My Take on Watchmen

I had never read Watchmen, the highly popular graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (artist). When the movie came out a few months ago, the book gained in popularity again, and I finally caved and got a copy to see what all the hype was about.

I am by no means a graphic novel aficionado, I have just read a few things that have caught my interest over the years, so I'm not one who feeds on these types of books. I have, however, started branching out and trying to read more, and have found it to be a varied experience.

My first thought when I began reading Watchmen was "wow, this is just a big giant comic book." I was drawing back on my childhood experiences, reading X Men and Superman comics, among others. However, when looking at this book through a historical lens, knowing that it was written during the later years of the Cold War, there was a lot to this book. The cynicism, the disillusionment, and the tongue-in-cheek dialogue, especially from the narrator Rorschach, made this a great adult reading experience.

I'll admit that some of the Dr. Manhattan stuff got a little "out there," but I enjoyed the metaphor that lied behind it. That's a good way to describe my overall experience with this book. It was out there, but was a great story that kept having me go "ah yes, I got that, very nice."

Now, does this book have potential in the classroom? First off, if you're talking anything below AP English Literature for Seniors or really insightful Juniors, forget it, don't even bother. If this book fits some kind of unit of study on, say, the Cold War, or in a greater survey of graphic novels, comic books, or something along those lines, then sure, I can see it fitting in terms of its content along those subject lines.

It is a very witty, very multi-dimensional story. There is a lot more sophistication than I was anticipating, and I'm not saying that in a snooty, "those darn kids won't get it, they're just not smart enough," kind of way. I am saying that it simply might go over their heads and end up being just another comic book with an adult theme.

This is a great piece of literature that has aged well, but is an adult piece of literature. I commend anyone who has managed to use this in the classroom and go deeper than surface level with it. Personally, I say it's more of an adult read, but if you've had experiences teaching with this, please share.

In the Small by Michael Hague, a graphic novel book review

What you're going to read from me over the next few days are a few graphic novel reviews, I am currently going through a stack of some that were either recommended to me or sounded interesting.

Today I am going to review In the Small, by Michael Hague. In the Small is the debut for Hague and is likely the first in a story series. In the Small is a post apocalyptic story about a blue flash that envelops the earth, turning humans 1/12 their normal size. Of course, you can imagine the panic that sweeps the world, as life as humanity knows it ceases to exist. Animals once thought benign are now predators on the largest scale, and years of technological advancement are for nothing, because humans are no longer large enough to use any of it.

This is a great premise, an interesting take on the whole apocalyptic story, certainly a departure from the celestial event or nuclear bombing that is the hallmark of 90% of all books and/or movies in this genre.

The first thing I noticed about In the Small is that I didn't care much for the delivery of the story in Hague's artistry or word choice. The story was highly contrived, based around mysticism a little bit too much, and was one of those stories where basically one family does all the work on two separate fronts and everyone else just satisfies themselves with being background players.

The graphics were rather gory, which isn't a problem, and actually comes with the territory, many graphic novels that are classified as young adult appropriate have a fair amount of blood and death, but this one was sensationalized a little bit at times.

I felt that the story was weak, and if I wasn't trying to get through it in order to have the whole story to look at (or the fact that it only took about 20 minutes to read the whole thing and gather my thoughts on it), then I may not have finished it, it couldn't hold interest and was just odd.

If you are a teacher (or just a reader) and have a love for apocalyptic fiction, or your students enjoy it and want more, I guess this book can be tried. I don't know how well received it will be by students, because it's getting highly mixed reviews in the literary world. I can just say that I won't personally recommend it, because I didn't care for it.

This book should carry a high school reading level, I would say 9th grade and up for the language usage, but probably 11th and up for the content, but that's just my opinion on that.

Arrival, by Shaun Tan: The Tour de Force of Wordless Graphic Novels

I went down to the library this morning to pick up some graphic novels to keep me occupied during this last week of vacation. One of the books I picked up was The Arrival, by Shaun Tan. The Arrival is the ultimate graphic novel, it is quite literally all graphics, there is not a single word in the entire story. Also, this book doesn't necessarily qualify as a "picture book," something like a Dr. Seuss or another book you'd see in a primary classroom, it is much deeper and multi-dimensional.

From the top, the visuals of this story are unbelievable. It's a story of immigration, of a man leaving behind his wife and daughter and heading to a new, strange, industrialized world. Upon his arrival, the language is strange, the customs are strange, and the man is confused and lost. What is amazing is how well the images capture this, and how the reader becomes confused and lost as well. There were times when I was viewing this book that I felt confused and lost, that I found myself trying to understand the man and his thoughts, and that is the very essence of this wordless book.

