Blog 6

Cyrill Somera

Blog 6

 

1. The graphic novel I chose to read was Smile. This graphic novel explores the ups and downs of being a teenager through the life of the main character, Raina. It focuses on Raina’s struggle to fit in, her developing love life with new crushes, finding true friends, and dealing with parents. To simplify, this novel describes what it is like to be a teenager. Graphic novels are literature. This genre in particular can be used with students who do not enjoy reading. It can be like a segway into more complex novels later in their reading development. This novel was easier to read and very entertaining especially with the illustrations. Although it was easy to read, it can still be challenging since it is mainly dialogue. Some elements included in graphic novels are written narrative, illustration, and poetry. The written narrative includes dialogue to create the plot of the story. The illustration helps readers analyze characters better in their heads. They can see what the character is thinking or feeling through the facial expressions of the characters. Poetry can also be present in graphic novels as a style of writing. The article listed many activities and main things to use from graphic novels. A fun activity to do with students after they read a graphic novel is for them to do some creative writing. This will enable students to use some freedom and become writers themselves! After finishing a novel, they can come up with an alternate ending and create their own comic strip with dialogue and their own illustrations.
2. H
   The novel takes place from the time Raina is about to start middle school until she finishes high school. Illustration plays such an important role in her character development. Her character starts off as a little girl who is about to get braces and her teeth are messed up. She goes through body changes through her physical appearance that show how she grows up as the novel progresses. I could probably be able to picture what she would look like as she went through middle school and high school, but the illustration in the novel really did help. The pace is really slow in terms of watching her teeth improve. It takes years of braces and dentist appointments, so for more than half of the book she was illustrated with braces on. A faster development that took place in the novel was when the writer showed how Raina had first broken her teeth. It all happened so fast, and the illustrations made it seem like it was a scene in the movie, Raina tripped and fell and just broke her two front teeth.