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Teaching the Teachers: Resources and Strategies for Teaching Graphic Novels | Education Series

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Teaching G.N. in English Language Classrooms

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Teaching G.N. in English Language Classrooms

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AE Live 5.2: Animating Your Instruction: Using Comics & Graphic Novels in the EFL Classroom

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ALIA Graphic Webinar: Nurturing and Inspiring Reading and Creativity Using Graphc Novels and Manga

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You Can Do a Graphic Novel: Comic Books, Webcomics, and Strips

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You Can Do a Graphic Novel: Comic Books, Webcomics, and Strips [Slate, Barbara] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. You Can Do a Graphic Novel: Comic Books, Webcomics, and Strips

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Hacking Graphic Novels: 8 Ways to Teach Higher Level Thinking

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Hacking Graphic Novels: 8 Ways to Teach Higher Level Thinking

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Hacking Graphic Novels: 8 Ways to Teach Higher-Level Thinking with Comics and Visual Storytelling (Hack Learning Series)

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Amazon.com: Hacking Graphic Novels: 8 Ways to Teach Higher-Level Thinking with Comics and Visual Storytelling (Hack Learning Series): 9781948212632: Miller, Shveta V.: Books

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How to Pair Graphic Novels With Chapter Books

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How to Pair Graphic Novels With Chapter Books

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How to Pair Graphic Novels and Chapter Books | Read Create Grow

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The classic babysitter's club books you grew up with have been modernized and adapted by beloved authors Raina Telgemeier and Gale Galligan for this series. The artwork is done in the pop-art style of many current graphic novels, making them bright, colorful and fun.

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How Graphic Novels Spark Interest in Reading (and skills)

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How Graphic Novels Spark Interest in Reading (and skills)

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It can be difficult to engage kids in reading over the summer, especially if they have struggled with reading during the school year. In cases like these, creative solutions are in order. To that I say, have you considered graphic novels?

If you have a reluctant reader on your hands, introducing a new form of literature is an opportunity to experience the joy of reading from a new angle. If they haven't found any prose texts that resonate with them yet, graphic novels are a whole different world of books with a completely different selection of childrens' literature to choose from.

"What I find is that kids like reading graphic novels without any pressure from their parents to read," says Brian Hibbs, owner of the Comix Experience bookstore in San Francisco. He goes on to say,

What I think the hard part for a lot of kids is the pressure to read and the pressure to read prose. It's daunting when it's put that way in front of you as a kid, whereas graphic novels are something that you're reading for fun.

Brian Hibbs at the Comix Experience
If your little one is in the early stages of learning to read, prose can be intimidating. While learning to read prose is an important part of any student's development, it's also important to remember to find age and skill-appropriate texts that kids are excited to read. By sparking excitement and passion, kids can grow to become lifelong readers.

Do graphic novels even count as "real" reading, though?

Oh, they most certainly do!

Critics would say that the experience of reading graphic novels is just a simplified version of "actual" reading and that comics don't come close to the complexity of "real" books with long paragraphs of prose and no pictures.

librarian educator and children's literature professor at Illinois School of Information Sciences, Carol L. Tilley, would argue exactly the opposite.

"If reading is to lead to any meaningful knowledge or comprehension, readers must approach a text with an understanding of the relevant social, linguistic, and cultural conventions... if you really consider how the pictures and words work together in consonance to tell a story, you can make the case that graphic novels are just as complex as any other kind of literature."

The pictorial nature of graphic novels does not diminish its complexity at all. In fact, it makes that complexity more approachable. This encourages developing readers to become sophisticated, visual thinkers, all the while, engaging multiple areas of the brain at once while reading.

As a matter of fact, Reading Partners' program uses picture books to teach fundamental reading skills to our elementary-aged readers of all levels. We encourage them to look at the illustrations to predict what's going to happen next in the story and improve their sequencing skills. Furthermore, looking at pictures helps readers understand the deeper and more complicated messages and meanings behind the text.

For example, in this excerpt from Luke Pearson's Hilda and the Troll, a young reader can look to the progression of pictures and supporting text to learn that Hilda is stuck in a massive rainstorm. Then they can look closer at the expressions on Hilda's face to understand that she enjoys the sound of the rain, nonetheless.
An excerpt from Hilda and the Troll by Luke Pearson
Kids can also look to the illustrations in search of clues to understand unfamiliar vocabulary or metaphorical prose. When Hilda thinks, "a million assaults on my cozyness, thwarted noisily everytime," we can look at the picture to see evidence of the rain hitting her tent while she remains cozily snuggled inside. From that evidence we can make the connection that the rain is what threatens to assault her cozyness.

"There's a way that you read [comics] that's different from when you're reading normal prose," says Hibbs, "the way you process it is different because the audience is involved in the work itself... In graphic novels, you control the time and the pacing of what you read. It's really common to go back three or four panels or three or four pages even to read a sequence again. You don't do that as often in other mediums. You're communicating with the pages in graphic novels. That level of participatory behavior is what I think is the key thing that makes it different from other media."

The key is the gutter, or the spaces between the panels. These spaces offer natural breaks for the reader to pause and make sure they understand everything that's happening in the story. With these natural points of "checking in" with the reader, the experience of reading becomes more collaborative, making graphic novels great read aloud material for you to bond with your child.

Comics can be a new way for children to explore their interests

Comics are more than superhero stories and manga, nowadays. There's never been a greater variety of fiction and nonfiction stories from a diverse cast of voices to choose from. Find a coming of age story set in a fantasy land, a nonfiction story about the rise of a sports hero, or a story about life in a marginalized identity-if its a genre that resonates with your young reader, it's out there. Be it through graphic novels or prose text, books are a meaningful way for children to explore their interests.

Young readers are developing human beings discovering both the world and themselves through stories and learning. Opening them up to the vast, diverse world of graphic novels is opening them up to a whole new world of possibilities to figure out what they're into. In raising a reader, it's important to work together with your little one to find reading material that speaks to them. In his parting words, Hibbs says,

To me, the greatest reason to get enthusiastic about kids reading graphic novels is because kids are already enthusiastic about them.

With all that in mind, it might be a good idea to support a local comic book store near you or ask your local library where to find their graphic novel section to find something that speaks to your young reader's sensibilities. From paperbacks to digital subscription services such as Comixology, there's never been more ways to find new comics. Alternatively, if graphic novels aren't speaking to your kid , we have more ideas and tips on how to get kids engaged in reading over the summer.

Otherwise, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has an amazing pamphlet with even more in-depth information on how you can use comics to get your kids into reading. They even includes a comprehensive reading list of educational graphic novels to get you started. Hibbs recommends reading by Brenna Thummler and This Was Our Pact by Ryan Andrews. I just picked up Pilu of the Woods by Mai K. Nguyen, and I'm absolutely loving it.

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How graphic novels can spark an interest in reading among kids - Reading Partners | Reading Partners

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It can be difficult to engage kids in reading over the summer, especially if they have struggled with reading during the school year. In cases like these, creative solutions are in order. To that I say, have you considered graphic novels?

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8 Reasons To Read Graphic Novels in Upper Elmentary

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8 Reasons To Read Graphic Novels in Upper Elmentary

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For years, one of my goals as a teacher has been to transform reluctant readers into avid readers. But true confession...much of that time, there was one genre that didn't get much of my attention, and that was graphic novels.
After watching the excitement graphic novels created in my struggling readers as well as proficient readers, I started to add graphic novels to our upper elementary classroom library.
Since that time, there have been a number of parents who have asked whether their kids should be reading graphic novels. They wonder if these books are helpful for their kids as readers.
I can easily tell them yes, and here are 8 reasons they're beneficial for upper elementary kids.
1. Less Intimidating for Struggling Readers

When kids reach third grade, the text complexity and the greater expectations for readers (not just to read but to read to learn) make some student's reading difficulties become more apparent.

Graphic novels are great for struggling readers because they're more approachable to kids. With less text and more pictures than other books, they're simply less scary!

2. High Interest - Low Readability

One of my favorite tools for reluctant readers in upper elementary is to use High Interest - Low Readability Books. While graphic novels come in a variety of readability levels, there are many titles out there that are perfect for struggling readers.

3. "Cool" Element

As kids get older, of course, they're conscious of the types of books they read and the message those books send to kids their own age.

The beauty of graphic novels in upper elementary is that even though their readability may be at a lower level, they don't look babyish. In fact, lots of proficient readers enjoy them as well.

4. Visual Images Support Comprehension

When kids are first learning to read, they rely heavily on a picture book's illustrations to help them construct meaning.
Graphic novels are full of visual images which can be used as a scaffolding, to help readers piece together information they missed from the text, to help increase comprehension.
While some may think of this as a form of cheating, I like to think of the alternative.

I would much rather see a student choosing to read and enjoying a book, with some help from the illustrations, than avoiding books and pretending to read as an alternative.

5. Diversity of Characters and Life Situations

There are so many choices in graphic novels now, and they are written with a diversity of characters, both male and female, with all races and life situations.

This means that ALL of our students should be able to see themselves represented, which is a great thing. When we can relate more to a book's characters and situations, we tend to feel more validated.

6. Builds Positive Book Associations

I love seeing a struggling reader feeling that sense of accomplishment from completing an entire book! Graphic novels can give kids this feeling and raise their confidence as readers, which results in them naturally wanting to read more.

For upper elementary students, this positive association with books leads to less avoidance and less giving up on a book too soon.

7. Includes Complex Story Elements

Even though graphic novels have less text, they still include complex story elements. Upper elementary readers will still see rich characters, strong plots, conflicts, and strong themes.

8. Prepares Readers for Other Genres

Another benefit of graphic novels is that they're great "bridge" books, to help prepare struggling readers for other types of genres. As struggling readers experience growth, they are better able to tackle the greater demands of chapter books.

If you'd like more ideas about motivating struggling readers, you might like to read another post I wrote. Click here to read Motivating Reluctant Readers in Upper Elementary.

I love having graphic novels as an independent reading choice, but it's also great to have sets of reading resources that are no-fluff, but are differentiated (three levels for each of passage and games and task cards for grades 3rd - 5th grade reading levels).

If you need some time-saving resources, you might like to take a look at these:
Text Evidence Activities Print and Digital for Google Slides™
Thanks so much for stopping by!

Let me know your favorite graphic novels in the comments below.

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8 Reasons to Read Graphic Novels in Upper Elementary - The Teacher Next Door

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For years, one of my goals as a teacher has been to transform reluctant readers into avid readers. But true confession...much of that time, there was one genre that didn't get much of my attention, and that was graphic novels. After watching the excitement graphic novels created in my struggling readers as well as proficient [...]

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How Graphic Novels Help Students Develop Critical Skills

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How Graphic Novels Help Students Develop Critical Skills

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The Graphic Novel: A Visual Literacy Tool for Educating Students | Resilient Educator

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When novels burst onto the literary scene in the 18th century with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, they presented something truly new: the idea that a common person and his pursuits could matter. This concept shattered the notion that books needed to focus on high-minded ideals and individuals of hi…

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Reading Comprehension Through Graphic Novels

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Reading Comprehension Through Graphic Novels

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Reading Comprehension through Graphic Novels: How Comic Books and Graphic Novels Can Help Language Learners – MinneTESOL Journal

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In order to find potential tools, scaffolds, and differentiation to be employed by English Language (EL) and content teachers alike, a small qualitative study was conducted that found that English learners (ELs) displayed better reading comprehension and increased memory retention of the chapter eve…

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8 Reasons to Read Graphic Novels in Upper Elementary

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8 Reasons to Read Graphic Novels in Upper Elementary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For years, one of my goals as a teacher has been to transform reluctant readers into avid readers. But true confession...much of that time, there was one genre that didn't get much of my attention, and that was graphic novels.
After watching the excitement graphic novels created in my struggling readers as well as proficient readers, I started to add graphic novels to our upper elementary classroom library.
Since that time, there have been a number of parents who have asked whether their kids should be reading graphic novels. They wonder if these books are helpful for their kids as readers.
I can easily tell them yes, and here are 8 reasons they're beneficial for upper elementary kids.
1. Less Intimidating for Struggling Readers

When kids reach third grade, the text complexity and the greater expectations for readers (not just to read but to read to learn) make some student's reading difficulties become more apparent.

Graphic novels are great for struggling readers because they're more approachable to kids. With less text and more pictures than other books, they're simply less scary!

2. High Interest - Low Readability

One of my favorite tools for reluctant readers in upper elementary is to use High Interest - Low Readability Books. While graphic novels come in a variety of readability levels, there are many titles out there that are perfect for struggling readers.

3. "Cool" Element

As kids get older, of course, they're conscious of the types of books they read and the message those books send to kids their own age.

The beauty of graphic novels in upper elementary is that even though their readability may be at a lower level, they don't look babyish. In fact, lots of proficient readers enjoy them as well.

4. Visual Images Support Comprehension

When kids are first learning to read, they rely heavily on a picture book's illustrations to help them construct meaning.
Graphic novels are full of visual images which can be used as a scaffolding, to help readers piece together information they missed from the text, to help increase comprehension.
While some may think of this as a form of cheating, I like to think of the alternative.

I would much rather see a student choosing to read and enjoying a book, with some help from the illustrations, than avoiding books and pretending to read as an alternative.

5. Diversity of Characters and Life Situations

There are so many choices in graphic novels now, and they are written with a diversity of characters, both male and female, with all races and life situations.

This means that ALL of our students should be able to see themselves represented, which is a great thing. When we can relate more to a book's characters and situations, we tend to feel more validated.

6. Builds Positive Book Associations

I love seeing a struggling reader feeling that sense of accomplishment from completing an entire book! Graphic novels can give kids this feeling and raise their confidence as readers, which results in them naturally wanting to read more.

For upper elementary students, this positive association with books leads to less avoidance and less giving up on a book too soon.

7. Includes Complex Story Elements

Even though graphic novels have less text, they still include complex story elements. Upper elementary readers will still see rich characters, strong plots, conflicts, and strong themes.

8. Prepares Readers for Other Genres

Another benefit of graphic novels is that they're great "bridge" books, to help prepare struggling readers for other types of genres. As struggling readers experience growth, they are better able to tackle the greater demands of chapter books.

If you'd like more ideas about motivating struggling readers, you might like to read another post I wrote. Click here to read Motivating Reluctant Readers in Upper Elementary.

I love having graphic novels as an independent reading choice, but it's also great to have sets of reading resources that are no-fluff, but are differentiated (three levels for each of passage and games and task cards for grades 3rd - 5th grade reading levels).

If you need some time-saving resources, you might like to take a look at these:
Text Evidence Activities Print and Digital for Google Slides™
Thanks so much for stopping by!

Let me know your favorite graphic novels in the comments below.

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8 Reasons to Read Graphic Novels in Upper Elementary - The Teacher Next Door

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For years, one of my goals as a teacher has been to transform reluctant readers into avid readers. But true confession...much of that time, there was one genre that didn't get much of my attention, and that was graphic novels. After watching the excitement graphic novels created in my struggling readers as well as proficient [...]

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Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners

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Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners

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By Leslie Morrison, CTD Summer Leapfrog Coordinator

Graphic novels have become a popular format in classrooms, partly due to their appeal to reluctant readers. More recently, a growing body of research, focused on how the brain processes the combination of images and text, indicates that graphic novels are also excellent resources for advanced learners.

When students read visual narratives, the activity in the brain is similar to how readers comprehend text-based sentences. However, when students learn to read graphic novels with an analytical eye, depth and complexity are added to the reading process.

With graphic novels, students use text and images to make inferences and synthesize information, both of which are abstract and challenging skills for readers. Images, just like text, can be interpreted in many different ways, and can bring nuances to the meaning of the story. In this form of literature, the images and the text are of equal importance -the text would not fully make sense without the images, and the reverse is true as well.

Graphic novels can also challenge students to think deeply about the elements of storytelling. In a traditional text, students uncover meaning embedded in sentences and paragraphs. In graphic texts, students must analyze the images, looking for signs of character development, for example, or clues that help build plot. All of this experience developing textual and visual reading skills contribute to students' understanding of their world - the ways the text and images all around them communicate - and in turn help them in crafting their own stories.
Resources
Barbee, M. Comic Books as Models for Literacy Instruction. International Reading Association. 2015.

Brenna, B. How Graphic Novels Support Reading Comprehension Strategy Development in Children. Wiley-Blackwell. Literacy Journal, UKLA, pp.88- 94. 2012.
Brown, Sally. A Blended Approach to Reading and Writing Graphic Stories. Wiley Online Library. 2013.
Bucher, K., & Manning, M. Bringing Graphic Novels into a School's Curriculum. The Clearing House, November / December 2004.

Cohn, Neil. The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images. London: Bloomsbury. 2013.
Eisner, W. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative. W.W. Norton & Company. 2008.
Gillenwater, C. Graphic Novels in Advanced English / Language Arts Classrooms: A Phenomenological Case Study. Dissertation, Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2012.

McCloud, S. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. William Morrow Paperbacks. 1994.
Comic in the Classroom: Why Comics?
The Impact of Structures and Meaning on Sequential Image Comprehension

Neil Cohn, Martin Paczinski, Phil Holcomb, Ray Jackendoff, Gina Kuperberg,

-Tufts University
http://www.visuallanguagelab.com/P/NC_pn&b_abstract.pdf

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The Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners

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By Leslie Morrison, CTD Summer Leapfrog Coordinator Graphic novels have become a popular format in classrooms, partly due to their appeal to reluctant readers. More recently, a growing body of research, focused on how the brain processes the combination of images and text, indicates that graphic novels are also excellent resources for advanced learners.

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Graphic Novels: Preparing for a Multimodal and Multiliterate World

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Graphic Novels: Preparing for a Multimodal and Multiliterate World

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Graphic novels have become increasingly popular in the classroom as a means to engage English language learners (ELL) in new ways (Christensen, 2007). The accessible and diverse content of graphic novels can inspire critical discussions by encouraging students to become 'agents' of their own meaning-making experience (Boatright, 2010). Using both text and sequential art to tell what are often serious, non-fiction narratives, many graphic novels use intelligence and humour to explore sensitive issues of race, social justice, global conflict and war (Christensen, 2007). The wide range of stories and perspectives delivered through this multimodal medium are capable of inspiring a deeper level of engagement for students as they relate the stories to their own experiences (Chun, 2009).

In an ever-globalizing world, in which the literacy experiences of students, as well as their cultural, social, linguistic, and technological backgrounds, are both diverse and evolving, the use of graphic novels as a pedagogical tool offers various benefits. As such, this paper addresses the question of how the socially diverse material depicted in graphic novels can be used to encourage ELL students and reluctant readers to draw from their own experiences, perspectives, and multiliteracies to construct meaning and participate in 'critical literacy experiences.'

Image © dw-wp.com

English language teachers have an opportunity to introduce students to a form of literature uniquely placed between the old and the new and offering perspectives not embraced by traditional literary discourse. Offering diversity not only in content but also in reading practice, graphic novels can be a more accessible and therefore less intimidating way to experience literature than the traditional novel. As Chun (2009) explains, "the teaching of critical literacy can take place while students develop literacy skills through their engagement with these texts so that they will be better equipped to deal with more traditional texts" (p. 146).

In addition to preparing students for more traditional forms of reading, this form of literature can also be used as a means to diversify the types of text and meaning making processes that are emerging with new technologies. With today's rapid expansion of technology, literacy has become what Leu (2000) refers to as deictic. Leu et al. (2011) explain that "the meaning of literacy rapidly and continuously changes as new technologies for information and communication continuously appear online and new social practices of literacy quickly emerge" (2011, p. 6). Though not an obvious pedagogic solution to technology's influence on literacy, Coiro (2003) points out that, like graphic novels, web-based texts are typically nonlinear, interactive, and inclusive of multiple media forms. "Each of these characteristics affords new opportunities while also presenting a range of challenges that require new thought processes for making meaning" (2003, p. 459).

This paper first addresses how literacy is changing with changes in technology and social practices. Graphic novels, as a print-based medium, meet some of the changing needs of literacy instruction while also addressing three propositions presented by Cummins (2011) for promoting literacy development among immigrant and minority students in actual classroom practice. In addressing these literacy needs, this paper explores how graphic novels can help teachers to involve all students in a critical literacy experience while nurturing the needs of ELL students and reluctant readers simultaneously.

Literacy is no longer considered a skill that is learned entirely in childhood, in the context of formal school instruction (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2013). Rather, it is viewed as "an expanding set of knowledge, skills and strategies that individuals build on throughout life in various contexts, through interaction with their peers and the wider community" (2013, p. 9). The definition of literacy and the multimodal ways in which it is practiced continuously evolves to meet the demands of the societies in which we live (New London Group, 1996). Technology and the Internet combine to accelerate these developing literary practices. As Cull (2011) asserts, "reading is a cultural activity that has undergone profound changes since its inception" (para 10) and the pace of this ongoing transformation is not slowing. These rapidly evolving practices, however, are making traditional literacy pedagogy, which promotes conventional linear text, insufficient. Concerned with the misalignment between emerging literacy practice and public policy and instruction, Lue et al. (2011) suggest that it is because we are in a time of such transition between conventional print and on-screen reading that this misalignment exists. The authors caution that regardless of the cause, "the misalignments appear to have serious consequences for our youth" (2011, p. 8). These consequences most seriously affect those who do not thrive in the institutional discourse, and/or do not have access to print and technology literature at home. ELL and minority students are the most likely to fit into one or both of these categories.

The changing social and cultural realities of literacy, and the imbalanced distribution of technology that enables such practices, thus require that we change the way we approach literacy education. Concerned with current literacy instruction and its limited concern for comprehension of the new literacies of the Internet, Coiro (2003) states, "The Internet, in particular, provides new text formats, new purposes for reading, and new ways to interact with information that can confuse and overwhelm people taught to extract meaning from only conventional print" (p. 458). Chun (2009) furthers this argument stating that because of, "the increasingly complex delivery systems of information in our globalized societies, it follows that the more students are exposed to and grounded in multiple modes of representation, the more they would appear to have a chance to succeed in school and beyond" (p. 146).

The process of integrating basic online reading comprehension skills into the current curriculum has been especially slow in some communities. In many cases this may be due to lack of technology in schools and individual classrooms. But Lue et al. (2011) suggest that this may also be due in part to "a basic reluctance to venture beyond the touchstone of our field, the book" (p. 11). While the use of graphic novels may not be able to compensate wholly for limited access to computers and other technologies, they do offer an alternative way of interacting with print-based text so as to help prepare students for the multiple texts they will encounter in their personal and professional lives. Unlike conventional novels, the graphic novel is polysemic, requiring readers to recognize the notions of time, intertextuality, visual literacy, and hypertextuality (Cromer & Clark, 2013). This cross-discursive literacy experience can benefit all students, and, as Chun (2009) points out, the added benefit for ELL students is that much of the language in a graphic novel is contextualized, acting as a support system guiding the reader through the language learning process. Continued on Next Page "

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Graphic Novels: Preparing for a Mulitmodal and Multiliterate World

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Graphic novels have become increasingly popular in the classroom as a means to engage English language learners (ELL) in new ways (Christensen, 2007). The accessible and diverse content of graphic novels can inspire critical discussions by encouraging students to become 'agents' of their own meaning-making experience (Boatright, 2010).

