Tricotomania and more

I should have done this years ago, but I’m catching up on my comics reading. I enjoyed Sacco’s Palestine so now I’m checking out his Bosnian material. Safe Area Gorazde is a similar style. I like his drawing style — lots of cross-hatching, asymmetric page layouts, interesting perspectives, somewhat comical representations of people (particularly himself). But the material is a bit more gruesome. The Israel-Palestine conflict is more a war of attrition in comparison. Slitting of throats is not pretty even in black and white from a distance. But like his earlier work, Sacco intersperses reporting of the stories people tell him about the war with accounts of the life they are living and the time they spend together. This inclusion of the everyday — watching videos, eating dinner, going to cafés — makes a difference. It feels more rounded. It illustrates the hope that people feel even in quite desperate situations.

I have to admit that I didn’t pay much attention to the Bosnian war when it was happening. I tend to tune out some of that really gruesome stuff, particularly when there is nothing much I can do about it. And I am also very suspicious of most media reporting. The first Gulf War really turned me off. Even on Channel 4 (which usually has quite in depth news coverage; I was in the UK at the time), the coverage was so voyeuristic and “video game” like. I stopped reading newspapers for a long time after that. Now that I write this I realize that the Bosnian conflict came in that period so that might explain something. Reading this account, now, though, makes me realize that it was a pretty horrific situation. I can see why I might have avoided at the time. Though I know people who actually did research about it.

The book is worth reading. It gives a good perspective. And if you are teaching anything about recent historical events, it would make a good complement to more academic books. There is a good section on the antecedents of this conflict in WWII. And there is a short bibliography at the end, which could lead to other reading. It would also be a good text to use in a discussion of the nature of journalism and how we report on these kinds of conflicts.

Because of the nature of the events in this conflict, I would not recommend Safe Area Gorazde for younger kids. High school age kids would probably be fine, but it is quite harrowing in places so you’d have to judge how they deal with emotional stuff.

In this month’s Notes from the Horn Book, I spotted a feature about a new series of Toon Books. They are marketed as a learning to read thing, drawing on kid’s visual literacy to bring them to wider literacy. But the series advisor is Art Spiegelman whose comics credentials are rock solid. So, yes, reading comics will help you kid learn to read, particularly if they are visual kids. But these might be worth checking out just because the cartoon format is an important one that does interesting things you can’t do in regular books. And the visual narrative of comics is quite closely related to other visual narrative media like TV and movies.

As I was looking at the Horn Book website, I also noticed that they have this guide to Graphic Novels with links to recommendations for different age groups.

Last up, for today, another book that I thought might be of interest because the main character is a 10 year old. I kind of liked it though it is very dark and the text is very sparse. The drawing style is interesting and well suited to the content. I think the story might well appeal to some kids, but those parents that are concerned about coarse language should be aware that there is some, all totally in character and used by adult characters for the most part.

The characters are what might be described as “men of few words” and this medium is well suited to portraying their relationships and their emotional life. At least I think that is what is being portrayed. Nothing terrible happens but the life of the characters is not particularly joyous either. Isolation, both geographic and emotional, is well portrayed. (I said it was dark, didn’t I?)

This series is winning awards. And it is well worth checking out. I don’t think it is particularly the kind of story that Tigger likes, but I can imagine Steph’s Sarah finding it interesting. And boys who might identify with the main character, who has a rich fantasy life as a superhero and builds a fort by the river, might also enjoy it. Volume II: Ghost Stories is now available and has won a prize. Volume III: The Country Nurse is due out in October. The other two volumes appear to focus on different characters and the whole trilogy looks to be an interesting commentary on small town life. An interview with the author can be found here.

Since we had been talking about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in relation to the news, I figured it was also time to read Joe Sacco’s Palestine. Like Persepolis, this was originally published in several volumes but has been reprinted in a single volume with an added bonus of an introduction by Edward Said. The juxtaposition of Said’s writing with Sacco’s graphic presentation is interesting though Said also has interesting things to say about the possibilities of the graphic medium drawing on the role of comics in his own life.