How good is this book? I can put it best in two different ways. First of all, on goodreads.com (a book social site that I discuss frequently in this blog), there is one book that I've come across that carries an average rating of 5 out of 5 stars, and it is this book. Secondly, every teacher in the United States should have a copy of this book, and should go through it, in great depth with their classes.

Wordless books are great to use in the classroom, and yet, oddly, are something I do not have a lot of experience using. The book Zoom (Picture Puffin), by Istvan Banyai, is a wonderful wordless book in which you continue to zoom out of a picture, revealing more and more of the world as you do. It's a captivating story that students are easily drawn in to and want to experience time and again. The book Zoom has become a mainstay in literacy classrooms across the world, from kindergarten to high school classes, and I highly recommend it.

But wait, back to The Arrival and the classroom usage of the wordless book. There is a great many resources out there that discuss the merit of wordless books and the many different contexts in which they can be utilized. On EverythingESL.net, there is an article by Judie Haynes titled Wonderful World of Wordless Books in which ideas for the implementation of wordless books as literacy lessons are given (in the context of ESL students, but honestly, every child can benefit from ESL instruction, especially in the elementary setting). There is also a great wikispace that's all about reading wordless books, it is aptly titled How to Read a Wordless Book, and contains in depth examples of using The Arrival.

This is the first review of a wordless book that I have done on this blog, but now that I am thinking about it, I want to encounter more of these. Those of you who are more involved in this type of literature, please share some of the better ones you have read. Please, pick up The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, and "read" it. There are so many ways that this book could be utilized, and I'm just scratching the surface here in this posting.

Media Literacy (a.k.a. Star Wars Literacy)

My oldest son, who is a six-year-old first grader, has a major interest in Star Wars, he loves the whole world that George Lucas and his "people" created. Today we sat down and watched some of the Star Wars movies, and then my son decided it was time to do some reading. We got on the public library website and reserved a few of the Star Wars books they had on the shelf.

What this really got me to thinking about it how media influences literacy, which is a "DUH" statement to anybody in the field, but is something that people like to sweep under the rug as they continue to read Little House on the Prairie and use outdated textbooks.

Media literacy is no longer something that we can ignore in the classroom. Our students are out there watching movies, they're out there playing video games, listening to music and podcasts on their iPods, and watching video clips, reading pages of information, and chatting on the internet.

Digital literacy is something I've discussed in the pages of this blog on numerous occasions, but today, I wanted to remind myself and my readers about media literacy as a pathway to get your students to read.

I went to a Scholastic warehouse sale last year, and found piles and piles of Star Wars books, that have sat on my shelf for nearly a year and have been checked out and completed by numerous students. I had a trio of male students just before Christmas all go together to the store and pick up Star Wars: Clone Wars, and read it together during silent/individual reading time.

I'm a little more old school when it comes to books and movies, I think that the books are almost always better (if they were written first and the movie adapted afterwards). Of course, this doesn't take into account series like Star Wars, which have literally hundreds of novels, comics, cartoon series, and even fan zines out there continuing the story. So much of this goes on with Star Wars, in fact, that the Holocron was created, in order to separate "canon" from non-official stories. What started as a neat movie in the '70s has become the source of a near endless world of books and other literary works.

OK, this post jumped all over the place a little bit, but it's just another reason that teachers need to understand the multi-dimensional reality of today's child that we must account for in the classroom. It's just something to think about, and discuss more.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy: Possible Young Adult Literature

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, was not written for high school students, it is an adult book. However, its content, as well as the way the story is told, is appropriate for high school and undergraduate college students alike. The Road is a post-apocalyptic story of the survival of a man and his son is told through very roughly formatted text, but in beautiful fashion. McCarthy, the author of No Country For Old Men (which is definitely NOT appropriate for school reading of any age), has struck a chord with this book among both science fiction and literary circles alike.

This book forces one to ask, can science fiction be heralded as a work of classic literature, or if this book even qualifies as science fiction. I wanted to originally classify this book as a dystopia themed one, much like 1984, A Brave New World, and such post-apocalyptic tales as The Planet of the Apes, I Am Legend, and Earth Abides, books that have all found their way into high school classrooms at one time or another. However, after reading it, I found that it fit with none of these books, although I was able to make connections that I found fit. This book defies classification in a clearly defined sub-genre, but is most definitely a work of science fiction and of the highest form of literary art, in my opinion.