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Graphic Novels: a Visual Literacy Tool for Educating Students

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Graphic Novels: a Visual Literacy Tool for Educating Students

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The Graphic Novel: A Visual Literacy Tool for Educating Students | Resilient Educator

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When novels burst onto the literary scene in the 18th century with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, they presented something truly new: the idea that a common person and his pursuits could matter. This concept shattered the notion that books needed to focus on high-minded ideals and individuals of hi…

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Amazon.com: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art: 9780060976255: McCloud, Scott: Books

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The Graphic Novel Classroom: POWerful Teaching and Learning with Images

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Amazon.com: The Graphic Novel Classroom: POWerful Teaching and Learning with Images: 9781628737349: Bakis, Maureen, Carter, James Bucky: Books

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Teaching with Comics and Graphic Novels: Fun and Engaging Strategies to Improve Close Reading and Critical Thinking in Every Classroom

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Buy Teaching with Comics and Graphic Novels: Fun and Engaging Strategies to Improve Close Reading and Critical Thinking in Every Classroom: Read Books Reviews - Amazon.com

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

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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. As teachers, we're a...

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In the first of a brand new series, artist extraordinaire Nick Sharratt teaches you how to draw a character

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If anyone ever needed a lesson on graphic novels, it's the publisher who told Stan Lee: "That is the worst idea I've ever heard. People hate spiders, you can't call a book Spiderman." As you may have heard, that idea ended up working out quite well for Mr Lee who, at 93, is the god of the graphic novel and created The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four and Iron Man.

There can be a bit of snobbery when it comes to using such texts in schools, but they can be a brilliant way of bringing literature to reluctant readers, and are particularly useful for those who don't speak English as their first language. The more sophisticated examples contain the kind of complex themes and language (it's not all KAPOW! and THWACK!) that will challenge even the highest-achieving students. And, of course, the books are beautiful to look at, combining illustration and text in a unique way.

If you're still unconvinced, this article from the National Council of Teachers of English puts forward a strong case and this presentation looks at ways to use graphic novels to teach the classics such as Little Women, Frankenstein and a surprisingly muscular Macbeth.

Primary

Take younger students on a journey through the many worlds of graphic novels with this list of recommended examples for primary classes from Bookspace. This includes Tintin, Asterix and the intriguing Sardine in Outer Space (which has an online activity pack (pdf) available to print).

Graphic novel techniques can also be used to complement texts that students are already reading, like this resource pack on Roald Dahl's The Twits from TeachIt Primary. It asks pupils to illustrate key events from each chapter, such as the dark and brilliant move of making Mrs Twit think she is shrinking by gluing bits of wood to the bottom of her walking stick.

The next step is to get your classes creating their own comic books. This guide from Sarah McIntyre, illustrator of Vern and Lettuce and Morris the Mankiest Monster, talks students through the professional process - from coming up with characters and adventures, to using Photoshop. This guide and collection of top tips, also from TeachIt Primary, takes your class through a practice exercise before dreaming up their own pieces.

Get your students to create their characters using this How to draw ... characters guide from Jacqueline Wilson, which details the author's long process of drafting and redrafting. If you want to follow Stan Lee's example and design superheroes, this guide explains the importance of exaggeration, costumes and a cool name. Or, if you want to get a bit more high-tech, this online comic creator lets pupils create their own colourful graphic novels using drag-and-drop tools. And for a creative homework task, try this printable "Adventures in Cartooning" activity book (pdf).

Once your class has mastered the skills of the graphic novel, they can use them to explore any area of the curriculum. Twinkl has blank comic book templates of different sizes available to print. Studying history? Get students to render key moments in graphic form. Looking at geography? See if they can make rocks into characters. For science, this resource book guides students through creating a comic that explores the heart and circulatory system.

Secondary

There are endless ways to use graphic novels in secondary classrooms, as this list (pdf) explains. The suggestions cover key literacy skills such as summarising, sequencing and predicting, as well as more inventive tasks such as holding a graphic novel tea party. This poster from the Scottish Book Trust explores the features of graphic novels and would work well as a handout at the beginning of the unit.

But which text should you go for? The Book Trust recommends some trusty favourites and interesting newbies, from The Savage, David Almond's exploration of grief, to the Manga Shakespeare series, which includes Romeo and Juliet, Othello and other curriculum stalwarts (and provides an excellent introduction to the Bard for those with lower literacy levels).

This project-based resource from TeachIt sets students the task of researching the history of comics, sourcing examples of different types and analysing the common attributes of the books' heroes, before creating their own.

For older pupils, this Ted talk from Michael Chaney, a professor of English at a US university, explores the complexities of the graphic novel form and how caricature and distortion are used to convey messages in a coded manner - an interesting cross-curricular topic for art and literature. Chaney includes two examples that are now considered classics and make for rich study for key stages 3 and 4: Maus and Persepolis.

Art Spiegelman's Maus tells the story of his father's survival in Auschwitz concentration camp, mice representing the Jews and cats the Nazi guards. These discussion questions guide students through the book, and this collection of teaching resources includes an interview with Spiegelman on the creation of Maus and the enormous impact its had since it was published in 1986.

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis looks at the Iranian revolution through the eyes of a young girl, offering a wealth of learning in history, religious studies and politics. This resource bank contains historical background, language analysis, discussion questions and lots of other useful study links.

Finally, get your class to harness the power of the graphic novel to explore issues they feel strongly about with this workshop on grassroots comic campaigning from Cafod which guides them through the process of conceiving and creating their own issue-based comic. Happy sketching!
Do you have an inspiring teaching resource you'd like to share? Upload it here, or email teacher.network@theguardian.com
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If anyone ever needed a lesson on graphic novels, it's the publisher who told Stan Lee: "That is the worst idea I've ever heard. People hate spiders, you can't call a book Spiderman."

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Quizlet : Graphic Novel Terms and Concepts

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Quizlet : Graphic Novel Terms and Concepts

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Understanding flow to read comics and graphic novels

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Understanding flow to read comics and graphic novels

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FLOW sums up a key concept in comics page or strip design: Underlying structures that make the work legible, flow and should not need to be explained to readers.

Flow is a big subject, though to nail down simply. It covers everything from the rudimentary like having the first person speaking always on the left side of the panel, so that their word balloons tale won't cross the next one when we read the page left to right. To what kinds of arrangements of panels can work, and which might confuse readers more.

In a previous post I talked about grids, specifically the 9 panel grid but I mentioned there are many others. Part of why they help make, making comics easier, is that they can simplify the decision-making process of where the next panel goes. But, even if you never break them up or very panel sizes AT ALL, just use a grid, there are configurations of the content within that can break the storytelling, losing and confusing readers. So it's important to learn a few basics about how to build Flow into your pages and make sure your comics are easy to read.

Until recently there was no science to this just theory that I knew about. But in 2013 I read of a formal study done on panel layouts, and we can now say with some certainty how people are likely to read one based on a few kinds of page designs. That's invaluable insight to add to the old wisdom, and I detail some other notions here that are borrowed for some other disciplines.

First some basics. In northamerica and the western world, we typically read comics the same way as we do pages of text. Left to right, in horizontal rows top to bottom.

Manga, Japanese Comics, reverse this running right to left. Both otherwise follow most of the same basic rules beyond that mirroring. We read Comics One Panel at a time-analogous to one word at a time-to the end of each row of panels-analogous to a sentence. And then back to the left [or right for manga] to start over.

From left to right, top row first and then back and from left to right again. So in this nine panel page layout example, the arrows show how we'd read it.

The spaces between Panels are called Gutters, and the area around the outside of the panels before the edge of the paper, typically is referred to as a Margin.

Art that goes to the edge of the page is called Full Bleed. Text in Boxes = voice over or third person. Text in Balloons = speech, or thoughts as indicated by different styles of Tails, which indicate who is speaking or thinking.

Now the study I mentioned can be read in full here.

It was published in Frontiers in April 2013 by Neil Cohn of the Center for Research in Language, University of California San Diego. They took a famous experimental Jim Steranko page designed to confuse readers, and removed all the art from the panels. By the way, that Steranko page has its own dedicated paper in fact, analyzing the way different readers interpreted it! I recommend you download it and read it as well!

They also created a number of other 'ghost' page layouts without any art, based on a number of conventions they found in a sampling of american comics. They gave the bank layouts generated from that to both comics literate, and novice comics readers [ refrence link], and told them to enumerate the panels in order of how they imagined they were supposed to be read! Cool Beans. Honestly we had nothing like that to look at when i was learning about page design. We had some good examples and rules of thumb, but this is great.

Now the basic six panel grid led to no surprises. It was more of a control than anything else.

We tend to read that left to right, then back and again. Manga readers will reverse that.

They also looked into what happens when you stagger or overlap panels.

What happens when you change the size of gutters or get rid of them, and what happens when you have two panels stacked on each other next to a tall one, on either the left or the right.

That last one is interesting because the same thing comes up in Drawing Words & Writing Pictures as a problematic page design. I think the example is drawn by Jessica Abel. They use it to propose that when you have two panels on the left, and a single tall one on the right, there could be confusion about what order to read them in? Is it left to right, then back to the lower left? or is is left, down, THEN to the right?

I think in part, the speech balloon placement in this example suggests we should read it left to right, then down to the left again. As the Eye Line created by the red arrows is much more smooth. I'll come back to that in a moment.

In Neil Cohn's study however, they discovered something called "Blockage". See the two image as examples above. He's since gone on to clarify how it works and the proportional math to when it makes readers switch [by % of respondents] from a typical Z path reading of a standard grid, to the И shape followed with full 'blockage'.

Blockage: Occurs when panels are stacked vertically next to a panel that runs the distance of the vertical panels as we see in the last example. In the study they found that if the arrangement was with the two panels on the left, people read down most of the time first. But if it was on the right, people read left to right, and THEN down. That in the study is called Z Blockage. See diagrams above.

So that means in the example given by Jessica Abel, the first one is typical the most likely reading? But, I don't think you'll read it that way. This is why I find this interesting to focus on for a moment, I read it across then down first! I think most will, dispute what the study found about Blockage.

Why? Look at it here on the left without the arrows. Do you see it? I think we read this left to right, then back down to the left again...why?

Because the second most important device we have in page design, is the balloon placement and sound effects!

Note how in this case, the word balloon, along with the sound effects of "BEEP BEEP" in the "C" panel, are aligned with those of the same in panel "A"? They pull you to the right. Add to this the radiating undulating lines? They both radiate from the figure in panel "B", but also act like arrows for me, pointing from the edge of panel "A" into "B". Then we look down the tail, the character is turned to the left, with that elbow pointing almost to the "C" panel. By placing the word balloons in this way, Jessica Abel has unintentionally I think, hijacked the typical reading order and gotten us to follow this one instead. It's not explained as why it could be confusing in her book but I think that's what happens, and until I stopped to think hard about it I also didn't find it all that confusing. The composition of the texts read very clearly for me.

I don't think Jessica or Neil are wrong but this underlines the lack of absolutes in page layout.

We'll come back to word balloon placements and Eyelines shortly, but first here's more of Neil's findings summed up, along with a handy diagram illustrating them. Again there's a lot more findings in the paper than i'll share here, but this is a simple listing of key mechanical relationships. And a map of them all on one clear pair of examples.

Entry-points: Orange circles in the diagram. Design elements that suggest a fixed starting point on the page design. In the four shown, they are all in the top corner, rather than the default of being someplace generally in the first panel on the top left of the page. Diagonal panel borders slice up that space, leaving a few variations on where to start. If your page does not have diagonal divisions like this it's safe to assume readers will simply start with the left top panel, probably with a Focal Point in the arts composition.

Separation: The study looked at the role space between panels had in how they were clustered and read. A large gap separated panels and grouped them with panels they are closer to. Doing this could disrupt what would otherwise be a typical left to right reading, instead sponsoring a vertical reading path. Look for the purple marks in the diagram.

Overlaps: Overlapping panels pretty much does the opposite of increased separation. Panels that overlap create bridges between them, strongly suggesting the panels be read together. Green markers in the diagram.

Staggering: This breaks up what would be an otherwise even grid. And it can impact the reading order but typically does not in these examples. Blue markers for Staggered panels.

Inset Panels: Neil's study didn't have a lot to say about inset panels, but they have one in the diagram, marked in Yellow. Inset panels are great for highlighting an idea. They are almost like text boxes for specific visual ideas.

Anything that reversed the left to right version of a pattern, is called a "Z____" version of itself.

Here's a simplified map of the reading properties.

Ok, this is all very interesting, but what to do with it?

Well you can stick to a simple grid, with no variation from panel to panel in size and shape. Totally works and it does keep your job a lot simpler. Some artists swear by it, Seth has said he feels like a grid like that helps him as a reader to stop thinking about the frame and just engage in the content, and that it captures intimate personal narratives like those he writes very well. Personally I think they are best for very regular depictions of time and space, with few big jumps cutting to a different location or time frame. I then tend to expand out into a whole row or half a page to establish a new place or cut to a new point in time in the story.

But even If you stick to only using a rigid grid, you still have to think about flow. The page over all is simple, but what happens in the panels, still needs to lead the eye and read well.

Here's a great couple of simple examples pulled from DW-WP, by classic creators Bud Fisher and Roy Crane.

The first from Bud's ' Mutt and Jeff', shows how the action of the characters both flows with the lateral movement of the strip and helps lead the eye, complete with circling back at the end. The Second from Roy's ' Wash Tubbs ', we see in the first two panels how the composition leads us into the strip, and then accentuates the action of the second half in a two panel fight sequence, by leading us our eye up, and then down. Selling the feeling of the strength of that final blow. Now this kind of designed Flow gets even more powerful as an effect when you have more than one strip of panels.

Check out this great comic about making comics by Seth, 'Down the Stairs'. Published in the Walrus originally along with an essay 'The Quiet Art of Cartooning'. In it, only twice does he not make use of either characters eyelines [where they are looking], leading lines in the composition [edges that direct our eye to look in one direction or another] a pointing gesture, or the direction of the action, to subtly indicate the intended reading flow of the page.

Note that in the first row, there's a leading line created by the angle of the house in panel one, the bed sheets and thier heads in two, that brings up to the level of Seth's head in three. Augmenting an implied sitting up motion. Then down stairs, over to the room and into it in a way that complements directionally the way our eye scans over those three panels in row two. Then the leading lines of the desk in the fourth panel suggest we should go back to the next row.

He breaks these paterns in row three twice, in panels one and three IMO. And this I think helps bring some rhythm to the strip, helping to differentiate the first eight panels from the last eight.

In panel sixteen, Seth looks out the window, in direct opposition to the stairs he talks about. His back points the way he'll go in the next moment. In the following panel, the same-he looks in the direction we're to read next the row, but away again from the direction he will ultimately go. The next two, his hand points to where we are to read next, and in the last, he descends the stairs one more time, and note that it's not off the page to the right but back, into the story?

Note also there are a lot of callbacks here, moments that echo each other. For example, we only see him actually descend the stairs twice. It's suggested the rest of the time but not shown. Were it only once it would be a bit too week of a message. But more than twice, overly repetitive probably. We see him looking away from the stairs to the outdoors, twice as well. Call backs like this help with the reading rhythm and keep it interesting. They are a key part of Flow.
Now for something quite different,
but STILL, sticking with a rigid Grid.
Jack Kirby used a lot of the same kinds of compositional devices to lead a reader by the eyes, and here we have a great example of him doing so in a fight scene, to sell the action! we don't even really need to add arrows I think, the motion lines spell it out clearly! But there's a copy of the page on the right with them in any case.

Starting in the first panel, the bad guy winds up a kick, only to have Captain America punch him in the face, conveniently in the direction we need to read next!

In panel three cap swings back just as we need to return to the start of the next line, and the leaning direction of his figure and the strong silhouette of his left leg, points the way down to the next row.

This pattern of the action pointing the way continues really strongly throughout, until finally in the last panel, Kirby helps to punctuate the defeat of the villain, by dropping the panel borders and highlighting the figures against a white background. Caps pose has movement, as he circles around the villain who's almost laid out prone.

We won't always want our page layouts to be quite so choreographed to read this fluidly, but it's an excellent way to amplify the dynamism of an action sequence. Breaking that flow as well, as Seth did in panel nine of 'Down the Stairs', is equally a powerful way to break up flow and create a beat in the reading rhythm.

Interesting things start to happen when explore our options beyond the grids. We can start within the realm of the grid in fact, by simply looking at what happens when we join up cells in it to create varied panel sizes and shapes.

Going back to the examples in Neil Cohn's 2013 study, only example 'D' begins to really deviate from an underlying grid. To illustrate this here's another fine example from DW-WP, of a page from George Herriman's 'Krazy Kat'. Just by placing the panels askew a bit, he's done something visually exciting to liven up the reading of the strip in a way that reflects it's dream like, surreal quality.

Also note however, how he's numbered the panels? Because without that cue, you would read them 1. 2. 5.! I like this example because it highlights how you can break the reading flow if you're not careful and while numbers or arrows could be used to indicate how one should read the page, it's not as effective as finding a way to do it that does not need to be explained. I think in this case, Herriman would have done better to have the three overlapping panels read in the visually logical sequence [1. 2. 5.] and then merged 3. & 4. into one frame, following the third panel [#5.]. He would have had one panel less to work with, but it would read more naturally.

'Krazy Kat' is from the early days of western comics, and numbering panels was not uncommon then as people were still learning how to read comics. Today between newspapers, web comics and comic books, most people have some basic idea of how comics pages are read, so overt indicators like panel numbering are often not required. I'm personally a fan of page designs that don't require them. I feel it's better that the page tells you implicitly what order to read things in, not explicitly.

Here's a modern action comic, using a very skewed layout based in a grid for a two page spread. The penciled art is by either Terry Dodson, or Mike Deodato, from Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Exodus (2009) #1. it almost works, but as the arrows on the right indicate, there's some problems with the designs I think.

Note how the extreme angles accentuate the sense of action? You can do this, but here I think the reading flow is broken up by the way the art in the panels leads the eyes and created confusing tangents. The turquoise arrows show how I think we do read it, or confusion about the order. The orange how it was meant to be read I believe.

So how do we avoid this confusion? Well one way is indicated in Neil Cohn's 2013 study! The use of space!

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Again spaces between panels are called gutters, how wide they are, or indeed when they disappear and panels overlap, can help us indicate to readers what order to read them.

To illustrate this I found this page from Arkie Ring's webcomic Robo Hole posted with notes about how one reader found it a bit confusing. I think it in part suffers from some of the same issues. Undesirable or distracting design tangents!

I think Arkie came very very close to the mark but missed a trick, so to illustrate how space can clarify things I'm going to edit his page to make it read smoother. First, here's the problem the reader found: The first panel tends to lead into the third one, which derails the intended reading entirely.

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Note that this is again a "Blockage" situation with two panels on the left stacked next to a taller panel so in theory most will read the two stacked first. But what really misleads the readers eye here, is the sound effect, and the robot's arms, which both point at the more dynamic third panel, rather than down to the second one first. And they do so in a perfect tangent with the robot's arm in panel three, cementing the problem. It's basically the same thing that we saw in the example from Jessica, but here unwanted.

So by way of example, i've taken the liberty of shifting the first two panels to be closer to each other, and moved the third so that it's closer to the fourth and fifth as well. And equally important, i've broken the tangent, weakend it, by moving the sound effect text in panel one so that it no longer leads the reader to look to the right directly at the robot's arm in panel three, but rather helps bring them down to the second panel below it.

I think this is a great example of how small changes in the spacing in gutters, changed the beats, pacing and order of the reading of a page, especially when the layout might otherwise be confusing.

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Ok, so we've looked at how spacing, tangents in the composition, and the action in the panels can all be used to lead the reader. And in that last, how the sound effect played a role too. So how about the lettering?

A bit of thread on the way pages are laid out in Japanese comics.

When you think of manga page layouts, you may think "dynamic." Pages tend to pop more than in other comics. It may look like anything goes, but they are able to do that because there are strict traffic rules.
- Rachel Thorn ACAB BLM Say Their Names (@rachel_thorn_en) January 19, 2018

I've read some Manga, but not deeply of the form and haven't studied them in their original language at all or with an eye towards how their Right to Left reading pattern changed or impacted page design strategies before now.
So I've always been reluctant to talk too much about how they work. Recently [6/26/20] I came across a thread written by Rachel Thorn, a Professor in Faculty of Manga at Kyoto Seika University, and Translator, & shōjo manga scholar. She details what she's called 'The T Rule', an Idea I'd never heard before even without the name! I'm still getting my head around how it works but knew I had to include mention of it on this page! As I grasp it, it does dramatically limit some of the things we do often in western comics, and creates a variable on the "blockage" rule I think, as identified in Neil Cohn's work.

It's safe to assume as with western comics not all manga will perfectly follow any rule. But just so this is a really interesting insight into how they've developed a practical visual grammar that's largely unspoken - or at least unnamed until now? Nice one Rachel! I've included the text of the key tweets addressing it's features for reading here with a gallery of the images referenced, and linked to in the text.

Now if you're doing a silent comic, this won't come up. But most comics have text, and even the best layout can be undermined by badly placed word balloons!

likewise, tricky layouts, can be greatly clarified by where the word balloons are placed! Todd Kline has some great notes on this, I've borrowed a couple of his visual aids here but you should read his full post too.

On the left here we see some examples he created of "confusing balloon placements". Note that they all force the reader to bounce from one extreme side of the panel or page, to the next. And in many cases there's another balloon that is closer but if read next, would be in the wrong order? It's pretty straightforward really. Note that in the first example as well in panels three and four he reverses the standard left-to-right pattern, making us double back?

He also used the same panel-sets-including that confusing double back pattern in those two panels-to illustrate how to letter them as "Challenging" but readable pages! Note the lines connecting them and how they Flow? This is great, something I use a lot myself as you'll seen in some examples in a moment.

Note as well how he used the overlapping of word balloons over gutters and panel borders selectively, as cues indicating to the reader what order to read the panels in and where exactly to cross into the next panel? Perfect. He's used the balloon placement to preemptively lead the readers eye, making bridges between, indicating which is to be read next.

In more conventional page layouts, where we read from left to right and then down to the next row, the word balloons should complement that pattern. But even then they have to be placed with some concern for how the readers eye will find them.