Sacco is a journalist and this collection is an interesting journalistic experiment in that the process by which he comes to know what he tells is an important part of the story. He is not trying to give a “balanced” account in the sense of showing both sides, but rather to provide an account that he finds is missing from most of the American journalism on the subject. Thus the book is meant to compliment other sources of information. He does attempt to provide a fair account and I think that letting the reader see how he came to know these things about the situation in Palestine is important. In general, I think he succeeds in this attempt at fairness, to the extent that this is possible in a situation as complex as the one he portrays. The context in which different people living there frame their own opinions of the situation is also portrayed well. While Sacco clearly has sympathy for the Palestinian people, he is able to portray the complexity and contradictions. Plenty of food for thought.

In terms of whether the material is suitable for children. I think that any child (probably middle school age and older) that is already aware of these political issues could probably cope. While violence and the effects of violence are portrayed, they are not glorified nor is there gratuitous graphic portrayal of brutality. Much is understood rather than portrayed directly. Sacco includes information about the lives of children, which I find is often interesting to children when they read about events.

I like his drawing style. And he lays out the panels in interesting ways. His slightly self-deprecating tone works well. It’s not overdone, but it gives a certain humility to the reporting. He portrays his own fear and his own goofiness. The contrast between his visits to Palestinian towns and refugee camps and his life in Jerusalem where he is staying is also interesting. I think that seeing the journalist in the story in this way probably makes us read other journalism differently. Or at least ask questions about the extent of the journalists engagement with his subject.

For teenagers with an interest in politics, this would be an excellent book to recommend. It raises a lot of important questions about point of view in politics and journalism. It also raises some interesting questions about the role of journalism in making political change (an ideal that many young people hold). At the same time it is not cynical.

I’m now thinking I will look for his books on the Bosnian conflict. Some of his earlier work has been collected in the volume Notes from a Defeatist, which also looks interesting. It includes his reflections on the Gulf War as well as something on his mother’s experience of World War I.

I’m a sucker for those “you might also enjoy” recommendations and spotted this while I was looking up those links. King: A comics biography of Martin Luther King by Ho Che Anderson. That might also be worth checking out, particularly for those of you who teach American history in some sort of systematic way. The cover art looks fascinating.

In my recent explorations of the comic form, I have been catching up on some classics. Since these are not intended as children’s books (despite some folks prejudices about graphic novels), and since even those of us who don’t think books should have ratings appreciate what others have to say about them, I thought I’d set down my thoughts here. I’m going to give each one it’s own post. First up Persepolis.

I came across this when I saw the movie advertised in my local art cinema coming soon list. Makes me think I’ve been living under a rock, but I’ve discovered it now. The book is autobiographical and was originally published in French in several volumes. Although my library has both the French and English editions, I read the English, one-volume one. The story is of a young girl (about 10) at the time of the Iranian revolution. I like the drawing style (sample pages are included at the link). The story is well told. It is clearly from a particular perspective — that of the child of intellectuals — but that perspective is interesting and gives insight into the various contradictions of radical intellectualism as well as insight into the how the bigger political events shaped everyday life. The author reflects on that choice on this page at the Random House site.

Because the main character is a young girl, I thought that it might be of interest to my daughter. However, because we are dealing with war and difficult political circumstances, I was concerned that it might treat subjects that you wouldn’t want 10 year olds to know too much about if they weren’t in the unfortunate circumstance of living in a war zone. My concerns were unfounded. Although it deals with difficult subjects, it does not dwell on them nor treat them with gratuitous visuals. The author succeeds in maintaining the perspective of the child and things are explained as her parents might well have explained them and as a child would have understood them. While these are difficult things to deal with, including arrest and execution, they are presented in a very matter of fact way that would probably enable a middle-school child to engage meaningfully with the content.

Since my 10 year old child does read the newspaper, including articles about Gaza and honour killings in the middle east, I think the content would be fine for her. She has chosen not to read it right now but if she is interested in the future, I will not hesitate to get it out of the library again. I have no idea what the movie is like. I know that for my daughter, she finds the same subject more disturbing in a movie than in a book (a recent example being the movie of Murder on the Orient Express, which she has read twice and enjoyed). So what I say about the book does not apply to the movie adaptation. If anyone has seen the movie, I would appreciate any thoughts on this in the comments.

