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self recognition

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alienation

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alienation

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This is a video about a regular guy when a meteorite smashes into his life and he is forced to "live 91 centimeters away from himself", ripped from reality, “living 91 centimeters away from myself.”

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I find this video somehow share a similar theme with El Deafo: self recognition. The heroine in this view is affected by others' voices at first and finally recognizes her own beauty.

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Who are you? How do you define yourself? How do you see your differences from others? What is mainstream and what is difference?

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"Multimodality can afford, not just a new way to make meaning, but a different kind of meaning."

Hull, G., & Nelson, M. E. (2005). Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality. Written Communication, 22(2), 224-261

I think the meaning of graphic novels lies on "a new way to make a different kind of meaning". I could not imagine what if the story of El Deafo is written in plain texts, or just with images.

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"Reading is affected by the spatial organization and framing of writing on the page, the directionality, shape, size, and angle of a script (Kenner, 2004)."

Jewitt, C. (2005). Multimodality, "Reading", and "Writing" for the 21st century, Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 26(3), 315-331.

In the process of reading graphic novel, I will inevitably have a glimpse of the whole page and can be easily influenced by the spatial organization. For example, is an image with a blue background or a sad expression of the character may lead to big shift in readers' mind.

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I think one of the themes of this graphic novel is self-recognition, self-identification. Young Cece is only 4 when she comes down with meningitis. She survives, but her hearing doesn’t. Like any newly and suddenly deafened person, she retreats into herself, scared and confused. There are traumas in our life, but how to deal with them? They are of course part of us. They are what make us who we are. Because of her disease, Cece finds that she is different from her fellow students and feels inferior to others. Actually what makes you different is what makes you unique. It is crucial to accept one's differences from others and finds one's own value.

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"Children and young people are defined as active agents in the meaning-making process."

Sefton-Green, J. (2006). Youth, technology, and media cultures. Review of Educational Research. 30, 279-306.

In the reading process I find myself occasionally making guesses about future events that will happen to Cece, and also trying to connecting dots to make meaning from the story.

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I think the storyline in this graphic novel is well-designed. As a children book, it is not difficult for kids to understand and also enjoyable to read. The appearance of characters imply the turning points of the story, having some effects on the main character, Cece and what happened beforehand is what influences her to make decisions in the following situations, which contributes to the coherence of the whole story.

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I don't know whether the author chooses to tell this story at first or decides to create a graphic novel first. Anyway, I think using graphic novel to tell this story is a wise choice. Images are powerful in terms of presenting characters' emotion because they can clearly show the expressions of the characters. With the help of texts, the author is able to tell a good story.