We can see a good example of what the expected looks like with this "easy" reading placement example from Todd. Note that you can almost string a line like in his "Challenging" examples? I'll illustrate the point by drawing them in. It's not quite perfectly fluid, but there's not a lot of dramatic jumping back and forth, our eye can smoothly travel the page and find the word balloons along the way in logical places. Also note that in this set he never has the balloon overlap panel boarders? I do it a lot myself but this is generally thought of as undesirable. If done without care it can confuse an otherwise good page layout by making a bridge and causing the readers eye to jump to another panel in the wrong order, so be sure to be mindful of this if you ever dare. Or, just keep your balloons in the panels!

Here's an example from my own work, Dream Life, where I used a standard sixteen panel grid, parsed into 11 panels with a mix of widths. Needing to accommodate a fair bit of dialogue I didn't keep it inside the panels. I also chained the texts balloons, and shaped it around the art in ways hoped to complement the reading rather than make it busy or confusing. I've drawn in red, my hoped for Eyeline. As you can see I overlap panel boarders a lot here and in this book generally. But note how they are arranged generally to not touch other panels unless you're ment to read them next?

Creating a very overt Eyeline for the balloons to direct readers like this helps I think, it's important to think about when laying out the page flow at the rough stage if you want the best results. I utilized narrow gutters and wide outer margins on full bleed pages, and broke the rule of keeping balloon ALWAYS inside panels to pursue some more elaborate uses of the text in Dream Life.

In this next example from the same work, the page that comes just before it in the book, I want to establish the space of Dundas Square, have you linger there with the text almost like a prolonged voice over, but I used tails to indicate where they are in the space as well. To make it all fit, and suggest the longer duration in one frame, I have a winding "U" pattern of balloons in panel one,

There are elements of grids in both those pages, the second one it's more secondary, but in both cases as well the eyeline created by the text is anything but linear!

So near the start of this post I mention that the interval between two panels defines a moment that is cast in the head of the reader. The is called a moment of 'closure', and typically there is a 'gutter' between each panel along with the panel border themselves.

But this isn't the only option. Even when working with a grid, the space between panels can become simply a line, and I've talked here about how the size of, or absence of a gutter changes the way the moment of closure reads along with how two panels associate on the page. What is also possible when we lose gutters, and grids, is a kind of montage style of layout.

Traditional gutters work as breaks between intervals of time and space. Flowing montage sequences change the dynamic a bit, with no gutters the transition between panels becomes more like movement, leading the reader through space, suggesting time. It's a subtle difference but an effective one. I use it often in my own work, but it's not my own invention at all. For one thing I take a lot of inspiration for my uses from the art of Diego Rivera.

But posted here is a classic example of a comics page that uses both panels with gutters, sort of. And creates a larger meta space the characters move through, with levels and corners delineating the areas that otherwise would be panels.

Here's some examples of my own take on the idea. Bellow is a page from my book Dream Life, both with and without its lettering. And with my intended Eyeline, indicating the hoped for Flow of the page. it was built around the Zig Zag reading pattern, rather than a grid. It starts Left to right, but then travels snakes and ladders style, down diagonally across the anchoring object. A Rug, the couple isn't really arguing about. It then dives down into a page wide depiction of the two characters, driving the text down between them to help indicate the state of their relationship.

Now those are all fairly wordy pages, the last you can see how it might work without text but I wanted to show as well how I tried to compliment the layout in both the art, and balloon placement there.

I have a whole talk posted here about playing with page design here specifically regarding this kind of non grid based, mosaic inspired Flow. One of the pages I talk about in it is this, also from Dream Life. It was a challenge, for a number of reasons I get into in the video. Not the least is that it's meant to both communicate the intensity and trauma of an assault, while not lingering on and inadvertantly sensationalizing it by playing it out over many panels.

So I used the posing of the figures, eyelines of the characters, pointing gestures and leading lines, strong figurative contours, and textures, all to direct the eye in an exploratory trip over the page, inviting the reader to travel it for as long or little as is their inclination. There is no clear last, or even first panel, helping to obscure order and time. Instead, space is time, as your eye travels over the page.

To wrap up here, lets look a couple more page designs. Here's one from Sergio Toppi I love to show my students. Note how he used positive and negative space tiling to draw our eyes? I've made a copy with what I think are the compositional eyelines created by the artwork. If feels circular, feeding back on itself in a positive way the detailed textures reward. His work often utilized Chiaroscuro to highlight compositional design.

Here's a non grid based page design from my Memoir, meant to have a floating quality from old memories. Note the absence of any bounding box or balloon for the text? Instead it follows the contours of the drawing, the groupings of the text helping to give it reading rhythm the same way shaped poetry does. And indicating directional space/time in the reading as we travel from the toy, down my arm to the moment of me and my neighbor playing together. Again flow is key to a clear reading so the text is very ordered.

Here's a few silent pages I did for a comics called Misplaced. it was designed to be wordless, and hopefully a very fluid reading flow. it's a dream told to me by a friend, and packed into a very tight 16 panel grid baseline. I attempted to employ strong Chiaroscuro style drawing that leads your eye the same way Toppi does. Overall shapes, and eyelines were the main tools I employed.

Ok, that's it for this post! Check out bellow here, links to other tutorials out there i've found on the same subjects and in some cases referenced here. The best way to learn is hear different ideas and try many if not all of them, so read everything you can get your hands on!

LINKS
Dispelling myths about comics page layout The Visual Language of Comics [book] Visionary Synchronicities in Carl Barks Comics by Donald Ault Architecture of The Comics Page on Graphic Universe blog Composition 101 - Laying Out Your Comic Page on Webcomic Alliance An Analysis of Watchmen - Symmetry & the Tragic Flaw Posts Tagged: Page flow on MakingComics.com Todd Klein's great How To section on his site!

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FLOW sums up a key concept in comics page or strip design: Underlying structures that make the work legible, flow and should not need to be explained to readers. Dialog always starts on the left, a...

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A superb comic book layout aims to help the reader logically organize the panels in their mind to tell the story.

If you have a poor comic page layout, then your readers' eyes will become confused, and they will not be reading the comic in the manner that you would like them to, the way that makes the most sense to the story and the reader.

Comics come in many unique forms, from traditional newspaper comics to graphic novels to manga to online webcomics. Here are some tips and tricks from experts who create Japanese comics to Neil Cohn, an academic focusing on comic book page layouts' rules.

A Brief History of the Comic Book

Many argue that visual storytelling has been around since the Stone Age when the first Neanderthal represented an experience through pictures.

Pictographs and hieroglyphics could be characterized as narratives presented in pictures and convey information - the basic definition of visual storytelling. European broadsheets in the 17th century and satirical magazines from the latter half of the 18th century introduced speech bubbles and other critical elements to the art form.

However, the comic book as it is today, either in book form or in panel form like in a newspaper, wasn't developed until the very end of the 19th century. On May 5, 1895, Hogan's Alley (by R.F. Outcault) appeared in the New York World, and comic books were born.

Soon humorous comics were a mainstay in every major newspaper across the United States. Comics readers clamored for more, and in 1933, Funnies on Parade came out, a collection of popular strips like the Katzenjammer Kids or Mutt & Jeff.

The landmark issue of Action Comics #1, featuring none other than the Man of Steel himself, Superman, came out in 1938. The rest, as they say, is history. Soon Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Human Torch were all gaining fans and popularity.

Comic book artists soon figured out that the form wasn't limited to humor and began to expand comics into the fantasy and action genres. Magazines like Weird Science and The Vault of Horror broadened the stories that comic books could tell.

As comic books evolve, the way they look develops as well. Artists and writers regularly stretch the possible parameters in the world of comic books and graphic novels. One country that takes its comics very seriously in Japan.

The Popularity of Japanese Comics

Manga is the name of comics in Japan, and this art form confirms a style made prevalent in the late 19th century. In Japan, people of every age read manga, and the art form includes stories from all genres.

Manga is such a vital industry that in 1995, it was valued at 586.4 billion yen, or $6 billion. Because the Japanese written language and Western languages differ so much, the comic layout is also very distinct.

Westerners read their comics from left to right, whereas manga readers go right to left. Additionally, the basic layout for a manga page is 2x4, or a pair of panels repeated in four rows down the page.

Although the styles of Western comics layout and manga layout is different, the basic concepts remain the same - when people read the comic, it makes sense in a visual, linear manner.

Elements of a Comic Book

Some of the terminology that pertains to comic books and how to layout a comic page is specific to the industry. To effectively design a page for a logical, sequential reading path, you need to know what you'll be working with.

Some of the key terms to understand when creating a comic are panels, gutters, tiers, splash, and spread. Additional terms that involve sound in the comic are captions, sound effects, and speech bubbles.

Panel - This refers to one square on the comic page that contains a piece of action or conversation. There are often multiple panels on a page, and, to read a comic, you move from panel to panel sequentially.

Tier - This term defines a row of panels, usually three (or two in manga) per page.

Gutter - The panel borders and the spaces in-between panels are called gutters. Panels that span to the edge of the page are called a full bleed.

Splash - This type of panel is one that occupies the entire page. Usually reserved for the beginning, end, or climax of the story, splashes are generally in color and are impressive.

Spread - A step up from splashes, a spread incorporates both pages of a comic book, spanning from the left-hand side to the right hand. These are used sparingly and to significant effect.

Speech bubbles - These round shapes delineate who is speaking (or thinking) and what they're saying.

Captions - These are used to describe the setting or to fill the reader in on important information. There are usually rectangular boxes in the upper part of the panel with writing in them.

Sound effects - These words are not in boxes but appear anywhere there's action, helping bring the panel to life with onomatopoeias like Bam and Whizz-pop.

With the basic understanding of these terms under your belt, you'll be able to construct comic book pages that flow seamlessly as they tell your story.

The Basics of Comic Book Page Layout

All the specific design choices change your comic's feeling and add to the tone, which is the overall literature or art mood.

Although most traditional comics use panels set into rectangles, many artists use round, star-shaped panels, or panels with no borders. Each of these choices will change how the comic affects the reader.

Most North American comics use a six-panel grid with three tiers of panels, two panels per tier. For platforms that use a more comprehensive format, like Sunday editions of newspapers or webcomics, the "strip" layout is often employed. The strip layout contains three panels per tier, and some can even use four or five panels, resulting in wider tiers but shorter panels.

Another option is to use one long panel for a tier. This is a great technique to use for an incredibly important action or a landscape shot.

Many comic book artists use what Neil Cohn dubbed a prevalent phenomenon in comic book layout - blockage. Blockage occurs when the comic panels are not thoughtfully arranged, resulting in a confused and disordered reading style.

For example, this occurs when there are two smaller panels on the left, stacked on top of one another, and then a long panel on the right. Readers have a hard time figuring out if they should jump to the bottom panel after the first or move to the right as they would when reading a book.

Use Focal Points to Catch Your Reader's Eye

It may be helpful to think like a cinematographer when you are plotting your layout. Many comic book artists use the 180˚rule, which is often taught in film school but works just as well for comic book layout.

With the 180˚rule, create a perimeter that you wouldn't cross with the camera if you were filming the scene. This means, if you're filming (or drawing) a scene at a dinner table, you wouldn't have one shot on one side of the table and then immediately jump through the table to the other side. This would disrupt the viewer's line of sight and be confusing.

Once you've decided on a grid for your comic book, you should consider your panels' focal points. A focal point is an area of interest to which the reader's eyes are automatically drawn.

Each panel should have a focal point, and it should be relatively easy to connect that focal point to the plot. (In other words, you're not asking the reader to focus on something unrelated to the storyline.)

There are some simple guidelines to avoid confusion when planning your panel's focal point, whether it's a vertical or horizontal panel.

Vertical panel - The focal point of a long, wide panel should be center or slightly to the left or the right.

Horizontal panel - The focal point of a tall, skinny panel like this one should be dead center or a little above or below the central focal point.

Many artists argue for putting a focal point in the dead center of a panel, but others maintain that skewing the focal point a little in one direction creates a dynamic and exciting flow.

Other Considerations in Layout

There are some other terms to know if you want to lay out your comic in a way that lets the reader enjoy the story without having to stop and figure out which panel comes next. Stopping in the middle of a storyline is a sure way to get your reader to give up on your comic.

Entry points - These are fixed starting points on a comic book page. For North American and English speakers, this usually is the upper left-hand corner. However, if you are trying an unorthodox set-up, your entry point might be somewhere else on purpose.

Staggering - This is when the panels are not the same shape or are not on the same (imaginary) line across the page. So the left side panel maybe a little further up than the one on the right, creating movement and flow through your panels with little effort.

Separation - This technique does the opposite of staggering in that it asks the reader's eye to stop with larger gutters or odd placement of panels. Larger space between panels creates a visual pause.

Overlaps - Often, in manga, specific panels overlap one another. A reader's eye will go directly from one overlapping panel to the other.

Inset panels - These panels are smaller and usually appear on top of or in a larger panel. Usually, these delineate an aside, a private thought, or some action occurring in another part of the story world.

Final Thoughts

If you've had a superb idea and would like to turn that idea into a reality, it's not as hard as it may seem. By understanding the terminology specific to comic book layout, you can create a comic that will naturally flow from one panel to the next and tell your story well.

If you're inspired to create a comic book of your own, Comix Well Sring can help you every step of the way. From layout to binding, we can give you expert advice on bringing your idea to life.

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self-publishing graphic novel. self publish comic book

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By understanding the terminology specific to comic book layout, you can create a comic that will naturally flow from one panel to the next.

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How To Read Graphic Novels for Novice Older Readers

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How To Read Graphic Novels for Novice Older Readers

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If you are taking IB English, you may have noticed that comic strips sometimes show up on the Paper 1 exams (e.g. November 2015 for Language and Literature SL) and graphic novels are sometimes assigned to us for Paper 2 (e.g. Persepolis and ). The purpose of this blog is to provide novice readers with a basic understanding of how to approach a page from a graphic novel and to give more experienced readers of comics a greater appreciation of the various features of the medium.

To begin with, let's cover some basic terminology.

Panels are the frames that contain text and images to tell part of the story, and Gutters are the spaces in between those panels. Take a look below to see how these are used.

In Frank Miller's Sin City short story "Silent Night," we see a simple sequence of images pieced together to show the protagonist Marv descending a staircase for an as-yet-unknown purpose. The term icon is used to refer to the representation of identifiable objects in a frame. Marv, the frightened porter, and the staircase are all icons. The extremes of light and shadow create a particularly menacing tone, and contribute to an overall sense of graphic weight, that is, contrast within the image. One effect of this graphic weight is that it highlights the emotional contrast between the characters in the first panel, just by showing us the characters' eyes. Another effect is in the last panel, where Marv comes to the end of the staircase, and will step off into the unknown. It looks almost as if he will fall from this last step, into an infinite abyss. So much tension in a single page!

Bleed is a term used to describe an image that runs over to the edge of the page. It is not contained within a frame, that is, the outline of a panel.

When a page bleeds on all sides of a page, it is called a full bleed or splash, which we'll see in the next picture.

Words are communicated via captions, thought bubbles, and speech balloons. Captions usually come from a voice outside of the picture's time frame. This can be from a narrator, or it may come from a character reflecting on the action of the comic some time after it has occurred. It has an effect similar to " " in movies. However, in the following panel, the captions provide something more akin to commentary.

Above, we see Batman in The Dark Knight Returns . Batman provides narration for his first experience returning to crime fighting after a long layoff. These words express Batman's thoughts as he returns to fighting bad guys (hence, "This" in the first caption). Captions can provide insight into thoughts and feelings in ways images alone cannot.

Thought bubbles convey a character's thoughts. Simple enough. Check out the next panel from an older comic.

Okay, so the first thing we notice is that Batman and Dick sleep in the same room, Yes, this is really creepy, and no, this is not rare in Batman comics from years back . This is just one instance of numerous homoerotic undertones from the earlier days of . So, when we are ready to get over the fact that our beloved Batman is pining for a ten-year-old Dick, we should notice that the thought bubble conveys Batman's thoughts at the moment they occur. This is similar to when an omniscient narrator conveys the thoughts of a character to the audience in fiction. Now, you may have noticed that it's rather difficult to differentiate between the functions of the thought bubble in the above image, and the captions in the image before. I like to think of the difference as similar to that between direct speech and free indirect discourse. In the image above, we know for certain that the words in the bubble are Batman's at precisely this precise moment. However, in the first image of Batman from The Dark Knight Returns , we don't have the trail of bubbles to make the connection between the words and Batman. The reader is then forced to infer that the speech comes from Batman, but that it has the effect of being mediated by a narrator or author.

Speech balloons tend to make up the majority of the written text in comics and graphic novels, and the balloons themselves can be written in a variety of ways to demonstrate the qualities of a particular voice.

The last use of text is probably the most inherently comic.

Before I wrap up, I'd like to take a look at how several of these elements come together to create a scene. When looking at the scene below from an issue of 100 Bullets, remember that we read graphic novels from left to right, and top to bottom (unlike Manga!).

Okay, so here we have a familiar scene where two tough guys sit across from each other at a diner, and one points a gun at the other but keeps it discreetly under the table. What makes this sequence unique is not what happens, but how it is conveyed to us. Notice that unlike a movie, the graphic novel medium allows us to see the entire scene unrestricted by sequentiality. While we know we're supposed to read it in that zigzagging pattern I mentioned before, we can't help but see it in its entirety, as a single, (in this case) mostly symmetrical image. All sense of time is removed from the scene, and it exists laid out in front of us as not a chronology, but as a geometric pattern. This is the only medium known to me that allows us to see existence with true omniscience, unrestricted by time. Even an experienced reader of graphic novels will glance at the page in this way and grasp, however briefly, an entire scene at once.

When we "read" the page, we can view the top half of the page as a single image: one in which two men are sitting; one drinks coffee while the other holds him at gunpoint. But the sequence of panels (left to right) would have us focus on the nefarious man in red first. We are meant to focus on him as the dominant icon in that panel, as he takes up the foreground (the front of the image, as opposed to the background, or the back of the image). Then, in the next panel, we are to focus on the face of the longhaired thug, as he also dominates the foreground of the upper right panel. According to strict sequentiality, we aren't supposed to know he has a gun under the table just yet, but we can't help but have seen it already. One might argue that this approach ruins the suspense, and that might be true in this case, but I would argue that it does so to provide the reader with detached omnipotence much like in the art style of cubism. This technique allows the artist to break a moment into pieces and arrange some of those pieces so that a narrative may still be discerned, but also so that the arrangement constructs a perspective unlike anything people can ever see outside of visual art, and almost never in the film.

Next time we'll be looking at angles of shots within panels, and a number of other things that will help us expand our understanding and increase our appreciation of graphic novels.

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How to Read a Graphic Novel or Comic Strip: Part 1 | The Edge

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If you are taking IB English, you may have noticed that comic strips sometimes show up on the Paper 1 exams (e.g. November 2015 for Language and Literature SL) and graphic novels are sometimes assigned to us for Paper 2 (e.g. Persepolis and ).

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Did you know the layout of your comic book can impact how your readers visualize & consume your story?

A great comic book will hook your readers with a balanced comic layout, flow, and structure. To create an engaging composition, consider all the comic book elements and how you can use them to enhance your story and create a visually stimulating layout for your reader.

Let's look at all the different elements and review how to create a layout that elevates your story and engages your reader.

Panel

The panel refers to the border outline that encapsulates a single scene or frame in your comic book. Panels are a fundamental element of a comic book layout and are used to portray one complete thought or idea in one shot, separating scenes into sections.

They also help the reader break down the story and follow your storyline. When creating your panels, think about what you want to convey to the reader and how you want to develop your story using different panel shots.

For example, your panel could have a close-up shot of an object, indicating the object as important/valuable to the story or, it could have a distant shot establishing or setting the scene.

When creating your panels, think about how many independent thoughts you need to include to tell your story, and how you want to lay it out for the reader

Captions

Use captions to narrate your comic book and give more description to the reader of what is happening in the scene. Typically, captions will be in a colored outlined rectangle box within the comic.

Captions are not the same as thought or speech bubbles (we will cover more about those in the next section). Captions will have a different tone compared to character dialogue, which helps separate them from other text within the comic.

For example, your caption could be within your panel in a colored rectangle box with more formal text. The tone is descriptive - differing from the conversational tone your characters use in their dialogue.

Captions help enhance your story because they can clarify to the reader what is to be expected in the frame and set the scene.

Speech and thought bubbles

Speech and thought bubbles indicate character dialogue or thoughts. They are an important element to your comic book layout because they help give tone, voice, and personality to your character(s).

You can use the speech bubbles to indicate that your character is speaking openly or conversing with other characters in the story. Thought bubbles convey emotions, feelings, and expressions unsaid by the character(s).

For example: Use a speech bubble to indicate character dialogue, and use the thought bubble to give your reader insight into what the character is actually thinking.

Both speech and thought bubbles are important elements because it creates an engaging format for your reader. You can give more depth to characters and express foreshadowing through characters' unvoiced thoughts..

Sound effects

Sound effects are a great way to make your comic book story more expressive and depict vivid scenes happening within the plot. Sound effects in comic books will usually appear in a large bold text, be outside a text box, and portray sounds commonly known as onomatopoeias (words that sound like what they describe.)
For example, common onomatopoeias that you will see are words like DING-DONG, WHAM, BOING, BAM, WHACK, WHOOSH, DRIP, SLAP.

Using sound effects throughout your comic helps emphasize events, actions, and sounds happening within the scene. They are a powerful element that can help your reader visualize, feel, or hear what's happening in the comic book, making it more realistic.

Gutters

Gutters refer to the white space between two panels within a comic book. They are important because they bring closure to one scene and help transition to the next. Without them, your image would appear as one continuous shot and bring no closure to the scene.

Gutters also force the reader to come up with their own conclusion on how some scenes end.

For example, if one panel depicts an action scene between two characters but the next panel shows a distant shot of an onomatopoeia BAM, SMACK, AND WOOSH, the reader must use their imagination to envision the scene.

Using all the comic book elements in your comics layout

As you can see, including all these comic book elements in your story can help you create an enriching comic that is engaging, evokes emotion, and hooks your reader.

All these elements play a strategic role in a comic book layout and can help you create a vivid, expressive comic that pulls the reader into your story.

Now that you know how to create a great comic book layout, check out our article, "The Difference Between Comic Books, Comic Strips, and Graphic Novels," to help you pick a format that works best for your story.

And when you are ready to bring your story to life, consider using Storyspread interactive software. Our comic creation online is easy and fun to use with simple drag-and-drop features (no drawing required!)

With various templates to choose from, create a comic book with different settings, characters, and objects to bring your story to life. With our built-in text features, you can create a dialogue between characters and add captions to tell your story.

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Easy to use. Say goodbye to searching far & wide for an expensive illustrator.

