How Graphic Novels Work - Saturday at 10:10
by Miriam DesHarnais, education librarian and graphic novel enthusiast
(page from Last of the Sandwalkers by Jay Hosler)
Jay Hosler (Last of the Sandwalkers)
Maggie Thrash (Honor Girl)
Rafael Rosado & Jorge Aguirre (Dragons Beware!)
Let me tell you a story. Not so very long ago, last year in fact, there was a school librarian who wanted to start the year off right for her new 5th and 6th graders. Yes, she knew the students should get oriented to the library, learn where the books are, and learn about databases and citations and how to take notes. But what if, for library orientation, they just got to know each other, and got to tap back into the playfulness of elementary school? They’d probably been hearing a lot in their orientation about middle school, and the ways it wasn’t going to be like what came before.Â
So the class gathered in the library in a circle, and did some silly movement exercises, and then had a chat about breakfast, what they liked and what they didn’t like. And as the students spoke, the librarian illustrated the breakfast items on the board. One girl shared her recipe for Huevos Rancheros and the librarian drew step-by-step pictures of that too, and everyone gave the Huevos Rancheros girl a round of applause at the end. Then, even though they were middle schoolers, the librarian read them I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen, and a chapter of The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, and the students demanded she pass around her iPad so they could look at the comic book parts.
(from Dragons Beware! by Rafael Rosado and Jorge Aguirre)
When the class left they were happy and relaxed, or at least they seemed that way to the librarian, who noticed that from then on all of the 5th and 6th graders knew her name, and greeted her in the hall, and that many of them started visiting the library between classes, and after school. And when they Skyped with Kate Klise or were visited by Kevin Sherry, playing guitar in his yeti costume, something solidified in that grade’s relationship with the library. Some of them started working as library assistants during lunch, even though there hadn’t previously been a library assistants program. And they started reading all of the “hybrid” books they could get their hands on - books that looked like journals, Origami Yoda, Hugo Cabret, the Marcel the Shell book where you can download a recording of Jenny Slate reading it in her Marcel voice. T-Rex Trying was a particular hit.
They were reading the Maryland Black Eyed Susan Book Award nominees, or some of them, but really all of the graphic novels. And another girl’s grandmother (this was a school for girls) found the librarian to tell her that this was the first year her granddaughter had ever liked reading. And the librarian felt very glad she’d decided to do the breakfast drawing game, and the kids did learn about databases, and how to cite using Noodletools, and where the books were on the shelf. Some of them even learned where to shelve them, and others got the librarian to order more and more comics for the graphic novel section, which now lived at the front of the library, twice the size it was the year before.
Oh, and another older girl read Fun Home, then gave it to a friend she thought might need to read it too, and from then on they both started using the library more. A senior had a gigglefit while reading Hyperbole and a Half during finals week. A kid wanted to understand eating disorders and asked the librarian for a book, even though she mostly only liked comics, and they were both surprised to find that Inside Out, Portrait of an Eating Disorder, when they opened it up, was full of drawings and comics and collage.
(from Honor Girl, by Maggie Thrash)
I think the story I'm telling you was made possible by pictures, by what happens brain-wise, when readers look at drawings and words together. It was also brought to us by the kind of “Hey, look at this! I’ll give it to you when I’m done” sharing that happens with comic book reading. If you could see the faces of the students involved, and read their funny dialogue, I think my point would be sharper, but I’ve tried drawing comics and frankly it’s too difficult for me.
So what do the panelists think about this whole images and text doing storytelling together thing? About their line, their drawing tools, the way a character arrives and is designed? I’d like to know how their comics got made, wouldn’t you? What if we draw our breakfast? What if we draw our notes? Will the panelists draw each other? Will someone make a joke about a “comics panel”? Keep in mind that these people created some of the books that the very same girls in this story literally wrestled over. Try not to do that at this session.
(Huevos Rancheros, from Relish by Lucy Knisley)
Wrestle your way to Miriam’s great graphic novels panel at KidLitCon on Saturday - but ONLY IF YOU REGISTER!