Becky posted that the new issue of The Edge of the Forest is up and has an article on graphic novel adaptations of regular books. I’m feeling ambivalent about this trend. On the one hand, I think it is great that canonical stories are being produced in formats that are accessible to more visual-spatial folks. Some kids just prefer reading pictures to lots and lots of words on a page and why shouldn’t they have access to Shakespeare and Beowulf and the like. On the other hand, I can’t help but think someone is trying to “redeem” comics; give them some seriousness. So that it is okay if you are reading Beowulf in graphic novel form but the vast comic landscape is still considered somehow less than real literature.

I’m not a huge reader of comics myself but I do have friends who are big readers. And I think that there is a need for people to really value the visual elements of this genre. There is important stuff in the pictures. Same with picture books probably. Too often we think that kids should grow out of this visual material into “real” books with lots of words. Many of us are discovering some really good picture books for older readers. And recently I was picking out picture books for a very young reader (she’s 2) and recognizing the importance of good artwork in my selection. Have you ever looked, really looked, at the collage work in Ezra Jack Keats or Eric Carle?

So I’m feeling my way a bit. But also trying to learn as I go. And Tigger clearly loves comics. Our trip to Belgium showed us that. So I’ve been keeping an eye out for good material.

Thanks to Stephanie’s tip about Unshelved, I’ve come across a new resource. A newsletter about comics and graphic novels for educators and librarians, Diamond Bookshelf. I figure it is worth a look. And from that link, I discovered a prize-winning graphic novel set in rural Southwestern Ontario (okay that is still 10 hours drive from here, but it is the same province!) with a 10 year old protagonist, Essex County Vol 1: Tales from the Farm. The first volume of the trilogy is even in our library. Yes, I have requested it.

Because I don’t trust parental guidance information, I’ve also requested the English translation of Persepolis. My kid reads the Guardian Weekly. She was talking to me about the Pakistani elections the other day. She also read about what’s going on in Gaza and an article about honour killings. I think she might be able to cope. Maybe I’ll look for that one about Palestine, by Joe Sacco, too. There are serious graphic novels out there for adults that aren’t adaptations of other genres. They are just plain serious treatments of serious topics in a graphic genre. Hopefully, a bigger market for similar material for kids (in the English language; the French material seems plentiful) will develop.

Unserious is good, too. I don’t want to imply that graphic novels are only worthwhile if they treat serious subjects. I think we need to learn to appreciate graphic novels and comics for what they are, though. And to see the variety of subjects that can be presented this way. I suspect that some stories are better in this genre. And the more we study art, the more I learn to appreciate what is going on in the visual part of these. And maybe that’s where we need to rethink them. Appreciating the art in both picture books and graphic novels. Galleries that are accessible in our own homes.

Edited to add: There is a good activity about comics and graphic novels at Sharing Understandings. Scroll down to “Comics and Graphic Novels”.

I was installing a new French corrector software today (Antidote RX, it is really good; comes from Druide Informatique) and as it was installing I noticed some stuff in my applications folder that I didn’t even know was there. Must have come installed on this machine (an iMac) when I bought it a year or so ago.

So one thing is Comic Life. Software for making comics. Will let you drag images in from iPhoto and add captions and whatnot. Has various designs for your page… I did a very quick little photo-story. (click the pictue to embiggen)

I know that the topic of comics has come up on the homeschoolingcreatively yahoo group and I suspect some of the folks who read here might be interested, too. So if you have a Mac, you might want to roam around in your applications folder and see what you find. I know the other thing we talked about once was the graphing software which their kids thought was great for learning algebra.

Have fun!

I know that some of the knitters who read here are also librarians and know other librarians. Maybe they know about this already but if so, they haven’t told the rest of us. I heard from Stephanie (of Throwing Marshmallows, since I have at least 4 Stephanies in my feed list). There is a cool comic out there on the web called Unshelved. Should be interesting for any of us who spend a lot of time in libraries

Now if only I can get the RSS feed on Alison Bechdel’s site to work, maybe I could get caught up on DTWOF. (I did. I’m not sure how, though. It just came up when I went to find the URL for that link.) And it looks like there are books to buy… How do I get so out of the loop on stuff I really like?