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Were you can create a comic and graphic novel WITHOUT drawing. Simple and easy! Made for all skill levels. Click-n-drag comic book characters, scences into panels.

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Comic Book Layout: How to Use Panels, Gutters, Captions, & More! - Storyspread

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A great comic book will hook your readers with a balanced comic layout, flow, and structure. To create an engaging composition, consider all the comic book elements and how you can use them to enhance your story and create a visually stimulating layout for your reader.

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G.N. Adaptations of Classics for Tweens/Teens

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G.N. Adaptations of Classics for Tweens/Teens

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Early Graphic Novels and  Illustrated Chapter Books

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Early Graphic Novels and  Illustrated Chapter Books

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Best Graphic Novel Series for Elementary

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Best Graphic Novel Series for Elementary

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Graphic Novels for Kids: The 13 best graphic novel series

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If you’ve written off graphic novels for kids as not “real” reading, take a peek at these titles that have massive kid appeal and help even reluctant readers want to crack open a book. These 13 best graphic novels for kids are sure to be a hit!

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Yes, Graphic Novels Count as Real Reading

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Yes, Graphic Novels Count as Real Reading

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Really, they do! Whether you have a reluctant or avid reader, graphic novels are entertaining and improve literacy skills.

Until last year, Kevin Yu's now 8-year-old daughter, Olive, wasn't really into reading books for pleasure. But then, Olive discovered the graphic novel series Dog Man, and everything changed.

" We would catch her reading in bed at night by herself, and were like, 'I'm proud of you, but go to bed!'"

She now begs her parents for new graphic novels at the school book fair, and rereads all of the Dog Man books and Captain Underpants, too. She's also started creating her own comic-style drawings. And recently, says Yu, she brought home her first non-graphic book from school.

Graphic novels are teacher approved

"I used to look at graphic novels as the junk food of reading," says Vicki Fraser, an elementary school teacher in Rosemère, Quebec. But that changed when she was introduced to a graphic novel biography of French-Canadian strongman Louis Cyr that she couldn't put it down. "I was quickly pulled into the story, and the images helped to guide me, keep me focused, and make the story more clear," she explains.

Now, graphic novels are an essential part of her grade 5 classroom and she highly encourages her own daughters, who are 12 and 14, to read them.

She says graphic novels actually help her students become more sophisticated readers, thanks to visual cues, like the font used, which helps to communicate a character's emotion, for instance. This teaches them to pick up on a book's tone, which is a skill they are able to use with non-graphic texts, too.

An age-by-age guide to reading to your kidsAnother skill that graphic novels teach kids is the ability to make predictions about what's to come in the book they're reading. "There's a lot of thinking that's required to connect different portions of the text together or even frame to frame," says Sean Henderson, a high school teacher in Toronto who has incorporated graphic novels into his classroom. "A lot of inference skills are needed to read a graphic novel."

And just because they've got pictures, it doesn't mean the vocabulary isn't challenging. "Sometimes the vocabulary is pretty tough in some of the graphic novels, too, it's not just all simplistic language, but they can rely on that visual to kind of help them along. And sometimes the visuals really tell the story themselves. You don't even need the words there," says Fraser.

Another benefit that both Fraser and Henderson have noticed is graphic novels are a great way to introduce all kids, no matter their reading abilities, to challenging topics like racism or poverty, or even historical events they may not have been keen to learn about from a heavy tome. "They allow students to connect to issues in a more meaningful way because they're able to see a character and what their struggle is like," Henderson explains. "It's more immediate and they're more able to picture and really understand problems within our society, or problems that a character's undergoing," he says.

Graphic novels level the playing field

Graphic novels are also thoroughly entertaining, which is why they appeal to kids who are voracious readers, as well as those who may have a harder time with this skill. This can boost the confidence of the struggling readers when they see they're reading the same books as the bookworms says Fraser.

Kathryn Byrne, an elementary school vice principal and a literacy specialist, agrees. "Graphic novels offer all different kinds of readers access to the same level of story and inferencing and imagination, and that wonderful way a story takes you away, regardless of their decoding ability," she says.

That's why she's completely fine with her 10-year-old daughter devouring graphic novels like Real Friends by Shannon Hale and illustrated by LeUyen Pham, while being reluctant to read traditional chapter books. "One of the most important predictors of future reading ability is the volume of and time spent reading," she says. "As long as she is reading stuff, I know that that is contributing to her reading ability, and improving her decoding, even if it doesn't look like what I read when I was 10 years old." Byrne is conscious of providing her daughter with a wide range of types of graphic novels, including a variety of genres and books for different age ranges, as well as those that feature female protagonists and male protagonists.

When looking for graphic novels for your own kid, head to an independent bookstore and ask staff to make some recommendations. Librarians are great guides, too. Remember that even though they look like comics, it doesn't mean they're all kid appropriate. Before giving a graphic novel to your kid to read, Fraser suggests you flip through the book or read it, since some have mature content. And don't be judgy about the content-the best books are those that keep kids reading, so let them go for whatever appeals to them.

While graphic novels can a stepping stone toward longer chapter books, something both Henderson and Fraser have seen with their students, all of the educators in this story agree they have standalone value and help create passionate independent readers. "Graphic novels really open up the world of reading to an audience that maybe would never have been a genuine, true reader without it," says Byrne.
Read more:
This simple 10-minute routine can help your kids catch up in reading
5 sneaky ways I get my kids to read more

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Yes, graphic novels count as 'real' reading

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Really, they do! Whether you have a reluctant or avid reader, graphic novels are entertaining and improve literacy skills. Until last year, Kevin Yu's now 8-year-old daughter, Olive, wasn't really into reading books for pleasure. But then, Olive discovered the graphic novel series Dog Man, and everything changed.

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Reading a comic book can be a daunting task.

Text flies at you from all angles. Sometimes, the sequence of events can be hard to follow. And there are plenty of titles that are specifically meant to be challenging. And by and large, comics readers have to be self-taught. We don't have a great system for teaching people how to read stories told in visuals.

But there's an art to reading a comic book, one developed over nearly 100 years in the US.

As the age-old practice goes mainstream, both readers and artists are experimenting with new ways to speak to and read each other. Here, then, as part one of an ongoing series, is a brief guide to comic basics - starting with panels and gutters.
In this article, we're primarily referring to American comic books. There are other comics, like Japanese manga, which are structured and read differently.
How a comic book is structured:

Comic books have a form and their own language to refer to that form. The diagram above is a very basic breakdown of what it would look like if you opened a page in a comic book.

Pages are meant to be read from left to right and in a "z-like" pattern - you read the rows as they're tiered and make your way down a page. Each page consists of panels - single illustrations, usually sequential, that tell the story. And the space that separates each panel is known as the gutter.

While stuff like the gutter and the size of a panel or what a panel's border or frame looks like might seem like tiny details, they're actually places where comic book artists are weaving in important concepts and making deliberate decisions.

What a comic book artist's job is like

Comic books are unlike any other art form. Because of this, the comic book artist has to juggle lots of information on any given project. They have to rationalize the angles and point-of-view the way a movie director would. They have to think about composition and contrast the way a photographer might. And they have to conceptualize the use of colors in their illustrations the way a painter does.

"The biggest difference between a single illustration and a comic book is time," Christian Ward, the artist for the comic book Ody-C, told me. Ward was an art teacher and is now a full-time artist, working with companies like Image (the publisher of Ody-C), Dynamite, and Marvel.

"You're trying to illustrate time and the passing of time. You don't see that passing of time in the comic because if you're doing it right, the passing of time should be the gutter of it," he added. "Each panel is a moment of time. And then the gutter is the time occurring, and the next panel is what happens after that time's occurred."

Here's an example from Ody-C. The two characters in these panels step into a kind of hot spring, but you don't see a continuous sequence - you see fragments. The actual motion of the characters stepping into the spring and adjusting to its heat is in your head (if you're following along):

In a sense, comic book artists play the part of editors, too, choosing which fragments to give life to, when they want to hold the reader's hand, and when they want the reader to infer something on their own.

"You have to decide how those fragments of time are," Ward said, explaining that Matt Fraction, the writer of Ody-C, gives him a plot script but ultimately lets Ward decide how to compose each panel.

"Each page will have bullet points. So I've got to make the decision [of how to portray those important points]. I then kind of draw it up," Ward said, adding that it takes him around four weeks to create the art after receiving the script.

Where the magic happens

All of this could make comic book art sound almost formulaic. But that isn't the case at all. Within the boundaries of panels and gutters, artists change the way readers absorb a book by playing with the form's existing conventions.

For instance, there are no rules about a size of a panel. When artists make panels big and wide, readers slow down, spending time closely examining an image. This is hugely effective when you want to, say, show off a superhero team, as in Avengers & X-Men: Axis:

By shortening a panel, artists make the pace more frenetic. Here, in Alex + Ada, artist Jonathan Luna plays with size to speed up the violence and heighten the fear in the sequence:

There are also ways that an artist can subconsciously signal time or a state of mind to a reader. In The Wicked + The Divine, artist and co-creator Jamie McKelvie and colorist Matthew Wilson do this by changing the colors of the comic's gutters.

When McKelvie and Wilson are portraying the present and a dialogue you're watching as a third person, you see white gutters and crisp lines:

When McKelvie and Wilson depict an altered state, the colors of the gutters shift, as well as the framing of the panels:

And when the comic is depicting a flashback, the gutters turn grey. The frames or borders of the panel also become fuzzy, perhaps because this is an imperfect memory:

There are ways to subvert the rules and form of panels and gutters to convey parts of a story.

If panels and gutters represent time and structure, then the absence of panels means something is broken or something is so powerful that rules don't apply to it:

Artist Andrea Sorrentino plays with this in Uncanny X-Men Annual #1. Sorrentino is telling the story of a mutant named Eva Bell with the power to travel through time. But Eva isn't quite in control of her powers, and in order to convey this, Sorrentino beautifully creates chaos, shattering panels and having them bleed into one another. By the time Eva has grasped a little bit of control (the bottom of the page), order is restored.

What Ody-C does so well

Ody-C offers an operatic inversion of Homer's classic tale. Instead of a ship at sea, Ward and Fraction have taken the story to space and gender-flipped the epic's characters.

Ward's art is bonkers. It's dizzying, one of the most artistically ambitious books on the market:

"I've always liked doing pages that are more challenging," Ward said, explaining that he wants to play with the format of a page. "I'll often approach a page like a puzzle."

The result is swirling spools of images that look like the comic lovechild of Dali, Daft Punk, and David Hockney. "People never believe me, but I've never done drugs before," he said.

But Ward's ambition isn't without thoughtfulness. The absence of structure is a methodical decision that only occurs when the scene involves the story's gods.

"The gods are the only characters that speak with speech bubbles," he said. "They kind of exist in a different, three-dimensional plane from the rest of the comic ... When the gods are involved, we see them directly fiddling around cosmically."

Because they are gods, the rules of form don't apply to them. Therefore, the pages where Ward depicts them are nebulous, with structure almost ignored. When the comic focuses on the story's human characters, the scenes are quieter, and the panels become more sequential, feeling as if they occur in the present tense, instead of outside of time altogether:

Space, which is usually very linear and structured in many sci-fi stories, is nebulous and mysterious in Ward's comic. This fluid feel is an ode to the original tale and meant to mimic what people look like underwater, Ward told me. "The comic book's liquid elements are a wink and nudge to that," he said.

With Ward weaving so much into the comic book, it's possible that not every reader picks up on exactly what he's thinking. Sometimes, he explained, just making a person feel a certain way through art - even if you can't put your finger on why you feel the way you do - is why he loves his craft.

"Every page, you make a thousand decisions, some of which are conscious, some of which are subconscious," he said. "But when people do pick up on these ideas, some of which aren't always sign-posted, that's fantastic. You know you're doing something right."

Ody-C #3 goes on sale on Wednesday.
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How to read a comic book: appreciating the story behind the art

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Reading a comic book can be a daunting task. Text flies at you from all angles. Sometimes, the sequence of events can be hard to follow. And there are plenty of titles that are specifically meant to be challenging. And by and large, comics readers have to be self-taught.

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Graphic Novels and Manga in the Classroom: LiveBinders

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Graphic Novels and Manga in the Classroom: LiveBinders

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Graphic Novels and Manga in the Classroom

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A resource for introducing Manga or Graphic Novels into the classroom or library.

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Teaching w Graphic Novels in Elementary Classrooms -The Curriculum Corner

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Teaching w Graphic Novels in Elementary Classrooms -The Curriculum Corner

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Help your students begin to explore graphic novels with this collection of resources that are just right for intermediate classrooms!

Graphic novels can be a wonderful option for those students who have not found their niche when it comes to reading. Exposing students to graphic novels might be the hook some of your readers are looking for.

While some might pass off graphic novels as being nothing more than comic books that offer no real reading benefit, this is so far from the truth! Within this collection, we are hoping to help you find ways to make a graphic novel study in your classroom meaningful.

You will find the entire collection at the bottom of this post. Click on the bold link to download this free collection.

These resources were designed to be used as a whole class unit of study. However, if you are looking to work with a small group of students on graphic novels, you will find pieces you can pull from what we have created. Some pages might be beneficial if you are looking to create book club packets.

The lessons and resources we have created are each listed below.

These resources are presented as a collection for you to use in the way that suits your needs. We have created introductory lessons if your students don't have any (or much) exposure to graphic novels. We have provided ideas and pages for a few "noticings" lessons that involve the students in a book sort and some analysis of graphic novels.

Introduction to Graphic Novels: Begin by creating a stack of texts that contain a variety of graphic novels and a variety of fiction books. You might choose to include Percy Jackson which also has a graphic novel version. It might also be a good idea to include some picture books along with chapter books. Students can compare and contrast a picture book with a graphic novel. For this lesson you will need stacks of nonfiction and historical fiction texts (mixed & shorter picture books instead of chapter books) for each group you have assigned.

Noticings Provide students with the noticings chart. Have them record four things they notice about the graphic novels.

"Characteristics of Graphic Novels" to look deeper into each text and compare them according to their similarities. Follow up the group work with a discussion of their findings and an introduction to the anchor chart you can display in your classroom. (A black and white version is provided for reading binders or folders.)

"Reading" a Graphic Novel Copy a page from a graphic novel as a poster or use a document camera to show on your smartboard. Look for a page that has multiple speech bubbles and characters that tell us what is happening using facial expressions. The more variety on the page, the better! Look at the page as a class. Talk about how this can be read like a book. Some things to note are facial expressions, boxes that are not speech bubbles that tell us what is happening. Reading speech bubbles from left to right and top to bottom.

More "Reading" A Graphic Novel Graphic novels help us "read" using more than just words on the pages. Help students understand how authors tell us what is happening by focuses on the first two or three pages of a book. Have students start with the first page and write it like it is a novel. Students will share what students are doing, how they are feeling and what they are saying. When finished, have students share with the class to help those that are not "reading" the pictures yet to understand all that a picture can tell us. We have provided lined paper for this activity.

Graphic Novel Book Club Packet Cover - If you decide to do differentiated graphic novel book clubs with some of the resources, this cover will help to disguise the fact that there are different pages in each book club's packet.
Story Map
Characters -Students share two characters from the book. They will then look at the words and pictures to share what they have learned about each character.

Looking into the Characters Students will draw an outline only of their character. On the outside of the character, they will draw arrows and share what the character looks like. On the inside, they will fill the character with character traits they have learned about the character.

The Main Character Students identify the main character. They will then choose two character traits. Each character trait will need to be supported with evidence from the text.

Plot Students will identify the problem and solution in their graphic novel.

Theme This portion includes an anchor chart. It contains some common themes but there are many others. At the bottom, there are prompts to help students focus on determining the theme. We have included this as an anchor chart and in black and white.

Summary Pages These are pages to be used for students to record their thoughts. You might assign one for each chapter or section. It might be helpful to model the completion of a page for students. This will help set expectations of what the completed page should look like.

Emotions One important aspect of graphic novels are the pictures. This helps us as readers to "read" how the characters are feeling. Focus on these pictures using one of the emotions pages we have provided.

Graphic Novel Templates Students will take a chapter from a novel and turn it into a page or two in a graphic novel.

Reading Response Questions This set contains 12 cards that can be printed in color and laminated. Depending on your students' previous exposure to graphic novels, these cards might be used in different ways. They can be used to lead whole class discussions. Or, they might be placed at a center to lead group discussions. You might even have students write a response in their journal using the prompt on the card.

You might also use the black and white version of these cards. Provide students with the half page, lined template. They can glue the question onto their page and glue their page into their reading journal.

Notes about these questions: Skills that need addressed before using these cards include onomatopoeia and the use of narration in the text

Other Extensions:

Write your own words! Copy a page from a graphic novel, erase the words. Have students use the pictures to write their own words to tell what is happening in the story.

Creating a Graphic Novel Turn a favorite novel into a graphic novel. As a class, choose a book you have read aloud. Divide the book into sections so each child or small group has a section. Students will take their section and create a page or two as a graphic novel. They will write the words and illustrate their parts like they are graphic novels. When finished, bind the book as your classes own graphic novel. We have provided graphic novel templates that you might use. Or, students can create their own.

You will find all the resources for our graphic novels described above in one download here:

You might also be interested in our Mystery Collection. We also have a set that focuses on Historical Fiction.

You will find a few graphic novels below. Contains affiliate links:

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Looking to try graphic novels in your classroom?

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Help your students begin to explore graphic novels with this collection of resources that are just right for intermediate classrooms! Graphic novels can be a wonderful option for those students who have not found their niche when it comes to reading. Exposing students to graphic novels might be the hook some of your readers are looking for.

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Literacy Connections w Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel

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Literacy Connections w Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel

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by James Bucky Carter

Description

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.

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

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by James Bucky Carter Description 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.

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CONTENT AREA: English/ELA
UNIT: Visual Literacy
GRADE LEVEL: 10
SEQUENCE: 1 of 25
TITLE: The Arrival and Visual Literacy: Every Panel is a Painting

STANDARD ADDRESSED:
(MA Framework, CCSS, and/or Other)

How do we differentiate between visual literacy and linguistic literacy? How do we assess which has merit in an academic setting?

How do we "read" an image? What tools do we have in our arsenal to help us through that process?

What thought does a graphic novelist or illustrator have to put into even the seemingly inconsequential details to build meaning, character, theme, or tone?

The impact of successfully translating visual text

The links and shifts between processing written as visual texts

The value of reading visuals in and outside of written context

KNOWLEDGE
Students will know...

The difference between the different types of literacy and how to shift familiar tools to alternate styles

How to read and study a visual panel effectively and draw deeper connections from both film and illustration

That small details in films and graphic novels are paramount in constructing narrative, theme, tone, or purpose, just like small details in a novel might contain significance.

SKILL
Students will be able to...

Read a visual text successfully and analyze its content for meaning, significance, purpose, theme, or tone

Determine how and why artists and filmmakers use various details or images in the backdrop of a scene in order to help establish meaning

Differentiate between the different types of literacy and use a variety of skills in order to effectively consider both with an academic eye

Read, respond to, collaborate on, and write about a series of complex texts and their reflections and analysis of said-text

LESSON PLAN / ACTIVITIES:
Activator: Teacher will begin less with a short video on "winning a scene." Students should take notes on the clip and generate a short list of ways to identify a scene's "winner." Next, teacher will show the clip from "Streetcar Named Desire" (helps if students have seen/read the play but unnecessary). Clip may need to be played more than once. Then, teacher asks the following, "Who wins the scene?" A discussion about the power dynamics based solely on the visual power of the scene follows.

Post-introduction, teacher will:

1. Show the next clip: Every Frame's a Painting's take on chairs in film. Again, students take notes and we reconvene post-showing in order to make sure everyone is on the same page as to the basic message. Teacher will show students images of famous chairs in television and film in order to begin the conversation on visual literary and bring in real world examples that many may recognize. From there we transition finally to the day's activity.

2. Assignment: Looking at both Tan's The Arrival and Yang's American Born Chinese use some of the techniques we've learned from Every Frame a Painting and apply them to each text. You may wish to consider elements like chairs or power dynamics based on positioning; however, you are not limited to these aspects of visual reading and are encouraged to go beyond them for your assignment. Consider: what types of objects does each author use to create meaning, theme, or tone in his world? Who holds the power in any given scene and what visual clues are we given to reinforce that sense of power or control?

3. Students should work in small collaborative groups while they gather their evidence. Students should prepare to present their findings to the class

4. HW: Students should choose a scene we did not discuss in class that they feel would work well with what we've learned about reading a scene thus far. They should prepare to share their findings with the class ultimately with the goal of writing a polished short analytical piece on this scene.

INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS NEEDED:
Various clips from the YouTube Channel "Every Frame a Painting," YouTube Clip from "Streetcar Named Desire" (scene with Stanley calling for Blanche after the poker game), YouTube clip from "Macbeth", Copies of The Arrival, Copies of American Born Chinese, Images of various chairs in tv and Film History, writing implements, paper, etc.
ASSESSMENTS:
Formative: Class discussion, collaborative work, note-taking, etc.
Summative: Written Reflection, presentations

PERFORMANCE TASKS:
(Assignments, In-Class Tasks, and/or Homework)
See Lesson Plan Activities

TEACHER REFLECTION:
(Cite evidence of what worked, what required modifications, and your thoughts on how to improve the lesson)
Differentiation: I love this site as a resource for teaching students how to read films better. You could use several of these (there's one on geometric shapes in a frame or another on poetic details in another that might prove particularly helpful). He does tend to use R-rated films, which means language can be an issue. I generally reserve these videos for upper level classes as a result.

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Lesson #1: The Arrival and Visual Literacy - The Graphic Novel Classroom

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CONTENT AREA: English/ELA UNIT: Visual Literacy GRADE LEVEL: 10 SEQUENCE: 1 of 25 TITLE: The Arrival and Visual Literacy: Every Panel is a Painting STANDARD ADDRESSED: (MA Framework, CCSS, and/or Other) How do we differentiate between visual literacy and linguistic literacy? How do we assess which has merit in an academic setting?

