The Beauty of Graphic Novels

Sorry it took so long for me to post! I am at caveman status when it comes to using technology… seriously, I even find iPods confusing.

I honestly was not excited about blogging and doing my booktalk about graphic novels. I knew nothing about them other than Manga, which is not something I am completely interested in, and comics, which I considered something for the Sunday paper. When I did go to Dr. Buehler’s office to choose a book, I was pleasantly surprised by how wrong I was about graphic novels. She showed me ones about topics I was interested in like homelessness, the Cold War, the Holocaust, etc. I chose a relatively short book and began reading. What I loved most about my experience with this graphic novel was that not only did the characters tell a story like in a movie, but the art in the book was equally as important as the content, perhaps even more!

 From a teaching perspective, I was happy to see a way for visual students to learn that didn’t involve them reading and rereading and not even processing the words. I also appreciated the amount of talent and work that goes into making such novels. I did some research as to when the graphic novel began, and it turns out they have always been around! Cave paintings and hieroglyphics are technically graphic novels because they evoke the power of pictures to help tell a story.

I know I can’t be the only one who was less than enthusiastic to have to read a graphic novel at first, and I’m wondering if anyone else was surprised by how good these novels actually are. Did anyone go through that experience of being proved wrong like me? I’m a little embarrassed for not even wanting to give this genre a shot just because of my assumption of the genre as a whole. Do you think that other people have the same assumptions and that’s why they defer from reading these books? I’m just wondering… I am definitely going to reconsider this genre, especially for education. 

My experience was definitely a good one, and I guess I should’ve known since we have yet to read any books that I don’t like in this class. 

- Jo

so this is a graphic novel....

This being my first experience reading a graphic novel I didn't really know what to expect, and honestly I still do not know how I feel. I have always loved art and literature so I do not know why I haven't read graphic novels before. When I picked up American Born Chinese I finished it easily in one sitting but at first I didn't really get much out of it........so I read it again. With the second reading I began to realize how smoothly the three different stories fit together an the intricate ways that the main character(s) came to terms with being a Chinese American. Using the ancient Chinese story as a parallel was brilliant. It used a part of Jin Wang's heritage to describe his own struggle to fit in, it showed Jin that by being himself he had a specific role to fill, that he could be both American and Chinese and that that was who he is suppose to be. American Born Chinese has opened my eyes to the world of Graphic Novels and the new hidden layers and facets it makes available to literature.
-Chloe

Picture is worth a Thousand Words

This week we were required to read American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. I can honestly say that I have never read a graphic novel before this one. I have never had any interest in them and always thought it was a “boy” thing with superheroes and Batman and Superman and Spiderman, the list goes on and on. I was not particularly excited to read this graphic novel this week but when I opened it I tried to open my mind to it as well. This is what I discovered upon reading it. Graphic novels – if this one is any indication – can hold some really complex issues and present them in a quick , “easy” format that allows the reader to grasp the concept even if it is largely complex and would take hundreds of pages in a traditional novel. I have to give authors of graphic novels credit where credit is due in this sense because they are so limited to the amount of text on a page and specifically in each frame on that page. The combination of text and visuals is used to portray a lot of emotion which allows them to put into our minds what would take a thousand words to do – in this sense, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Kaylin