This story involves no brutal murder, blood and guts, or even adult situations (other than the ongoing topic of death and suicide, which is not an uncommon theme in works of adult literature, especially such dark tales as this one). I can see high school juniors or seniors, as well as college undergraduates, delving deep into the possibilities of this book, including the origins of the apocalypse that took place, the relationship and goals of the man and boy, and the meaning of this story as a whole.

The prose of the book is especially interesting. McCarthy is known for his interesting style, and this book is no exception. The stripped down writing, with its incomplete punctuation, sometimes erratic structure, and bare bones dialogue are almost poetic at times, but on a deeper level, are a part of the story itself. When the man and boy are on the brink of despair and starvation, the grammatical structure of the story begins to thin, but when they are in higher spirits, it reads more like a novel (which isn't much). I think this would be an intriguing idea to show to students to let them think about on their own, it certainly interested me.

I am writing about this book in part because I thought it was of stunning beauty. It was a work of art, and engrossed me in every conceivable way. Its content is not inappropriate for high school students, and its vocabulary is not beyond 17 and 18 year olds. I recommend teachers take a closer look at this book, both for its value as a true masterpiece, and for its value in the classroom. Hopefully someone sees this and runs with this book. If I taught senior English/Composition, I definitely would.

I would draw possible parallels in the young adult and pre-adolescent literary worlds to this book through the following two books:

Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer - The story of a girl and her family struggling to survive after a massive meteor strikes the moon, knocking it out of its gentle balance with the earth, causing apocalyptic events (ages 10-14). See my review of Life As We Knew It.

The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau - Some sort of unnamed apocalypse occurs, and a group of people are taken to safety in The City of Ember. This story is one of survival through dark circumstances, but is told in a fashion that is appropriate for children (ages 8-12). See my review of The City of Ember.

Zombie Fiction: A Real Literary Experience

In my personal time, I read voraciously (hey, there's a nice vocabulary word for the day), I love books, and I have actually come to prefer them over movies. No, I'm not just saying that, it's true. The interesting thing is that I definitely go through phases where I'll read tons of stuff out of one genre. For awhile, I was really in to spy thriller stuff, then, I got really into dystopia stuff, like 1984, A Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Ayn Rand's books, and tons of others.

Right now, my genre obsession is zombie fiction. That's right, I'm a sucker for a good zombie fiction. And you know, it's really gotten me thinking, what are the redeeming cultural values of zombie fiction? There is actually a whole world of fascinating stories out there, and a growing pool of research about zombie fiction (nothing I'm going to mention now, but maybe in the future).

When I think of these great books, they're first of all, horrifying, but second of all, fascinating. Zombie fiction has taken on a growing form since 9/11, which is something I've read about in the research of others and have also read about in zombie discussion forums. One of the main recurring themes behind zombie stories is that you see the frustration and fear of America at large, and the continuing ignorance of the American government play out in these stories.

Max Brooks provides some of the best zombie fiction I've ever read in his anthology of the Great Zombie War, titled World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. This is easily one of my favorite books of all time, I am currently reading it for the third time, it's just amazing. It's a telling of short stories by survivors of the war that swept the world and practically wiped out 90% of the population of the entire world.

Brooks is just a start, he's also well known for The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, which is also a very interesting read. I've recently also read some other books, that I'll provide in a list at the end of this posting.

The thing is, I really got to thinking about the possibilities for using zombie fiction as an educational experience. My next post will be on this, because this one is already getting pretty long, I'll put a link for it here when I write that post. For now, I'm going to end this post by listing the zombie fiction books I've read so far. I really want to read more, and will, but this is where I am right now.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War- by Max Brooks: This book, as mentioned above, is simply the best zombie book I've read, I can't get enough.
• The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead- by Max Brooks: This book is pretty much as advertised. It's a survival guide, what kind of weapons to use, how to kill a zombie, how to get out of reach of a zombie, it's just so imaginative and so serious that you almost start believing it.
• Monster Island, Monster Nation and Monster Planet- by David Wellington: I included these three books as one, because they're pretty much one long story. These books were unique to the zombie genre because you actually go inside the head of zombies, and see what they're seeing and experiencing. There's some interesting twists here, but they're very entertaining.
• Day by Day Armageddon- by J.L. Bourne: This book is a total throwback in to the world of George Romero (you know, the Dawn of the Dead guy). This book is a journal of survivors fighting zombies as they're holed up in a small town outside of Austin, Texas. In this book, the zombies are mindless, flesh eating dead, no tricks, no smart ones, nothing like that. It's a really good, really well told book.