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Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links. Clicking through for additional information or to make a purchase may result in a small commission.
I don't really read graphic novels. I have heard of them, know lots of people who love them, but for some reason or another, they have never really made there way to my bookshelf. I love to read books. I enjoy the act of reading, which is something I cannot get from audio books and to some extent graphic novels. This probably explains why graphic novels have never really been a huge part of my reading lists. However, fate would have it (very dramatic of me, I know) that I would be reading my second graphic novel. Whilst I am not going to say that I am an expert of the genre, I do think there is a lot that can be learned from first impressions. Here are some of my first impressions:
Pro...
The action is all there for you, on the page. It makes reading and taking in information a lot quicker. It can be exciting to see the story move along so fast.
Con...
At times, I feel like my imagination has been disabled. Books give me descriptions that I can use to create characters and places in my mind. Graphic novels don't really give me this opportunity.
Pro...
In a graphic novel, you not only get to read the words on the page, but also the characters faces and body language. I wonder what this would do for helping foster empathy with characters? Especially when you can see them drawn on the page.
Con...
Graphic novels can feel clunky. I guess it just takes time to get used to the way the comic is set out. Colours and outlines of speech bubbles denote who is speaking - narrator, character, etc.. They can also denote if something is happening in the future or the past. Getting used to these codes is not always a simple straightforward task, so it does require some commitment.
Pro...
It is nice to look at something vibrant and colourful (I know not all graphic novels are in colour...).
Con...
I am a creature of habit, and sometimes I miss my black and white words.
Pro...
I can't say this for all graphic novels, but in my experience they can often be better than the movie (like most books!).
Con...
When reading graphic novels for the first time, it can feel like you don't get all the 'inside' jokes. There truly is a world of graphic novels that refers to other works and authors and artists.
Are you a fan of graphic novels? What is your most or least favourite thing about graphic novels? As always, remember to share the reading love.
Get your copy of Watchman to start your graphic novel journey here.

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The pros and cons of reading a graphic novel (from a novice graphic novel reader)

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Book cover of Watchmen by Alan Moore. Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links. Clicking through for additional information or to make a purchase may result in a small commission. I don't really read graphic novels. I have heard of them, know lots of people who love them, but for some reason or another, they...

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Graphic Novels in the Classroom: A Teacher Roundtable | Cult of Pedagogy

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Four teachers discuss how using graphic novels has enriched their instruction, strengthened student comprehension, and engaged their most reluctant readers.

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Guide to Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom

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Guide to Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom

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Guide to Using Graphic Novels w/ Children and Teens

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Guide to Using Graphic Novels w/ Children and Teens

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YA Graphic Novels Every Book Nerd Should Read

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YA Graphic Novels Every Book Nerd Should Read

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40 YA Graphic Novels That Every Book Nerd Should Read

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Ready to get into the graphic game but not sure where to start? These YA graphic novels are must-haves for any collection!

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Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners

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Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners

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By Leslie Morrison, CTD Summer Leapfrog Coordinator

Graphic novels have become a popular format in classrooms, partly due to their appeal to reluctant readers. More recently, a growing body of research, focused on how the brain processes the combination of images and text, indicates that graphic novels are also excellent resources for advanced learners.

When students read visual narratives, the activity in the brain is similar to how readers comprehend text-based sentences. However, when students learn to read graphic novels with an analytical eye, depth and complexity are added to the reading process.

With graphic novels, students use text and images to make inferences and synthesize information, both of which are abstract and challenging skills for readers. Images, just like text, can be interpreted in many different ways, and can bring nuances to the meaning of the story. In this form of literature, the images and the text are of equal importance -the text would not fully make sense without the images, and the reverse is true as well.

Graphic novels can also challenge students to think deeply about the elements of storytelling. In a traditional text, students uncover meaning embedded in sentences and paragraphs. In graphic texts, students must analyze the images, looking for signs of character development, for example, or clues that help build plot. All of this experience developing textual and visual reading skills contribute to students' understanding of their world - the ways the text and images all around them communicate - and in turn help them in crafting their own stories.
Resources
Barbee, M. Comic Books as Models for Literacy Instruction. International Reading Association. 2015.

Brenna, B. How Graphic Novels Support Reading Comprehension Strategy Development in Children. Wiley-Blackwell. Literacy Journal, UKLA, pp.88- 94. 2012.
Brown, Sally. A Blended Approach to Reading and Writing Graphic Stories. Wiley Online Library. 2013.
Bucher, K., & Manning, M. Bringing Graphic Novels into a School's Curriculum. The Clearing House, November / December 2004.

Cohn, Neil. The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images. London: Bloomsbury. 2013.
Eisner, W. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative. W.W. Norton & Company. 2008.
Gillenwater, C. Graphic Novels in Advanced English / Language Arts Classrooms: A Phenomenological Case Study. Dissertation, Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2012.

McCloud, S. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. William Morrow Paperbacks. 1994.
Comic in the Classroom: Why Comics?
The Impact of Structures and Meaning on Sequential Image Comprehension

Neil Cohn, Martin Paczinski, Phil Holcomb, Ray Jackendoff, Gina Kuperberg,

-Tufts University
http://www.visuallanguagelab.com/P/NC_pn&b_abstract.pdf

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The Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners

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By Leslie Morrison, CTD Summer Leapfrog Coordinator Graphic novels have become a popular format in classrooms, partly due to their appeal to reluctant readers. More recently, a growing body of research, focused on how the brain processes the combination of images and text, indicates that graphic novels are also excellent resources for advanced learners.

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In Defense of Graphic Novels and Those Who Read Them

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In Defense of Graphic Novels and Those Who Read Them

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Top Ten List in Defense of Graphic Novels

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Top Ten List in Defense of Graphic Novels

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Does your child adore graphic novels? You're not alone. Does it feel like they only read graphic novels? You're not alone. Do you worry about that? You're not alone.

Hands down, the most common questions and concerns I hear from parents center around graphic novels. Do graphic novels count as reading? Are graphic novels too easy for my child? Why should I invest in books that my child ends up finishing in one sitting? I wish my child would read "real books" like I did when I was their age. How can I get them to broaden their reading?

Today, I'm going to assuage all these fears by giving you TEN reasons why encouraging reading graphic novels (and comics) translates into literacy skills and a love of reading for pleasure, both of which will serve your children for the rest of their lives. You should not only stop worrying about your kids' obsession with graphic novels, you should actively encourage it! If you find yourself walking into a bookstore about to tell your child, I'll buy you anything so long as it's not a graphic novel, check that 'tude at the door. (No shame. We've all been there.) Your child is taking an active interest in a literary format that is endlessly creative, artistic, entertaining, thought provoking, and aligns with the uniquely visual culture in which they are growing up. This is a good thing, and we're going to talk about why.

Then, in a few weeks, I'll be back with a follow-up post on tips to gently nudge your child to expand his reading interests beyond-but never in place of! -graphic novels, including stories with more traditional prose.

But today, without further ado, here are Ten Reasons Why You Should Feel Totally Great About Your Kids Reading Graphic Novels. Oh, and did I mention I'm going to give you dozens of graphic novel recommendations along the way?

10. More than any other books, graphic novels will get re-read, and repetition drives learning.

Susan Sontag once said, "No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading." Graphic novels are literally changing children's relationship to books. No longer does reading material languish on bookshelves after it's finished. Yes, kids will fly through a new graphic novel, because the cinematic presentation invites that. But, if they're allowed, they'll come back to that book again and again...and again. (My daughter read Katie the Catsitter a whopping seven times the first week she got it.) Each time they return to a graphic novel, readers are sinking deeper into the story, noticing new details, extracting layers of meaning from the pictures and the text. Anything that invites this kind of focus, commitment, and passion is an educator's dream, because these are gateways to learning and retention. When my daughter first read Catherine's War, only a fraction of the historical backdrop of World War Two made sense to her; every time she has read it since, she has developed more appreciation for the history behind it, even seeking out related books.

9. Graphic novels get kids talking and sharing about reading.

Last year, when we packed up to move into a small rental while our house was renovated, every book my kids insisted on bringing with them was a graphic novel. What I love are the myriad of ways they enjoy them together, in forts they build or side-by-side on the sofa. My daughter regularly borrows my son's Hazardous Tales books, and he negotiates these trades for her titles. They have a shared vocabulary related to the world of ("repeat business," anyone?). Last summer, vacationing with cousins, all the kids spent lazy afternoons passing around Trespassers and Stepping Stones. More times than I can count, I've driven carpools where boys and girls have passed around the latest Raina Telgemeier title, or debated about which Terri Libenson book was their favorite.

8. Visual literacy is a lifelong skill.

We tend to think of visual literacy as a tool for early readers, who must look to pictures for clues about the words they are sounding out. But any adult who has torn out their hair trying to assemble Ikea furniture knows that visual literacy is a requirement well beyond kindergarten. Now consider this: never before have children grown up in such a visual society. From video games to selfies to social media platforms that prioritize images over words, our kids are being asked to navigate a maelstrom of visual content. When children of any age read graphic novels, whose stories only comes alive through careful attention to the pictures, they are learning and strengthening their visual literacy skills. It might start with fun early graphic novels like Mr. Wolf's Class, but it only gets stronger with subtler, sophisticated stories like

7. Graphic novels encourage non-linear thinking.

Graphic novels encourage and reward non-linear thinking, since their very style of storytelling is inventive and disruptive. Graphic novels are rarely the "easy reads" we parents worry they are. I've never been a visual learner, so I find myself often struggling to understand comics (OK, old lady eyes don't help). Sometimes I can't even tell in what order to read the panels! When I ask my kids for help, I'm amazed at how fluidly they adapt to different presentation styles. When my kids discovered Mister Invincible, where the pot-bellied superhero manipulates the comic medium itself by dropping into neighboring panels or rows to alter the scene's outcome, they talked of nothing else for two days. At a time when outside-the-box thinking is being rewarded in business, let's encourage our kids to devour graphic novels. The more they do, the more their definitions of storytelling, their very notion of what it means to be creative, will expand.

6. Graphic novels are as much about text as they are about pictures.

For all the appeal of their visuals, graphic novels make little sense if you don't read the text; in fact, it's in the marriage of the two that the magic happens. With space restrictions, text in a graphic novel often has to work extra hard, requiring careful editing by its author. Some of the richest vocabulary in children's literature can be found in graphic novels. When kids lose themselves in a graphic novel, rest assured they are reading, even learning, words-and good ones at that. The language in Be Prepared? Beautiful. The language in any of George O'Connor's books? Mic drop.

5. Graphic novels make close readers of our kids.

Graphic novels are one of the most active reading experiences our children will ever have. Their eyes track constantly between images and text, often having to infer meaning in what's not said, in what's left out of the frame. Many graphic novels take an entire year to create, the layers of detail more gratifying with every reading. Our children will be prepared for the day a teacher asks them to write a five page essay on a single paragraph of Austen or Steinbeck, because they've been training to be close readers all along.

4. Graphic novels are a springboard to history, science, biography, mythology, sci-fi, fantasy, and more.

Graphic novels or comics are often discussed as if they are their own genre-when, in actuality, they're a format for a variety of genres. And because kids are drawn to these visual formats like moths to a flame, they're more likely to dip their toes into waters they might otherwise avoid. My daughter has always run from any book about space (that's her brother's territory), yet she dove right into The Challenger Disaster from the History Comics series. Ditto to nearly every title in the Science Comics series. My son's obsession with the series was a big part of why he finally agreed to try Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series (also why, when we had a private tour of the Vatican, he nailed every mythology question). My daughter had no interest in reading the many excellent biographies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg until she discovered Debbie Levy's graphic novel. It's even possible to slip our kids valuable mental health lessons via graphic novels, with terrific titles on consent and anxiety.

3. Graphic novels have the power of literature because they are literature.

Quality graphic novels tell stories every bit as complex, poignant, and memorable as quality prose literature. The character development in Witches of Brooklyn is top notch. The suspense in Snapdragon is deliciously terrifying. When kids read Jerry Craft's Newbery Award-winning graphic novel, they're learning about the role that race and class play in middle-school friendships. When they read When Stars are Scattered or Measuring Up, they gain empathy for the refugee or immigrant experience. A kid might meet a character with severe allergies like Maggie in and see herself. A teen struggling with his sexuality might read a book like and it might save his life.

2. Graphic novels shape our children's understanding of their place in the world.

It's not just their diverse themes that are rocking our kids' worlds in the best of ways, it's also the inspiration that comes from seeing personal stories presented in creative, interesting, relevant ways. When kids read graphic memoirs like or Almost American Girl, they are connecting to more than the entertaining storylines; they're connecting to pieces of themselves, to their own quest to claim identity. When they read books like Dragon Hoops or , they're learning the mechanics of putting real life on the page. Graphic novels give children a compelling medium through which to tell their own stories.

1. Graphic novels are so. much. fun.

Sometimes, when we're talking about getting our kids to fall in love with reading, it's as simple as that. Series like CatStronauts, , The Bad Guys, and Bird and Squirrel brought so many smiles to my children in their early years of independent reading. Books like once informed imaginative play for an entire summer. Graphic novels makes reading fun-and that, my friends, is what we're after.
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Tagged: autobiographies and memoirs written for children, Chad Sell, children's books about anxiety, comic strips, early graphic novels, falling in love with reading, George O'Connor, graphic novels, introducing consent to children, Jerry Craft, Mike Curato, Raina Telgemeier, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, social-emotional development in children, Terri Libenson, Vera Brosgol, Victoria Jamieson, visual literacy

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In Defense of Graphic Novels: A Top Ten List

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Does your child adore graphic novels? You're not alone. Does it feel like they only read graphic novels? You're not alone. Do you worry about that? You're not alone. Hands down, the most common questions and concerns I hear from parents center around graphic novels. Do graphic novels count as reading?

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3 Ways Graphic Novels Benefit Reading Skills

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3 Ways Graphic Novels Benefit Reading Skills

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There are some myths about reading that tend to be perpetuated relentlessly. One of them: That graphic novels don't count as "real reading."

However, teachers and literacy experts disagree with this. Graphic novels will improve your child's reading skills like any other book would, and they are fantastic choices for reading outside of class.

Here are three reasons you should encourage your child to read graphic novels throughout the year:

1. Graphic novels are full of text. Sure, they have drawings, illustrations, and sometimes photos, but they also have text that readers must actually decode, analyze, and comprehend.

With graphic novels, kids still must follow plots and character development. They must understand cause and effect, and they must learn about perspective. All of these things will improve their reading comprehension.

2. Graphic novels are engaging. Often, especially for reluctant readers, graphic novels add the extra support kids need to help them through a text. The combination of text and pictures can be particularly captivating, providing context for stories that kids might not completely understand otherwise.

3. Graphic novels are high-quality reading material. Just like traditional novels, graphic novels have exciting and complex plots, characters, and conflicts. The plots have twists and turns. Characters are developed and dynamic. Conflicts are presented, unwound, and resolved like they are in other texts. The only difference is that graphic novels have more images to support the development.

Introduce the great graphic novels below to your reader and follow along! We promise that you'll be drawn in to these books also. You can discover graphic novels and much more at The Scholastic Store.

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3 Ways Graphic Novels Benefit Reading Skills

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Learn why you should give graphic novels to give your kids, plus take a look at book suggestions.

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How to Identify the Basic Types of Manga

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How to Identify the Basic Types of Manga

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When talking about anime and manga, there are a lot of Japanese terms thrown around that may be more than a little confusing to the uninitiated. But perhaps the most important of these to know refer to some of the different types of anime and manga.

In Japanese games and anime, there are often character archetypes you will see again and again the...
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This is basic stuff! Long time fans will know these terms. That's okay! New ones might not. Likewise, a-okay.

Each of these five types-shonen, shojo, seinen, josei, and kodomomuke-is focused on a specific target demographic. They are not genres (action, romance, coming of age, etc.). Rather, they are just labels for who the intended audience is. So while the anime and manga that fall into each of the types can technically be of any genre, knowing which anime and manga you like fall into which type serves as a good road map for finding other similar titles you might enjoy.

Shonen

Literally meaning "few years," "shonen" (少年) typically refers to young boys under the age of fifteen. Thus, shonen anime and manga are aimed at that demographic. A lot of these anime and manga have a young male hero and are focused on action, adventure, and fighting. However, comedies and series with female protagonists are becoming more and more common. Shonen works often have more than a fair share of fanservice as well. Some popular examples of shonen anime and manga are Dragon Ball, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, and Attack on Titan.

Seinen

"Seinen" (青年), on the other hand, refers to young men between the ages of 15-24. Seinen anime and manga tend to be of a more violent and/or psychological nature than shonen series-though, of course, there are seinen comedies as well. They can also have content of a pornographic nature (though this is not the focus of the work). Famous seinen anime and manga include such titles such as , Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Hellsing, and Gantz.

Shojo

"Shojo" (少女), which is often translated as "young girl," is the female counterpart to shonen, and anime and manga of this type are aimed at girls between the ages of ten and eighteen. These tend to focus on romance and interpersonal relationships-though this does not mean they are necessarily without action or adventure. Shojo works almost always have a female lead; however, many male homosexual love stories fall into the shojo category as well. Popular Shojo works include NANA, Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Fushigi Yuugi, and Ouran High School Host Club.

Josei

Anime and manga of the "josei" (女性) variety are aimed at adult women. Josei series are often slice-of-life or romantic tales featuring adult women, though, in recent years, shonen-like action-adventures have become popular as well. In general, these works tend to contain more realistic interpersonal relationships (as opposed to shojo's often idealized ones) and can cover darker subjects like rape and infidelity. While many josei anime and manga have female main characters, many others have male characters. Male leads are usually of the pretty-boy variety and stories featuring them often have homosexual undertones. Popular josei series include Loveless, Paradise Kiss, Honey and Clover, 07-Ghost, and Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist.

Kodomomuke

Literally meaning "directed at children," "Kodomomuke" (子供向け) anime and manga are exactly that. Kodomomuke works tend to be simple, imaginative stories that teach morals and other core values to young readers. Sometimes they are original stories while other times they are adaptations of Western classical literature. Popular children's series include Doraemon, Hello Kitty, Chibi Maruko-chan, Heidi, Girl of the Alps, Anne of Green Gables, and Anpanman.
Kotaku East To contact the author of this post, write to BiggestinJapan@gmail.com or find him on Twitter @BiggestinJapan. is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

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How to Identify the Basic Types of Anime and Manga

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When talking about anime and manga, there are a lot of Japanese terms thrown around that may be more than a little confusing to the uninitiated. But perhaps the most important of these to know refer to some of the different types of anime and manga.

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Geeky Americans don't just love comic books, but men, women, and children of all ages, worldwide. American superheroes are ever-popular, but it should come as no surprise that nearly every culture has its own approach to telling stories through pictures. Manga is a fascinating topic for academic research, and if you decide to study it more thoroughly, you'll easily find experts for thesis help here.

Japanese manga is one of the most unique and prolific of these comic styles. Never heard of it? Want to try reading it but don't know where to start? Simply interested in an aspect of Japanese culture?

[KiwiClickToTweet tweet="There are five types of manga that are written for men, women, and children. #manga @techaeris #readmanga" quote=" There are five types of manga that are written for men, women, and children."]

Want to know how to start reading manga? Then read on! Need a drawing tablet for Manga? Check out the best drawing tablets here.

What is Manga?

Manga is, simply put, Japanese comics. They are often adapted into Japanese animation. This type of cartoon is popularly known as anime.

Manga usually has a very distinct style of animation that features large eyes, exaggerated emotional responses, fine features, strangely-colored hair, and other character features that will become familiar over time as one reads manga.

Types of Manga

Five types of manga are written for men, women, and children.

Seinen - men's manga

Josei - women's manga

Shôjo – - girl's manga

Shônen - boy's manga

Kodomo - children's manga

Like novels, there are dozens of genres of manga as well. These range from fantasy and science fiction to slice-of-life and mecha. Often, these genres have blurred lines that allow for very imaginative stories and plot points.

How to Start Reading Manga

If you're new to manga, it can be confusing to figure out where to start reading. But I'm going to show you how to start reading manga. Traditional manga, translated or otherwise, reads right to left. In some cases, the cartoonist/writer, or mangaka as they are known in Japan, will design their manga to read from left to right. This is a rare situation, however.

This image shows the proper order and direction to read manga. Start in the upper-right corner of the upper-right panel and then read from right to left. Repeat this process until you're done with all of the panels in a section, and then move down to the next section of panels and repeat the right-to-left process.

Don't forget to take time to look at the artwork, though! Since the text boxes are often short bits of dialogue, it's easy to blast through an entire page of manga without actually looking at the artist's work. Most of the beauty contained within a manga volume isn't the storyline but the art. Indeed, the art is complemented by the story, not the other way around, as the art tells most of the story through careful, beautiful emotions and distinct actions.

Popular Titles

Here's a list of popular manga titles, along with a descriptive blurb from Anime News Network:

- ninja, fighting - When Naruto was born, the spirit of an evil nine-tailed fox was imprisoned within him, rendering him the hate of the villagers in the ninja village of the Leaf, who feared the demon in him. Countering this hate, he grew into the role of the clown, trying to attract attention by making a fool of himself and his teachers. But within him dwells the dream of becoming Hokage, the strongest warrior of the village. When he graduates from the academy, he's placed in the same group as Sakura, the technician and the girl he loves, and Sasuke, the strong, quiet guy and his rival for Sakura. The leader and teacher of the group are Kakashi, the strange and always late, though powerful ninja.

Pokemon Adventures - fantasy, creatures, adventure - Red is just a normal kid living in rural Pallet Town when he decides to go out on his own adventure along with his rival since childhood, Blue. In this world of Pokemon, he makes many friends, humans and Pokemon alike. However, all is not well. Team Rocket is trying to capture Mew, a very rare Pokemon, and is performing experiments on other Pokemon to increase their power. Red and his friends must battle against Team Rocket to stop their cruel experiments and unlock the secrets of Pokemon.

Full Metal Alchemist - fantasy, comedy, drama - When two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, tried to revive their mother using Alchemy, something went drastically wrong. Edward lost his leg and arm, and Alphonse lost his entire body. Now, a few years later, Edward becomes what's known as a "State Alchemist" or a Nationally recognized Alchemist. Along with Alphonse, whose spirit has been put into a metal suit of armor, and his automail leg and arm, the two brothers set out to find a way to restore themselves.

Ghost in the Shell - science fiction, cyberpunk, action - In the near future, technology has firmly taken root in society at large. Cybernetic implants are nothing uncommon, and robots roam as plentiful as humans, all connected through their "ghosts" to the electronic data streams of the net. Major Motoko Kusanagi and the Public Security Section 9 constantly battle the newly created wave of technological terrorists and cyber-hackers. But things take a turn once Motoko gets involved in a certain case involving an extremely dangerous "ghost" hacker nicknamed the Puppeteer, as she dives deeper and deeper into the limitless reality of the net to reach her own startling conclusions.

Love Hina - comedy, drama, the slice of life, romance - When he was a child, Keitaro Urashima promised a girl that they would meet at Tokyo University (Toudai). For this reason, he has tried to get into the prestigious university but has failed the entrance exam two years in a row. When his parents kick him out of the house, he tries to find lodging at his Grandmother's inn, but unbeknownst to him, it has been changed into an all-girls dormitory. He is allowed to stay in the position of Kanrinin (dorm manager), but his clumsiness tends to land him in trouble with the girls. To achieve his dream, he studies to pass the Tokyo University exam along with Naru Narusegawa, who has her own reasons for wanting to get into Toudai.

