James Bucky Carter, this collection of essays by classroom teachers demonstrates how to pair graphic novels with classic literature (including both canonical and YA lit) in ways that enrich students' understanding of both and that thoroughly engage them in literacy.