Comics and Graphic Novels – Kristie Weibling

One of Rocco Versaci’s main points is that we should not force our opinions of what qualifies as literature on our students. I can certainly see this causing students to resent what we’re telling them to appreciate, and I agree that we can do better by them by helping them to form their own opinions.

One of my favorite parts of Scott McCloud’s TED Talk was when he explained that while comics are visual, they also “try to embrace all of the senses within” the medium. Pictures, the text, “the different symbols and everything in between” are all given visually. I was also interested in his view of media as “a window back into our own world.”

As I read Rapunzel’s Revenge, I felt as though I was watching a muted TV and following the captions. Having constant images provided allowed me to read quickly; they images flowed together for me, I didn’t take much time to create the setting for myself in my mind. I liked that some pages had more text than others; sometimes my eyes quickly flew over the pictures, and other times I slowed my reading and followed the text carefully. I didn’t feel like I had to do much to follow the story, but Versaci later helped me to see that I wasn’t just a passive reader. He explained that reading books like this “requires an active, though largely subconscious, participation on the part of the reader.” I realize now that I was actively filling in what happened from panel to panel. McCloud said something similar in his talk, when he talked about comics’ “balance between the visible and the invisible.” He explained that comics leave it to you to envision what happens between each panel.

Rapunzel’s Revenge seemed to rely on the illustrations, because when I read a section of the text online without them, I struggled a bit to picture some of the settings. While this isn’t my favorite way to read, I really enjoyed and appreciated the experience, and I hope my students will too.

The Deaf and hard of hearing students I’ve worked with tend to be learning English as a second or third language, and I’ve been impressed by how books with illustrations help them to create mental images of what they’re reading. Graphic novels seem to be a good way to set aside speech tags and focus on dialogue. My only concern is that the dialogue tends to be capitalized throughout, which takes away from the shapes of the words. I noticed that reading the all-capitalized words affected my flow of reading, and I can see it doing the same for my students.

I didn’t know much about graphic novels before this unit, but I’ve seen my students enjoy them, and have thought before about using graphic novels in my own classroom. I hadn’t realized how diverse the style and subject matterr could be! I’m excited now by the idea to have students create graphic novels of their own.