Dragon Ball - action, comedy, fantasy, fighting - Dragon Ball follows the adventures of Son Goku from his childhood through adulthood as he trains in martial arts and explores the world in search of the seven mystical orbs known as the Dragon Balls, which can summon a wish-granting dragon when gathered. Along his journey, Goku makes several friends and battles a wide variety of villains, many of whom also seek the Dragon Balls for their desires, including foes from another planet.

Bleach - action, supernatural - Bleach follows the adventures of Ichigo Kurosaki, a teenager with the ability to see spirits, who accidentally steals the powers of the Soul Reaper Rukia Kuchiki while saving his family and subsequently assumes her duties while she convalesces. Since that event, Ichigo has had to fight hollows, evil spirits that attack people. In the process, he makes new friends with special abilities.

Akira - science fiction, action, supernatural - In the year 2038. A police state, scheming politicians, religious sects, revolutionaries, and a secret scientific project combine to produce an explosive mixture in Neo-Tokyo. The rival groups all have their eyes on one prize: control of Akira, a boy of such destructive psychic ability that he has been held in cryo-stasis for over 30 years. A coup is planned, but there is a wildcard in play: the psychic Tetsuo, an impetuous young biker who releases Akira and so forces all of the groups to make their move.

Soul Eater - action, comedy, fantasy - In a world where technicians wield the select humans who can turn into weapons, Shinigami-sama created a school to teach young technicians and their shape-shifting partners what it means to be a just death god. In order to create the ultimate weapon, the students of the school must collect the souls of 99 evil humans and one witch.

Hikaru No Go - drama, board game, supernatural - Hikaru Shindo is just a normal 12-year-old Japanese boy. One day, he's rummaging through his Grandfather's things to see if he can find something to sell and pulls out an old Go board. A ghostly apparition appears out of the board and tells Hikaru his sad story. His name is Sai Fujiwara, a man who was a Go instructor to the emperor of Japan a thousand years ago. Now, he haunts a Go board, and wants to accomplish the perfect Go game, called the "Hand of God," which he hopes to do through Hikaru. Whether Hikaru can do it or not (or even wants to) will have to be seen.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 - mecha, science fiction, drama, action - niversal Century 0079: The Principality of Zeon declares war on the Earth Federation. What follows is mass destruction on Earth and the orbiting colonies that claim a death toll by the billions. As a result, both factions declare a ceasefire for eight months. On Side 6 Colony, Amuro Ray, the son of a Federation scientist, stumbles upon his father's prototype mobile suit RX-78-2 Gundam and pilots it to combat Zeon's mobile suit forces. Amuro and the carrier White Base crew must survive the numerous battles against Zeon until the war ends.

Wrap Up

Manga has risen in popularity in America and the West in recent years, becoming one of the top exports of Japan. Personally, I really enjoy reading a slice of life and mecha manga. So now you know how to start reading manga. Did my how-to-start reading manga guide help you? are some of your favorite manga? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

If you're looking for other great manga titles to get started with, check out this About.com article, 50 Essential Manga for Libraries: Timeless Classics and Popular Titles for Kids, Teens and Adults.

Last Updated on January 7, 2023.

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Geeky Americans don't just love comic books, but men, women, and children of all ages, worldwide. American superheroes are ever-popular, but it should come as no surprise that nearly every culture has its own approach to telling stories through pictures.

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by Anise Shaw
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
These lessons are intended for beginners, those just trying their hand at comics for the first time and feeling overwhelmed. Feel free to discuss more advanced concepts in the comments!

Lesson 3: Character Design

Storytelling is comprised of three main elements: a setting, a plot and some characters. In this lesson we will go over a working methodology for creating compelling and original characters for your own stories or for a collaborative project. Creating characters is a great treat, and often the favourite exercise of writers everywhere. There are many ways to examine, develop and refine characters, but designing them is a completely different subject. Before one goes down the path of character design, we must first understand the foundation of the practice: design.

Design is about developing a working method to suit a function or need, as each instance of your design method will be different. For example, you may be a character designer, but designing a character for a comic or a video game or a novel are three very different instances. The goal is to create one method that can serve all three best. Your method is what makes you an artist, not your skill, perceived talent or even ideas (we're post modern, remember? All ideas are derivative anyways). What defines one artist to the next is how they work through the method of taking an idea and translating into their visual (or audio, or performance, or whatever) form.

In this lesson, I will provide a simple framework that is commonly used and you can build upon it yourself. This is where the whole "there are no rules in art" comes in. For every suggestion, the opposite, the negation or something slightly different will work as well. Never say to yourself "I have this great idea, but it doesn't fit the framework I learned in that graphic novels class". That's bullocks. Frameworks are supposed to help drive, define and ground ideas, not limit their existence. Be flexible, and allow your method to grow and evolve. Self reflect on your method, write these reflections down and be observant. Like we briefly discussed in the first class, being an artist is not just a profession, it's a state of mind.

So, without further adieu, the character design framework.

1. Identify and understand your design problem.

why are you making this character?

what are the restrictions you're working in? Media, deadline, target age group, function, etc, are all restrictions.

Your design problem may be simple or complex, they are as different as snowflakes. Do be honest with yourself, and don't make something more complicated than it needs to be.

2. Analyze the problem and break it down into simpler elements

Your problem is you need to make a protagonist for a graphic novel (of an undetermined genre), break it down into:

The character functions visually, therefore has to be visually appealing

The character will be seen and heard (through speech bubbles), and therefore has to display their personality visually and through dialogue.

The characters will be in a long form story, and therefore has to have a complex personality that can be slowly examined

The character will be in print and therefore must translate well into that medium, both aesthetically and conceptually (this is why I think 3D rendered comics tend to look strange, they don't fulfill this need).

At this point it's time to do some idea making, which will be covered later in this lesson. Remember how I said there are all sorts of exercises for examining, developing and refining a character? Now's the time to use them. The framework assumes that at this point you've done some brainstorming and are then ready to:

3. Choose the best idea.

This needs to solve all parts of the original design problem you identified in step 1.

4. Draw the Character.

You should have already been sketching, trying out different things and playing around in step 2. Now it's time to do a technical drawing of the character - the good copy. Draw your character from many angles, with different costume if necessary, and get a good feel for who they are.

5. Evaluate the results.

Ask others what they think. Get them to try and guess who the character is to see if your were able to accurately depict their personality visually. Talk to people you trust and who are thoughtful, not to people who will want to spare your feelings. This is not the time to get squeamish, you need a really good character.

6. Rework the design if necessary.

A very simple, yet important step. I often have students who skip this step because they are simply "ready to move on". While that might be an accurate feeling for more completed work (like trying to resist the urge to go back and redraw the first 10 pages of your comic because you're drawing has improved - that's a "move on" moment), during the design process a small moment of reflection and reworking is necessary. Grab the red pen and make the changes that need to be made.

Now the process is finished and you should have a pretty good foundation for a character. In the next lesson we move into the hard part: making the actual comic.

Step 2 Expanded

The design problem in our class is simple. We need to come up with a character (or a few characters) that can be the cast of our comics. All of the above expansions that I outlined in step two still apply. While comics have a literary component, they are visual as well. The visual design of our character is going to be as important as their literary content.

When at this step of the design process, ideas are king. We want to have many of them and have the freedom to develop them in different ways. I have some exercise suggestions, but there are many more available online, in books and from other artists. Feel free to add these to your library of idea generating methods.

Observation. The goldmine of ideas. Wei and myself come up with great characters by just observing people in public, on transit or in cafes and letting our imaginations run wild.

Brainstorm with others. Get into the mode where nothing is unacceptable and no idea is too wild and just run with it. It's amazing how differently two people think, and putting them together can yield fantastic results.

Locate reference materials. Pictures, clippings, movies, television, books, magazines. Everything is reference. It's not just visual either, characters in other novels can start as the foundation for something new.

Use word play and mind mapping. Automatic writing is fantastic. We're in idea mode, turn off your critical brain and let things flow. You can scrutinize later.

Fantasize about your characters. Daydream scenarios, think of how they would speak. You can even turn them into temporary imaginary friends. Anything to get the ideas going.

Look for symbolism and myth. Archetypes can make very solid character foundations.

Sketching Your Character

You need to get that pencil moving. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, stays in your head. That's a terrible place for ideas. Write and draw on the same pages, don't pre-organise yourself in the idea stage. Story ideas don't need to start in a word processor on the computer and characters don't need to start hand drawn (why not try some collage?). Here are some things to think about with the visuality of your character:

Shapes. Play with them, they are powerful tools. Their counterparts are scale and proportions, so play with those as well.

Expression exercises. Try the 25 Expression Challenge, a popular meme on Deviant Art. I use it all the time.

The five dot exercise: Get someone to draw five random dots on a piece of paper. You then choose two of the dots to be hands, two to be feet and one to be the head of your character. Now you have to draw your character in those constraints (you can get some great, twisted positions).

Add and subtract elements from a sketch. Either physically with an eraser, or by redrawing.

Shift elements, reshape, skew, squash, stretch, etc.

Character Design Exercise

We're going to create a character for our graphic novel project that we will start in the next class. You may follow this process or a different process for other characters, but for now we'll try out a pre-described method to see how the process works.

Our design problem: we need to create a visual, drawn character for a graphic novel that will serve as our protagonist. We need to finish this in roughly a week.

We break it down into the following elements:

Our character is visual and needs to be visually appealing

Our character will be drawn repeatedly, and can therefore not be too complicated

Our character will be the protagonist, so they need strong desires and conflicts and a concise history.

Brainstorming

Start with a mind map, starting with the character's role in the middle: protagonist. Begin associating words and writing them down. Think with your senses as well as your imagination, and don't censor yourself. When you are finished, it's time to refine the mind map. Circle the words that stand out to you, that describe a character you would be interested in. Don't worry if other will be interested at this point, if you're not then there's no point in choosing it.

Create the physical character, with words and sketches:

General physical description

Body type

Proportions

Material make-up (is your character flesh, robotics, alien, or anything else?)

Gender

Surface texture

Colour

Facial Structure

Movement (how does your character physically carry themselves?)

Create a character history. A character's life never begins at the beginning of your story, and the most believable characters will act in ways that expose their past experiences. Character histories are important, but don't need to be complicated. Look for elements that will create desires and conflicts, the essence of any plot. You need to describe the following:

Your character's personality

a quick timeline of your character's past, present and future.

Lastly we're going to do two things - the 25 Expression Challenge for your character. Don't be discourages if you don't finish them all, just try as many as you can. Don't pick expressions that you think will suit your character, pick them at random.

Then we are going to start thinking about character motivation. I want you to three short paragraphs. Each will a single event from the character's life told from three different perspectives:

Telling the story to a stranger. How does your character want to be perceived? How much information are they going to reveal?

Telling the story to a close friend. How will they confide in them?

Telling the story to themselves. What would they never tell to anyone else.

After this, you should have a character that's good to go for a final, good copy drawing! Feel free to post your work, sketches, mind maps, writings and finished drawings. I'd like to see how other people design their characters!
Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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An Introduction to Graphic Novels: Character Design

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by Anise Shaw Part One | Part Two | Part Three These lessons are intended for beginners, those just trying their hand at comics for the first time and feeling overwhelmed. Feel free to discuss more advanced concepts in the comments! Storytelling is comprised of three main elements: a setting, a plot and some characters.

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Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books

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From the March/April 2006 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

By day a mild-mannered library technician at Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, Massachusetts, Brenner is the creator and editor-in-chief of "No Flying, No Tights," a website reviewing graphic novels for teens, and "Sidekicks," its sister site for kids. Here are her answers to some frequently asked questions.

Q What's the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel?

A Most simply, length. A comic and a graphic novel are told via the same format, officially called sequential art: the combination of text, panels, and images. Comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels are in this sense all the same thing, but comic books stretch a story out to about thirty pages, whereas graphic novels can be as long as six hundred pages.

QWhat's the difference between American comics and Japanese manga?

A There are a few key differences between American graphic novels and Japanese graphic novels, or manga. While superhero comics still dominate the U.S. market, in Japan there is a much wider diversity of topics, from romantic comedies to historical fiction to how-to comics, and they are published in both weekly and monthly installments. Japanese comics work with a complex language of visual signals, from character design to sound effects to common symbols. The biggest difference is obvious: Japanese comics are from another culture and were never intended for export. In some ways, Japan's pop culture is like ours, but in many ways it's not, and learning the secret code that opens up those stories for us is one thing that makes manga so appealing to American readers.

QAre different graphic novels aimed at different audiences?

A Most certainly! In today's market, graphic novels exist for almost everyone but are not automatically for all ages. In the past, American comics were mostly aimed at children and teens, but today there are graphic novels for everyone from elementary school kids to seniors. It's true that a higher percentage of graphic novels and comics are still essentially aimed at men from teens to middle age, while girls and women have fewer titles created expressly for their tastes. Japanese manga creators, on the other hand, have a specific age and gender audience in mind when working on their titles, and those age and gender recommendations usually hold up.

QWhat are some common misconceptions about graphic novels?

A Comics and graphic novels are for kids. In reality, comics never were just for kids. Even in the 1940s-1950s Golden Age of superhero comics, there were crime, fantasy, and science fiction comics intended for teens and adults rather than children. However, due to the hullabaloo started by psychologist Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent (1954), which drew a tenuous connection between juvenile delinquency and comics, comics' content became watered down. Many adults are still under the impression that the format automatically means juvenile content - but as the average age of a comics reader is thirty, this is certainly not true.

Graphic novels are all full of violence and explicit sex. On almost opposite tack to the idea that graphic novels are for kids, many adults fear that they are full of sex and violence. Like many previous formats, graphic novels are painted with the extremes of what's available. There are comics with R- or X-rated content, but they are not the bulk of what's available, nor are those titles intended for younger audiences.

Comics and graphic novels are only superheroes. Yes, superheroes are still the bread and butter of the big companies, but genre diversity is increasing every day with more and more independent companies publishing a range of genres, from memoir to fantasy to historical fiction. This is partly what has allowed graphic novels to truly break into the book market. On the other hand, this distinction could also lead to the mistaken conclusion that there is nothing of value in superhero comics. A few years ago, many dismissed fantasy as a lesser genre, but the success and popularity of Harry Potter has reminded the reading public that genre does not define quality.

Graphic novels are for reluctant readers. One of the biggest benefits of graphic novels is that they often attract kids who are considered "reluctant" readers. This is not just hype - the combination of less text, narrative support from images, and a feeling of reading outside the expected canon often relieves the tension of reading expectations for kids who are not natural readers, and lets them learn to be confident and engaged consumers of great stories. That being said, graphic novels are not only for reluctant readers - they're for everyone! It's a disservice to the format to dismiss it as only for those who don't read otherwise, and relegating graphic novels to a lower rung of the reading scale is not only snobbish, but wrong.

Graphic novels aren't "real" books. This one's a zinger and contains a bit of truth and a lot of prejudice. The key to categorizing graphic novels is to remember that they're a format, akin to audiobooks, videos, and television, all media that have struggled for acceptance. Graphic novels are not and were never intended to be a replacement for prose. Sequential art is just another way to tell a story, with different demands on the reader. So, yes, graphic novels don't work exactly the same way that traditional novels do, but they can be as demanding, creative, intelligent, compelling, and full of story as any book.

QWhy should kids read comics and graphic novels?

A Graphic novels are simply another way to get a story. They represent an alternative to other formats, not a replacement. They are as varied as any other medium and have their fair share of every kind of title, from fluff to literary masterpieces. What they always involve, though, is reading - just as books, from Newbery winners to the latest installment in the Animorphs series, do. Stephen Krashen, who examines voluntary reading in his book The Power of Reading, discovered that comics are an unrecognized influence on reading. He found that not only were kids more likely to pick up comics voluntarily, but the average comic book has twice the vocabulary as the average children's book and three times the vocabulary of a conversation between an adult and child. And the very fact that a child chooses to read them gives them a greater impact on that child's confidence in reading.

Not only do graphic novels entail reading in the traditional sense, they also require reading in a new way. To read a comic requires an active participation in the text that is quite different from reading prose: the reader must make the connections between the images and the text and create the links between each panel and the page as a whole. This is generally referred to as "reading between the panels," and this kind of literacy is not only new but vital in interacting with and succeeding in our multimedia world. If you've ever struggled to make the connections in reading a graphic novel while a teen reader whizzes through it, you've experienced how different this type of literacy is.

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Graphic Novels 101: FAQ by Robin Brenner

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From the March/April 2006 issue of The Horn Book Magazine By day a mild-mannered library technician at Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, Massachusetts, Brenner is the creator and editor-in-chief of "No Flying, No Tights," a website reviewing graphic novels for teens, and "Sidekicks," its sister site for kids.

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Common Questions about GN and Comics in Education

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Common Questions about GN and Comics in Education

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Common Questions about Comics in Education, and Their Answers!

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by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com

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In the last decade, the comics-in-education movement has experienced exponential growth in scholarship, pedagogy and classroom use. Our excitement is only enhanced by the world-wide cultural acceptance of superheroes (the stereotypical American icon for comics) as well as other comics literature. Movies, sitcoms, reality shows, apparel and toys: comics are everywhere. The geek is now chic and with that educators are more open to comics in the classroom as an academically rigorous activity attached to standards.

The Graphic Classroom and Reading With Pictures began talks last year of combining our efforts toward comics literacy and education. It's been an exciting time for us all. RWP has been re-publishing TGC reviews to their website while my staff and I have taken a small hiatus. We have, after all, been publishing weekly for many years and we get tired.

Now, we back at the keyboard and ready to write more reviews for you, our dedicated readers, most of whom are educators or related to the education field. Change your bookmarks. Head to Reading With Pictures and find us over there diligently working to easily give you the tools you need to lead students to a place where they love reading for enjoyment.

We do this for you and them and the world and we do it for free. We love your commitment as ask that follow up at Reading With Pictures where you will find a cornucopia of comics-in-education information.

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In the last decade, the comics-in-education movement has experienced exponential growth in scholarship, pedagogy and classroom use. Our excitement is only enhanced by the world-wide cultural acceptance of superheroes (the stereotypical American icon for comics) as well as other comics literature. Movies, sitcoms, reality shows, apparel and toys: comics are everywhere.

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When my huge box of manga from came, I quickly catalogued them and moved them to the front racks of my comic book carts. I have multiple volumes of each title:

These are all traditional manga: black and white art, fast-paced story, and are read back to front and right-to-left. Knowing most of my kids had not read manga before, I was concerned they might struggle with the backwardness of it all. For two students it was a barrier. For the rest, they took to it easily, teaching one another how to do it.

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When my huge box of manga from came, I quickly catalogued them and moved them to the front racks of my comic book carts. I have multiple volumes of each title: These are all traditional manga: black and white art, fast-paced story, and are read back to front and right-to-left.

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Comics in the Classroom: Spotlight on Manga Classics

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Comics in the Classroom: Spotlight on Manga Classics

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Comics in the Classroom: Spotlight on Manga Classics

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Teachers are excited about these faithful adaptations of classic literary books in the style of Japanese manga. (Sponsored)

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Brief Introduction to Manga for Teachers

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Brief Introduction to Manga for Teachers

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Written by Guest Contributor Kapil Vasudev, Education Librarian
This is the second in a series of posts introducing teachers to manga. The previous post covered the origins of manga and the manga publishing industry. This week's post will explain how to read manga and manga visual shorthand. It will conclude with a classroom activity inspired by manga's visual style.
A Brief Introduction to Manga for Teachers, Part 2
How to Read Manga
Manga translated and published in English was originally flipped in orientation so that it could be read from left to right. However, due to production costs, a desire to reduce the length of translation from Japanese to English, and an interest in creating a reading experience more akin to reading manga in Japan, manga in English is mostly published right to left. This creates an obstacle for English readers who are not used to reading in that direction.

In general, manga will be read from right to left and then top to bottom. This applies to reading both the panels in a page as well as the speech bubbles within each panel.
The Manga Style: Visual Shorthand
In Japan, the term "manga" is used generically to refer to any story told using images, including Western comics. Outside Japan, "manga" refers to comics originating from Japan as well as non-Japanese comics that utilize techniques strongly associated with the Japanese style of visual storytelling. Because of the intense publication schedule of manga, manga creators use a variety of visual shortcuts to ease production and to efficiently communicate important ideas. Manga also typically does not make use of caption boxes or thought bubbles to reveal the inner thoughts or emotional states of characters, so visual cues are used in their place.

The face and particularly the eyes are important conduits for expressing a variety of emotions in manga.

In the image above, the red shape represents throbbing veins and indicate anger, irritation, and/or frustration. A single sweatdrop is an incredibly common visual convention that represents a wide variety of emotions based on context, but typically include embarrassment or exasperation. The following image provides examples of common ways to depict specific emotional states in the manga style.
Manga Inspired Classroom Activities
The following activities are inspired primarily by the visual shorthand style frequently employed in manga.
Communicating Concepts
Manga artists communicate both simple and complex concepts purely through images. This activity gives students an opportunity to practice doing the same.

Instructions:

1. Choose two students to come to a whiteboard.

2. Choose an item at random and give the competing students a limited amount of time (30 seconds - 2 minutes) to draw a simple sketch depicting the item.

3. At the end of time, have the class determine which drawing was more effective at conveying the chosen item and discuss why. Also, discuss if there were even more effective strategies for depicting the item.

4. Progressively increase the difficulty of the items to be drawn, from physical items and professions to emotional states and character traits.

Examples:

1. Easy items: fire truck, cowboy, alien, treasure

2. Intermediate items: teacher, anger, boredom

3. Difficult items: devout, frugal, sneaky

Alternative method:

1. Have each student complete a worksheet with multiple items of varying difficulties listed in an appropriately limited time frame.

2. Have students share with a partner and discuss the reasons for the strategies they chose and what was effective and what was not.

Manga Journal
Manga's use of simple visual shorthand also makes it tremendously versatile. Have students apply these techniques to tell stories about their life.

Instructions:

1. Everyday, give students a prompt to tell a story from their life. Examples range from "Write about your favorite birthday party" to "Describe your commute to school."

2. Have students tell the story in the form of a manga, using visual shorthand techniques that have been discussed in class.

3. Allow students to share their journals with an instructor and/or their fellow classmates to get feedback on the effectiveness of their use of the techniques.

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Written by Guest Contributor Kapil Vasudev, Education Librarian This is the second in a series of posts introducing teachers to manga. The previous post covered the origins of manga and the manga publishing industry. This week's post will explain how to read manga and manga visual shorthand.

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Research and learning outcomes for teaching MANGA

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Research and learning outcomes for teaching MANGA

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Yesterday I had the privilege of participating in a Library Pass panel titled Understanding Manga. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak alongside a group of fantastic Manga Enthusiasts: Mike Barltrop, Toronto District School Board Jillian Ehlers, NYC Department of Education Michael Gianfrancesco, North Providence High School, RI Ashley R.

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Guide to Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom

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Guide to Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom

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Struggling and reluctant readers

Graphic novels in the classroom

Recommended graphic novels for kids

Gene Luen Yang: Reading Without Walls

Interviews with graphic novel writers and illustrators

Tips on motivating reluctant readers

You are welcome to print copies or republish materials for non-commercial use as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact [email protected].

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Graphic Novels for Kids: Classroom Ideas, Booklists, and More

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Graphic novels for elementary and middle grade children have become enormously popular and widely accepted by parents, teachers, and librarians. In this resource section, learn more about this highly visual form of storytelling and how it can be used in the classroom, meet some writers and illustrators of graphic novels, and browse the "best of" booklists.

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Yes! Graphic Novels are REAL books! - Fresh Ideas for Teaching

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Elementary Instructional Coach Liz Janusz blogs about the impact of graphic novels on student literacy and love for reading.

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Understanding Comics

1993

224 pages. Black and White with 8-page color section.

A 215-page comic book about comics that explains the inner workings of the medium and examines many aspects of visual communication. Understanding Comics has been translated into 16 languages, excerpted in textbooks, and its ideas applied in other fields such as game design, animation, web development, and interface design.

Winner of the Harvey and Eisner Award, the Alph'art Award at Angoulême, and a New York Times Notable Book for 1994 (mass market edition).

Topics include:

Definitions, history, and potential.

Visual Iconography and its Effects.

Closure, reader participation between the panels.

Word-picture dynamics.

Time and motion.

The psychology of line styles and color.

Comics and the artistic process.

"With Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics the dialogue on and about what comics are and, more importantly, what comics can be has begun. If you read, write, teach or draw comics; if you want to; or if you simply want to watch a master explainer at work, you must read this book."

"If you've ever felt bad about wasting your life reading comics, then check out Scott McCloud's classic book immediately. You might still feel you've wasted your life, but you'll know why, and you'll be proud."

-- Matt Groening, The Simpsons

" Understanding Comics is quite simply the best analysis of the medium that I have ever encountered. With this book Scott McCloud has taken breathtaking leaps towards establishing a critical language that the comic art form can work with and build upon in the future. Lucid and accessible, it is an astonishing feat of perception. Highly recommended."

"Cleverly disguised as an easy-to-read comic book, Scott McCloud's simple looking tome deconstructs the secret language of comics while casually revealing secrets of Time, Space, Art and the Cosmos! The most intelligent comics I've seen in a long time. Bravo."

"In one lucid, well-designed chapter after another, [McCloud] guides us through the elements of comics style, and... how words combine with pictures to work their singular magic. When the 215-page journey is finally over, most readers will find it difficult to look at comics in quite the same way ever again."

-- Garry Trudeau, in the New York Times Review of Books

"The basic manual for introduction to the medium. Do not attempt to operate your comic without reading this first. "--

Warren Ellis

"...a rare and exciting work that ingeniously uses comics to examine the medium itself."

"...a brilliant comic book discussion of what makes comics work."

-- L. A. Times

"BRAVO!! Understanding Comics is a landmark dissection and intellectual consideration of comics as a valid medium. Its employment of comic art as its vehicle is brilliant. Everyone...anyone interested in this literary form must read it. Every school teacher should have one."

-- Will Eisner

"...one of the most insightful books about designing graphic user interfaces ever written, even though it never discusses the subject directly."

-- Andy Hertzfeld, co-creator of the Mac

"Scott McCloud's book, Understanding Comics, is a must read for any true connoisseur of comics. Don't let its entertaining format fool you -- it's an in depth look at what makes the comics medium so great. If I knew half as much as Scott, this would be the book I'd write!"

-- Jim Lee

"[ Understanding Comics] might well turn out to be the rosetta stone, the secret decoder ring, the lyrics sheet, for pete's sake, to all that has gone on in comics art. [This] 216-page book is one of a kind, a combination of everything funny and profound, cool and quirky."

" Understanding Comics is spellbinding! With a lively wit and a laser intelligence, Scott McCloud offers us a fresh new look at the comics medium. Whether you're in the business or on the sidelines, this book will charge your batteries. More than just a scholarly analysis of the art form, it points the way to possibilities, giving inspiration to those wishing to explore the wonderful continent of sequential art."

-- James Gurney creator, Dinotopia

"McCloud firmly establishes his reputation as both the Thomas Edison and Marshall McLuhan of comic books...A comic book about comics, Understanding Comics is a thought-provoking book that will be talked about for years to come."

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1993 224 pages. Black and White with 8-page color section. A 215-page comic book about comics that explains the inner workings of the medium and examines many aspects of visual communication. Understanding Comics has been translated into 16 languages, excerpted in textbooks, and its ideas applied in other fields such as game design, animation, web development, and interface design.

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A page devoted to graphic novel reviews

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Common Sense Media Reviews of Popular G.N.s

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Common Sense Media Reviews of Popular G.N.s

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Common Sense Media editors help you choose Graphic Novels. Illustrations and text mean fun for kids of all ages.

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Graphic Novels in the Classroom: A Teacher Roundtable | Cult of Pedagogy

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Four teachers discuss how using graphic novels has enriched their instruction, strengthened student comprehension, and engaged their most reluctant readers.

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Intro to Graphic Novels Podcast for grades 6-12

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Intro to Graphic Novels Podcast for grades 6-12

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30 min podcast for kids

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Graphic novels are an increasingly popular format for stories told in a range of genres. While learning to read graphic novels takes practice, their artistic and literary merit makes the effort more than worthwhile. Tune in to hear some background about graphic novels as well as specific recommendations of fantasy epics, memoirs, biographies, and adventure thriller stories, all presented in the form of a graphic novel.

After listening to this episode, be sure to print out this list of recommended titles to take to the library or book seller.
Recommendations in this episode include

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis (Bloomsbury, 2009)

Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon and Dean Hale and Nathan Hale (Bloomsbury, 2008)

Amulet: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic, 2008)

Japan Ai: A Tall Girl's Adventures in Japan by Aimee Major Steinberger (Go!Comi, 2007)

Freddie and Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody by Mike Dawson
(Bloomsbury, 2008)

Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography by Sabrina Jones (Hill and Wang, 2008)

Cairo by G. Willow Wilson and M. K. Perker (DC Comics, 2007)

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood Books, 2008)

Pitch Black by Youme Landowne and Anthony Horton (Cinco Puntos Press, 2008)

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Graphic novels are an increasingly popular format for stories told in a range of genres. While learning to read graphic novels takes practice, their artistic and literary merit makes the effort more than worthwhile. Tune in to hear some background about graphic novels as well as specific recommendations of fantasy epics, memoirs, biographies, and adventure thriller stories, all presented in the form of a graphic novel.

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Graphic Novels in the Language Arts Classroom

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Graphic Novels in the Language Arts Classroom

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Guide to Using Graphic Novels w/ Children and Teens

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Guide to Using Graphic Novels w/ Children and Teens

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Download Article

Download Article

Manga is a style of Japanese comic. Reading manga is different than reading a comic, book, or magazine in English. Learning to read manga in a right to left and then up to down sequence, correctly interpreting panel elements, and exploring characters' emotions by familiarizing yourself with some common emotional iconography will help you get the most from your manga.

Discover new manga genres and popular series, like shojo, shonen, Ghost in the Shell, and Love Hina.

Read manga panels from right to left and top to bottom. For dialogue boxes within specific panels, move in the same direction.

Follow characters' changing emotions. Sigh bubbles are for exasperation, vertical cheek lines are blushing, and sweat drops are embarrassment.

Add New Question

Do I read manga on the internet from right to left?

You read it right to left, or else you'll miss some important scenes in the conversation and then get really confused.

Is there any way I can get it the American way on paper?

Yes, but not for all manga. Some are flipped to fit the "American way," but most times, the backgrounds are flipped and it doesn't look right.

Do I read it right to left on an iPad/iPhone on the manga app?

Yes. Manga apps I've seen are often scanlations of Japanese manga and translated.

See more answers

This article was co-authored by wikiHow Staff. Our trained team of editors and researchers validate articles for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow's Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards. This article has been viewed 887,364 times.

Updated: October 25, 2022

To read Manga, lay the book down with the spine to the right, opposite of how English books are read. To read the dialogue panels, move from right to left and in an up to down sequence. However, if you come across a panel with a black background, interpret it as a flashback. Also, if you encounter a panel with a fading background, read the scene as a transition from the past to the present. For tips on how to read characters' emotions, keep reading!

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 887,364 times.

Frankie Smith

"I was new to reading manga and having a really hard time understanding the storyline, because I wasn't reading the panels in the right order. I didn't know anything about how the character's emotions were represented, either. As soon as I read this article, I was able to get much more enjoyment out of manga books, so I'm really grateful for all the advice I found here." ..." more

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Manga is a style of Japanese comic. Reading manga is different than reading a comic, book, or magazine in English. Learning to read manga in a right to left and then up to down sequence, correctly interpreting panel elements, and exploring...

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Manga images surround us. The style has become so ubiquitous that we seldom stop to consider the origins and meaning of the characters; often not realising that there is a rich language of storytelling lurking behind every manga graphic, as redolent in symbolism as a Renaissance masterpiece.
So, what is manga?
Manga is a form of storytelling, which relies heavily on visual elements, and which conforms to a broad style developed from serialised cartoon strips that first appeared in Japanese newspapers during the end of the 19 th century.

Manga stories are similar to comics and graphic novels; are read by all ages; and cover a vast range of genres, including adventures stories, romance, science fiction, and political commentary.
Reading manga
Traditionally, manga stories are read from right to left and from top to bottom, in the same way as Japanese writing.

The narrative is contained within frames called koma. So, to read a page of manga, you start with the koma in the top right-hand corner and you end with the koma in the bottom left-hand corner.

The elements that are used to build up a manga story include manpu, fukidashi and gitaigo.
Manpu
Manpu refers to manga symbols. They are frequently used to express movement or emotions, with stock symbols used to convey feelings such as sadness or anger; embarrassment or tiredness.

When these stock representations become instantly recognisable to regular readers of manga, it means that excessively prolix text becomes superfluous!
Fukidashi
Fukidashi are the speech bubbles, which give manga characters their voice.

The shape of the fukidashi reflects the mood of the message being conveyed. Solid, rounded fukidashi represent normal speech, whereas more cloudlike fukidashi express happiness and more spiky-shaped fukidashi surprise or tension.
Gitaigo
Gitaigo, Giongo and Giseigo are the ways that manga illustrates sound effects and feelings in a story.

The Japanese language has more than three times the number of onomatopoeic words compared to the English language, which gives manga stories ample scope for expressive sound-words.

In fact, there are so many gitaigo, it's enough to make anyone ぐるぐる (dizzy)!
A multi-faceted reading experience
Manga is often referred to as multimodel. In other words, there's a lot going on. Reading manga requires the ability to interpret symbols, decipher overlapping text and images, understand cultural references and appreciate differences in storytelling between countries.

But, above all else, manga is meant to be entertaining.
The Citi Exhibition Manga
The British Museum is hosting The Citi Exhibition Manga until 26 August 2019. It is the largest exhibition of manga ever to take place outside of Japan.

Combining traditional displays with interactive experiences, the exhibition looks at the history of manga; the development of manga; its global spread and appeal; the various genres of manga; and features numerous examples of manga and anime.

The Citi exhibition Manga provides illustrations of many of the different genres of manga. These include Shônen manga; Shôjo manga; Josei manga; and Gekiga manga. The different genres of manga typically appeal to different age-groups and genders, and deal with varying themes, from adventure to comedy; romance to sports.
Cool Japan
Cool Japan: Manga, Anime, Sushi is a module, which can be studied on the programmes BA Chinese (Modern and Classical); BA Chinese Studies; BA Japanese; BA Japanese Studies; BA Korean: and BA Korean Studies at SOAS University of London.

The module aims to analyse how the various aspects of our 'imagination of Japan' come together, working out how some of the stereotypes are formed and enabling students to understand how the concept of 'Japan' came about.
Find out more

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Manga images surround us. The style has become so ubiquitous that we seldom stop to consider the origins and meaning of the characters; often not realising that there is a rich language of storytelling lurking behind every manga graphic, as redolent in symbolism as a Renaissance masterpiece. So, what is manga?

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Illustration by Gareth Hinds

On March 14, 2013, teachers in the Chicago Public Schools were told, without explanation, to remove all copies of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis (Pantheon, 2003) from their classrooms.

A day later, facing protests from students and anti-censorship organizations, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett explained the move. The "powerful images of torture" on a single page of the book made it unsuitable for seventh graders and required the district to give teachers in grades eight through 10 special professional development classes before they could teach it. The book was pulled from classrooms for those grades, but remained in school libraries.

This is the paradox of graphic novels: The visual element that gives them their power can also make them vulnerable to challenges. Researcher Steven Cary calls this the "naked buns" effect. "It's the rare student or parent who objects to the words 'naked buns,'" he writes in Going Graphic: Comics at Work in the Multilingual Classroom (Heinemann, 2004). "But an image of naked buns can set off fireworks."

At the same time, graphic novels are increasingly used in the classroom. For over a decade, public librarians have been promoting graphic novels as literature, and researchers have studied their benefits in educational settings.

From challenged material to classroom curricula

To help educators and librarians deal with the potential fallout sparked by strong graphic imagery, the American Library Association's (ALA) Banned Books Week planning committee, working with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), has made comics and graphic novels the focus of this year's Banned Books Week (BBW; September 21-27). The CBLDF site has a free, downloadable BBW handbook and also tracks challenges in schools and public libraries, and offers advice on the educational use of graphic novels.

"The number and profile of challenges that CBLDF participates in has risen dramatically in recent years," says Charles Brownstein, executive director of CBLDF. "As a partner in the Kids' Right to Read Project, we are addressing challenges to comics and prose books on an almost weekly basis." The nonprofit organization provides assistance in a number of ways, often writing letters of support for challenged books and talking to school and library administrators.

"Prose books and comics are challenged for the same reasons," Brownstein says. "Content addressing the facts of life about growing up, like sexuality, sexual orientation, race issues, challenging authority, and drug and alcohol use are causes for challenges. [Profanity] is often a factor," as is violence.

In the old days, comics found in schools were usually smuggled in by students, and challenges meant a teacher snatching away the "Richie Rich" or "Superman" concealed in a social studies textbook. Times have changed. In sixth-grade teacher Jennifer DeFeo's social studies class at Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Jefferson City, Missouri, the textbook is a graphic novel, the centerpiece of the Zombie-Based Learning program, in which students learn geography by tracking the undead after a zombie apocalypse. She has used graphic novels in literacy classes to build vocabulary via context clues, which can be hard for some readers using prose books.

Because the last decade has seen a sharp increase in the number and quality of graphic novels published for readers of all ages, they are more common in classrooms and school libraries. Publishers often provide lesson plans, information on curricula, and tie-ins to the Common Core State Standards. The organization Reading With Pictures recently published a graphic textbook, Reading With Pictures: Comics That Make Kids Smarter (Andrews McMeel, 2014), an anthology of short, nonfiction comics stories accompanied by a downloadable teacher's guide.

Graphic novels as teaching tools

Educators agree that graphic novels are useful for teaching new vocabulary, visual literacy, and reading skills. They "offer some solid advantages in reading education," says Jesse Karp, early childhood and interdivisional librarian at the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York City. "They reinforce left-to-right sequence like nothing else. The images scaffold word/sentence comprehension and a deeper interpretation of the words and story. The relative speed and immediate enjoyment build great confidence in new readers."

Karp also points to the value of graphic novels as supplementary texts. "I wouldn't assign a graphic novel to get specific dates and events in the heads of, say, a history student," he adds. "But I would definitely assign a graphic novel like C. M. Butzer's Gettysburg: The Graphic Novel (Bowen Press/Collins, 2009) in conjunction with a textbook. A student can read it quickly, and it makes distant events live and breathe."

"For weak language learners and readers, graphic novels' concise text paired with detailed images helps [them] decode and comprehend the text," says Meryl Jaffe, an instructor at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, Online Division, and the author of several books on using comics in the classroom. "Reading is less daunting, with less text to decode. While vocabulary is often advanced, the concise verbiage highlights effective language usage," adds Jaffe, who also blogs for CBLDF about using comics in the classroom. She cites the "Babymouse" series (Random) and Squish, Super Amoeba (Random, 2011) both by Jennifer L. and Matthew Holm. "There is 'smart' but limited text, complemented by images that show what is being said, or thought."

"For skilled readers, graphic novels offer a different type of reading experience while modeling concise language usage," Jaffe adds. Jimmy Gownley's "Amelia Rules!" series (S. & S.), for instance, uses a variety of visual techniques and dialog filled with humor and "words of wisdom."

Furthermore, Jaffe says, the pairing of words and images gives learning a boost by creating new memory pathways and associations. "Research shows that our brains process and store visual information faster and more efficiently than verbal information," she says. "Pairing [graphic novels] with traditional prose texts is an excellent means of promoting verbal skills and memory." Ho Che Anderson' s King (Fantagraphics, 2010), a biography of Martin Luther King Jr., for example, can be paired with biographies and news articles about civil rights.

Eric Kallenborn, who teaches English at Alan B. Shephard High School in Palos Heights, Illinois, saw that effect when he gave one group of his AP students a translation of the epic poem Beowulf and another group the graphic adaptation by Gareth Hinds (Candlewick, 2007). The students who read the graphic novel spent, on average, 3.5 hours less than the ones who read the full text, but they only scored an average of 4.5 percent lower on the test. "However, when they wrote about or discussed the work, there was no difference in the quality of the conversations," says Kallenborn. "At times, the graphic novel students had more to say, since they were discussing the words and the images."

"I feel that the lower average, although four percent is not that much lower, was partly due to the fact that I created the test from the actual text and not a combination of the text and the graphic novel," Kallenborn adds. Repeating the experiment with Hamlet, he drew quiz questions from a summary, rather than the original text. Students who used the graphic novel spent 50 fewer minutes reading and scored seven percent higher on a comprehension quiz.

Effective communication

Jessica Lee, a teacher librarian at Willard Middle School in Berkeley, California, who hosts a weekly graphic novel discussion group, sees the speed factor as a plus. "With text-only books, kids read at such different rates and often struggle to finish a novel in a timely manner," she says. "With graphic novels, we are all on the same page." Her group has read Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist (Candlewick, 2007), Joe Kelly and J. M. Ken Nimura's "I Kill Giants"titles (Image Comics), and Bryan Lee O'Malley's "Scott Pilgrim" books (Oni Press), among others. They also read MK Reed and Jonathan Hill's Americus (First Second, 2011), dealing with a book challenge.

Sometimes graphic novels can convey an idea better than conventional prose. Ronell Whitaker, who teaches English at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School in Blue Island, Illinois, had been "running into a wall" trying to teach his students about inference until he started using graphic novels. When he taught Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese (First Second, 2006), his students had to infer that the three main characters were all the same person. "This was especially difficult for some of my kids, but when they got it, they felt like they had discovered a hidden message," he says.

When teaching with graphic novels, Whitaker explains that readers infer what happens between panels. "I had kids write out the completed action of a page or two using descriptive prose," he says. "They demonstrated two things: One, their ideas about what actions connected the images we can see in each panel. Two, how effective comics can be at communicating information."

The pull of graphic novels in the school library was demonstrated in a 1981 study cited in Stephen D. Krashen's The Power of Reading (Libraries Unlimited, 1993). Researchers put comics in a junior high school library and allowed students to read them there, but not check them out. Visits to the library increased by 87 percent and circulation of non-comic books by 30 percent.

Nonetheless, school libraries have seen their share of graphic novel challenges.

* In 2009, a mother asked that Amazing Spider-Man Vol II: Revelations by J. Michael Straczynski and others (Marvel, 2002) be pulled from an elementary school library in Millard, Oklahoma. "It has a lot of sexual undertones," she said, adding that comics had little literary value.

* In 2010, a Minnesota woman asked that Jeff Smith's series "Bone" (Scholastic) be removed from her school district's libraries since it showed characters smoking and drinking. A committee voted 10-1 to keep it.

* After a parent and a county council member complained about violence and nudity in "Dragon Ball" (rated 13+ by its publisher, Viz Manga), the Wicomico, Maryland, school district removed it from all school libraries.

How to head off challenges

"The single most important step to prevent challenges is to have a detailed and comprehensive selection policy, including challenge procedure," says Brownstein. "Many libraries and school districts refer to or even quote ALA's Library Bill of Rights." He also cites the importance of shelving books according to the appropriate age group.

"Often, people who think they want a title removed only want it out of reach of certain constituents or age groups," says Karp. "I make sure there is no title in the collection that I wouldn't go to the mat for," such as American Born Chinese and Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell's Coraline (HarperCollins, 2008).

To reassure parents, Kat Kan, the librarian in a PreK-8 parochial school in Florida and the graphic novel selector for Brodart Books & Library Services, is preparing a statement for her library website. "I am very careful to make sure the books I have come from reputable publishers, I read everything before I put it on the shelf, and I am watching out for your kids," she says. Her library includes "Babymouse" and Squish, Dave Roman's Astronaut Academy (First Second, 2011), Kazu Kibuishi's "Amulet" series (Scholastic), and Nathan Hale's Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood, (Amulet, 2014), about World War I, a favorite among boys.

"When I distribute the books, I forewarn kids, 'This one deals with war. It can be pretty graphic and painful,'" says Lee. "Or, 'The characters curse a lot. If your parents will be upset that you're reading a book with strong language, you might skip this.'" Some kids were uncomfortable with the drug use in Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons (Sasquatch, 2002), and Lee didn't use Brian K. Vaughan's Pride of Baghdad (D. C., 2006) in the book club because of images of violence involving animals.

"The biggest step I take to prevent a challenge is to make sure I'm ordering books that are fitting for the age range of the students I serve," says Esther Keller, librarian at I.S. 278 Marine Park in Brooklyn and a contributor to SLJ's Good Comics for Kids blog. In the Persepolis case, Keller thought the book was more suited to high school students.

Good communication with parents and staff is key. "I made sure my principal was on board before I even started the collection," as well as conversing with administrators and parents, Keller says.

"If anything ever comes up, you want there to be as few surprises as possible," Karp adds.

In seven years, Karp has had only one book objection go beyond a conversation. "The [objector voiced] their argument to a larger group of parents and administrators. We had an open discussion," he says. "Careful explanation of how the graphic novel was used, particularly that it was intended for and only made available to older students, made a big difference."

Should a challenge occur, Brownstein advises librarians to follow procedure "to the letter"-which can be difficult if it goes directly to the district school committee or an administrator, rather than the school. He urges them to report the challenge and reach out to CBLDF, ALA, and the Kids Right to Read project. "Even if the challenge is resolved quietly and successfully, it's important to report it to us, to the Office of Intellectual Freedom at ALA, or the National Coalition Against Censorship," he says. "The more information we have about what's being challenged, the better equipped we are to respond in a helpful way, and to make proactive tools."

While their visual aspect may make titles such as Persepolis or "Bone" vulnerable to challenges, that's what also makes them essential to a school's collection. "Today's kids have grown up reading comics," says Keller. "A school or library that doesn't include comics isn't addressing the needs or wants of their community....Images are a part of today's culture: selfies, pictures on the net, ads, video, infographics. If we aren't educating young students about reading images, they aren't getting a rounded education."
Brigid Alverson is editor of Good Comics for Kids. Robin Brenner, Lori Henderson, Esther Keller, and Eva Volin are contributors.

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Illustration by Gareth Hinds On March 14, 2013, teachers in the Chicago Public Schools were told, without explanation, to remove all copies of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis (Pantheon, 2003) from their classrooms. A day later, facing protests from students and anti-censorship organizations, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett explained the move.

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Graphic Novels in the Classroom: A Teacher Roundtable | Cult of Pedagogy

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Four teachers discuss how using graphic novels has enriched their instruction, strengthened student comprehension, and engaged their most reluctant readers.

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Students absolutely love graphic novels, which makes it all the more important to incorporate them into your current curriculum. With graphic novels, you'll not only engage your reluctant readers and help build important reading skills, but you'll provide advanced readers with a wonderful opportunity to think critically about a new form of storytelling-one that combines the most important elements of traditional novels, picture books, poetry, and even film in new and captivating ways!

When building graphic novels into your current curriculum, there are a few things you should keep in mind. This guide to teaching graphic novels is a wonderful resource if you're just getting started and will help you choose the best titles to introduce in your classroom. Whether you're hoping to improve your students' reading development, build vocabulary, or use graphic novels across subjects, here are four tips to make adding graphic novels to your teaching toolbox even more effective.

When introducing graphic novels to your students for the first time, encourage readers to focus on the format and how all the visual elements come together to help tell the story. They should consider the size and shape of the panels and how they fit together; how dialogue is used and shared; sound effects and how they're layered through the story; and of course, the overall visual style of the graphic novel. Is the art realistic? How does the illustrator use color to show emotion?

Just like their literary cousins, graphic novels often feature the same important themes other traditional works of literature employ. Graphic novels are also a great lead-in or follow-up to teaching classics and contemporary novels, especially for students who have trouble engaging with more traditional forms of literature. For example, I Survived and The Baby-Sitters Club series are available in graphic novel format as a compliment to their longform editions. Other titles like by Raina Telgemeier captivate young readers by exploring themes of belonging and fitting in.

The old writing adage, "Show, don't tell," is definitely on display in graphic novels-that's why series like Dog Man and The Bad Guys are such great books to read before students dive into creative writing projects. Whether you ask students to craft new endings for their favorite graphic novels or develop new characters or dialogue for existing stories they love, graphic novels are a great way to fuel your students' creative writing instincts.

For younger readers, graphic novels are perfect for helping students transition from picture books to chapter books. They teach important reading skills and give students a wonderful opportunity to reflect on common literary themes and empathize with characters. Graphic novels also shouldn't be limited to English and language arts. Science, social studies, and art instruction are areas where graphic novels can help introduce students to new subject matter and provide an introduction to important lessons from history, STEM, and more!

Adored by students of all ages, graphic novels are a tool every teacher should use to help develop the next generation of readers. They not only motivate students to read, they support learning in your classroom and help your students develop the skills they need to read and comprehend even more challenging works of literature.

Shop the best graphic novels for your classroom library below! You can shop all graphic novels and much more at The Teacher Store.

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How to Use Graphic Novels In Your Curriculum | Scholastic

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By adding graphic novels to your teaching toolbox, youÃ¢ ll help your students develop important reading and critical-thinking skills.

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Benefits of Student-Created Graphic Novels

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Benefits of Student-Created Graphic Novels

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Sponsored by Learners Edge

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There is no shortage of ways we all can benefit from teaching graphic novels. They engage reluctant or struggling readers, they are gateway texts for more complex literature, they build necessary background knowledge, and they develop visual literacy skills.

But another important reason to teach students to read, analyze, and create a graphic novel is that the form invites them to express hard truths about themselves and their experiences in a way that is different from what they can do with pure prose.

And perhaps a more surprising reason is for the impact it can have on a teacher's relationship with students. Teaching the graphic novel to my high school English students wasa way for me to see that there was pain in my classroom and the role I might be playing in students' difficult experiences.

How the Graphic Novel Form Inspires Deeply Personal Storytelling

I taught my first unit on the graphic novel in my high school World Literature classes. We read Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir Persepolis, in which a young Marji describes her experience growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. For their culminating project, students created their own graphic memoirs about a significant experience in their lives, using Persepolis as their mentor text.

As I turned page after page of each student's story, I discovered that this unit had accomplished a goal I never intended. I didn't expect so many students to delve into deeply personal, often traumatic, experiences from their past. I had read engaging personal narratives from students before, but this was different. Some used the project to announce an aspect of their identity they had kept secret. Others revealed the reasons behind certain challenging behaviors they exhibited in class. They created stories that would be healing for them and, in some cases, for their relationships with me.

What is it about the graphic novel form that made this possible?

Cartoons Invite Empathy

Anyone who has opened a comic or graphic novel before would immediately recognize that cartoon drawings are a defining feature of the medium. While a photograph or portrait tends towards realistic depiction, a cartoon leans more toward an abstract, iconic representation of a person, object, place, or idea. (Think of how a circle with two dots and a curve for a smile represents a happy person.)

In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud explains that when drawings of characters in graphic novels are less realistic and more iconic, readers can more easily put themselves in the situations of the characters. The cartoon image "is a vacuum into which our [the reader's] identity and awareness are pulled" (36). A detailed drawing of a face with specific features would be harder for readers to identify with than a simplistic cartoon face. According to McCloud, if we are less focused on the specific details of the character's drawing, then we are freer to enter the world of the character and participate in their experiences.

Graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier even explains that the creative team at Graphix "had the good intuition to use something more iconic" (20) for the cover image of her memoir Smile. Instead of using a full-body drawing of the main character, they opted for something even more simplistically drawn: an emoji with braces. One can imagine that a more specific cover image of the book's protagonist might not have instantly connected with as many book browsers as the abstracted emoji did.

So, if iconic images help readers empathize with characters' experiences, then a graphic novelist who has traumatic events or complicated emotions to narrate can do so knowing that an empathetic readership awaits.

Cartoons Allow for Distance

And while the iconic images unique to comics and graphic novels allow readers to connect with characters (and, by proxy, the writers), the abstraction also allows the writer some distance from their emotional story. With very realistic drawings, or with prose narrative alone, sharing the experience might feel too revealing. The writer is less vulnerable, however, if their experience is portrayed with some abstraction. This didn't happen to me specifically. This happens to lots of people. This is a universal experience.

It makes sense to me, then, that a student of mine would use the most abstracted icons-stick figures-to share something especially private with our class in his own graphic novel, Spoken of One.

This student-I'll call him Louis-was selectively mute all through high school. Sitting in the back row, completing all assigned written work but never raising his hand or contributing to partner interactions, Louis frustrated me. I had 36 students in my class, and I didn't have the expertise to find ways to draw him out. It was easier to assign his partner to someone else, to simply not expect that Louis would participate since apparently he never had before.

For the graphic novel project, Louis chose to communicate that he was making an effort to speak, but encountered debilitating obstacles like stigmatizing labels from peers and teachers.

With the anonymity offered by iconic representation, Louis perhaps felt safer in telling his story than he might have if he were asked to write a personal narrative. There is a comforting distance between his own identity and that of the universally drawn protagonist in his story. Maybe knowing that the reader could see the story more universally made it possible for him to share something so private.

Readers are Reflected in the Story

Louis knew that I would be reading these panels, but he also knew his classmates would read them during peer feedback. Perhaps the ease with which readers can identify with universal abstract icons might mean that his classmates and teacher would reflect on their own complicit actions in labeling him with declarations like "He doesn't talk." The simplicity of the nameless, faceless, abstract peers and teachers in this student's panels invite my students and me to see ourselves.

When we move away from realistic representations and towards abstraction, McCloud explains, "we're not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details " (30). Louis draws teachers with such abstraction that the only distinguishing features are a simple square (representing a briefcase?), their position within a given panel (at a distance from students), and an absence of any facial markings (dots or lines for eyes, nose, mouth). Without being explicitly told what to see, readers can imagine their own rich details.

As a teacher, I could vividly see my own impatience with certain behaviors and the emotional weight that impatience had on my students. I thought my sighs were inaudible, my nonverbals (standing at a distance, unsympathetic facial expressions) unnoticeable. Maybe Louis wasn't addressing me specifically in his panels, but that's irrelevant. The iconic representation of people and events works like the "vacuum" McCloud describes, inviting me to reflect on my own complicity in Louis' experience.

In another panel, the hallways of the school are stripped to the bare essentials: a white vacant floor on which to sulk. The specificity is so absent that a reader could "fill up" this iconic form with almost any other setting. The actual place, person, object, or idea being represented matters little.

Readers Must Help Tell the Story

Compelling texts are often ripe with ambiguity. Graphic novels, by their very design, contain "gaps" that readers must fill as they connect one panel to the next. By making connections and drawing conclusions in the gutters-the empty spaces between panels-the reader can help tell a story the writer can't tell alone.

McCloud describes this reader participation as "committing closure," and some transitions ask more of the reader than others. Many comics rely heavily on simple moment-to-moment and action-to-action transitions that require less participation (picture a person lifting a cup in one panel and drinking from it in the next). Others make powerful use of aspect-to-aspect and subject-to-subject transitions. These require readers to connect different experiences, time periods, and perspectives from one panel to the next. (Imagine a person lifting a cup in one panel and the next panel shows a different scene five years later).

In their own graphic novels, students generally struggle to create transitions that leave space for the reader to participate, but I think Louis found the gutter a helpful tool to tell his story without having to say too much.

What happens after the teacher prompts Louis to speak? How long does he pause before the next panel shows him defeated on the ground? How did his peers react? When I look at these two panels, I fill out the story: I hear his peers snickering, I see them rolling their eyes, my hands get sweaty thinking of how long the silence must have felt for this student compared to how brief it probably was to everyone else in the room.

It's not that graphic novelists are off the hook from having to explain and narrate difficult moments. It's that they are able to be selective with what they do show so that more readers can participate in ways that are personally relevant. And, I think that first learning about how gutters and transitions work in Persepolis, especially at certain difficult points in Marji's story, encouraged students to include their own hard-to-describe experiences in their work. I don't have to find words for every moment. I don't have to show kids rolling their eyes. That can be for the reader to imagine in the gutter.

No Story is Too Complex

Thecombination of words and pictures helps writers communicate hard stuff-no story is too complex to tell with this medium. Comics have a long history of teaching complex subject matter. There are graphic novels that discuss scientific phenomena, race, gender, cancer, and mental health. Satrapi catches us up on thousands of years of Persian history through carefully composed panels. Some of my students were able to portray subtle racial and gender-based microaggressions they experienced without even needing to know the term "microaggression." Others described complex learning disabilities and mental health issues without using a clinical vocabulary.

And because of the ability to "control time" (as comics expert Will Eisner puts it), the stories we tell in graphic novels are open to a wider readership. Young or inexperienced readers can make meaning from panels without necessarily drawing sophisticated conclusions from the gutters. As Gene Luen Yang explains (via McCloud), "Time within a comic book progresses only as quickly as the reader moves her eyes across the page. The pace at which information is transmitted is completely determined by the reader ... this 'visual permanence' firmly places control over the pace of education in the hands (and eyes) of the student."

Since readers of all ages and backgrounds can participate in reading graphic novels, my student writers could share sensitive stories with a variety of people in their lives, not just their teacher.

How I Taught This

To initially learn about the form of graphic novels, I read McCloud's Understanding Comics, which provides a thorough explanation of the variety of elements and devices at work in a comic or graphic novel. Over the years, I also studied Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative.

To choose a mentor text for my 11th grade World Literature classes, I considered what would be grade-level appropriate and rich enough in terms of the devices I had learned about. What will connect with students' experiences but also expose them to new ideas or challenge their understanding about certain concepts? Satrapi's Persepolis jumped out as the perfect option: teenage Marji narrates her experiences navigating religious, political, and social conflicts during a tumultuous time in Iran's history. When choosing your own text, you might also consider connections to social studies or science content students have learned. Or you might choose an adaptation of a text you've already read or to connect to a theme or genre you are teaching.

The Launch

Determine Prior Knowledge
I distribute a page from a graphic novel, not necessarily from the one I will teach, and ask, What is happening? How do you know? Students' written responses show me how familiar they are with noticing the subtle devices at work to communicate meaning in a visual text. With this information, I can partner students more effectively during upcoming lessons and keep their starting point in mind as I consider the unit instruction, tasks, and outcomes. Students also see for themselves how well or ill-equipped they are to do this type of reading, which for some students makes them curious to learn how.

What do students want to know?
After attempting a close read of a graphic novel page, many students discover they either don't have a lot to say or they know more than they thought. Then, they complete a KWL chart (Know-Want to Know-Learned) about graphic novels and Persepolis. My students have wondered, "How do you choose what to put in each box," "Does the order you read matter," and "Why is it called 'Persepolis,'" The most exciting part of the chart is, of course, the "Learned" column that students complete at the end of the unit.

Personal Goals
At the beginning of the unit, students indicate "Where I started" and "Where I want to be." I provide options of end objectives that students choose from. This tool is revisited at the end of the unit and students complete the "Where I am" and "Where I want to go next" columns as part of the assessment process (scroll down to "Assessing the Results" for an image of the chart). Because students articulate their own learning goals, ones that make sense given their starting point and the relevance of the topic to their lives, they are more invested in reaching those goals. And they often exceed them.

Reading The Mentor Text

We read the novel mostly in class, with students working together to reread for deeper meaning. Before we discuss what we've read in class, students spend five minutes independently free-writing everything they notice from one page of Persepolis. I ask: What happened? How do you know? What have you learned about characters? With less time, students simply record one question they have about the assigned reading. In partners or small groups, they share their observations and questions and develop some consensus around how the page is working. Then they report their conclusions to the whole class.

In whole class discussion, I introduce the terms and devices only after students have had the opportunity to express them in their own language. When they report that they know Marji feels weak because she's drawn smaller than usual and she's in a really small box, they learn to incorporate terms like "scale" and "frame." When they notice a page has no panels, and the drawing fills up the entire page, they learn the term "splash." When they notice one panel's scene does not seem to connect to the one before and after, they learn to describe a variety of panel transitions with phrases like "action-to-action" and "subject-to-subject."

For an example of how to model close reading of a graphic novel, watch me discuss page 6 of Persepolis with another reader in the video below. Reference this handout if you'd like to use the video as a teaching tool in your classroom.

Students are routinely asked to choose a panel to closely read and analyze in writing. I collect these as formative assessments that tell me if a device or specific page from the text needs review and if students are reading beyond the surface. Sometimes I provide a specific prompt, like "What do you think the author is communicating with the different uses of black and white in chapter 10?" or "Describe the significance of varying shapes and sizes of panels in chapter 1." Other times, I solicit prompts from students or invite them to write about any discoveries they have made about the story and characters, supporting their observations with references to the techniques involved. For models of written close readings, I use previous students' work, book reviews of graphic novels, and excerpts from Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art.

Two examples of students' written responses to close reading.

When student observations show me that a particular panel or page is challenging to understand, I post a copy of the pages on chart papers. Groups circulate and add their theories, questions, predictions, and interpretations. Meaning becomes evident through multiple reads of the page and collaborative discussion.

I use frequent but brief exercises that get students thinking about how the devices work in a graphic novel. For example, "If you had to show the emotion of fear with only lines, how would you draw them?" Or I might provide students with a sequence of panels with pictures but no captions and ask them to write the captions. Another day, I give them panels with only text and ask them to add the pictures. The key is to give the same panels to multiple students so they see the variety of ways they each interpreted specific text or visuals.

One student chose this specific panel's techniques to try in his own panel. He connected Marji's experience to his experience attending a new high school. The towering building, drawn with the same repetition as Satrapi's trees, dwarfs my student, who changed schools also for access to a better education and preparation for some unknown future.

These "micro-writing" assignments help students learn the devices, but they also serve as early drafts of their final graphic novel projects and begin to convince even the most reluctant students that what we are learning is valuable.

The Culminating Project

In the past, we have agreed that their stories would provoke thinking-more specifically, they would challenge assumptions, initiate a conversation, connect deeply with readers, and nudge them to act. To accomplish such worthy goals, they would need to skillfully use at least three devices, their words (captions and speech bubbles) would work interdependently with their pictures to communicate more than what either could accomplish alone, and some panel-to-panel transitions would move beyond moment-to-moment or action-to-action.

Drafting
To decide on a topic, students reference their "micro-writing" assignments, create brainstorming lists of potential experiences, and free-write about each one. Students examine their most promising free-write and tease out a rising action, a climax, and resolution.

Then, students create a visual outline of each page, mapping out their ideas in a panel layout, describing what they plan to illustrate and why. They consider how they will distinguish their characters. They identify the emotions and moods they want to communicate for specific scenes and note devices that could help accomplish this.

I model this process at the start of class by attempting my own project, one panel at a time, in front of the class, thinking aloud and soliciting their help. A bonus is that my clear lack of artistic skills shows students that beautiful artwork is not necessary for this project. While sketching, I narrate, "I want to show this character feels bold and confident. I think I will remove the frame altogether (create a "splash"), or I could keep the frame and draw the character so large she goes beyond the border (a "bleed")." At this point I ask for students' input-which technique would be more effective and why.

Workshops
During the drafting process, students sign up to attend mini lessons, facilitated either by me or a peer, on topics like "creating captions and speech bubbles," and "showing emotions with facial features and gestures." I schedule two 20-minute mini lessons per workshop day. When students aren't in the mini-lesson, they work on their panels independently, with support resources I provide (from Eisner, McCloud, and Barbara Slate). Topics for new mini-lessons are created in response to the challenges and needs students pose.

I don't want to force students to share their personal stories with their classmates for peer review, so I ask them to choose at least one completed panel to share for feedback. Sometimes, I collect one panel from each student and anonymously re-distribute them to the class for feedback. As reviewers, students ask themselves, "What is happening? How do I know? What assumptions am I being asked to challenge? How I am I connecting with this story?" Their comments help the creator understand how readers are responding to their narrative and design choices.

Sometimes, students volunteer to share their pages with the whole class for feedback. I project the pages and we perform a close read like we have done so many times with the pages of Persepolis. Students who do not seize this opportunity to get such thorough feedback on their work still benefit from providing and listening to the feedback given for a peer's work.

Assessing the Results

In the past, when I had scored these projects with As, I felt like I was sending a message that the learning was done. That their few-page attempts could just not be any better. But the goal is not that a student becomes a master at incorporating graphic elements into their own memoir after a few weeks of practice. The goal is that they have discovered a new form to explore with rigor beyond our classroom and have some creative independence with a new set of tools to tell all kinds of stories.

Instead of a four-point rubric that shows tiers of success leading up to the end goal of an A, 100, or "meets standards," I decided to create a single-point rubric and define an "A" by listing what we agreed the project had to contain in order to demonstrate the student was ready to continue on their learning trajectory A utonomously. That means they would be prepared to independently and critically read graphic novels of different genres. They could start experimenting with devices, and maybe create their own, to communicate a range of experiences. They could research the work of other comics and comics movements, and learn the history of the form. They could connect with the larger world of graphic novelists by joining the conversation online.

The success criteria we established as a class allows students to focus primarily on their ability to use the graphic elements they studied to portray a significant event in their lives (not writing conventions or artistry). We do discuss how grammatical errors can really confuse the reader and how a hastily sketched image can ruin the effect of the device. The grammar and drawing expectations are in service of the larger goal and don't need to be assessed with their own categories on the rubric. The focused criteria also help me avoid pitfalls of the past while providing feedback on students' graphic novels, such as correcting grammar errors that didn't actually impede understanding and praising artwork that didn't actually develop the story.

Finally, students complete the "Learned" column of their KWL charts, proudly listing the discoveries they made about how to tell stories in a different way. They also reference their rubric feedback to respond to the last two columns on their Personal Goals form: "Where I am" and "Where I want to go next." If students are not yet ready to pursue this work autonomously, what additional practice is needed? What resources can help? If they are ready for continued independent learning and practice, what books, websites, and writers can they explore? Students also have the option to continue working and resubmit their project for additional feedback later in the year.

Compared to my first attempt at assessment, this revised model communicated to students that the learning didn't stop for anyone, even those with an A.

Why Teach Students How to Create a Graphic Novel?

After my first foray into teaching the graphic novel, I discovered that the benefits went beyond teaching literacy skills. Though the initial objective was for students to hone their close reading skills, it turned out that I also learned to read my students more closely, especially the ones I perceived as disengaged learners.

Without access to students' stories, educators are likely to interpret certain behaviors as challenging. As Sarah MacLaughlin describes in an article about trauma-informed teaching, behaviors that have developed in response to a difficult home environment or experience can be interpreted as defiance in a class setting: "Trauma can manifest in so many behaviors! Hypervigilance can masquerade as hyperactivity... Fear can look like aggression: flight, freeze, or fight," or in Louis' case, selective mutism.

While reading my first class set of student-created graphic novels, I started to reconsider everything from my assessment practices to my nonverbal signals. I didn't change into an enlightened, empathetic teacher overnight, but I started to approach interactions with students with the understanding that there were stories inside them that I wanted to hear, that I could make instructional decisions that would decrease cortisol and build relationships.

I know that without this project I would have continued to overlook Louis' mutism. How would I have had such intimate access to a mute student's perspective without his graphic novel? Louis put it so simply but elegantly on the first page, despite the grammatical error: "Why am I talking now? Well, your [sic] in my head and your just reading my mind."

Teaching students to create graphic novels gives you the power to read their minds, which can change everything about the way you teach. More importantly, it gives them the power of voice-a superpower that can change their worlds. ♦️

Read the Book!!

Since writing this post, Shveta Miller has written a full-length book on this topic: Hacking Graphic Novels: 8 Ways to Teach Higher-Level Thinking with Comics and Visual Storytelling. If you're ready to really dig into this process, the book will tell you everything you need to know!

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The Surprising Benefits of Student-Created Graphic Novels

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Sponsored by Learners Edge This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. There is no shortage of ways we all can benefit from teaching graphic novels.

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GRAPHIX: A Guide to Using Graphic Novels

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GRAPHIX: A Guide to Using Graphic Novels