Greetings from the Hilton at #alamw15- I’m currently listening to a panel of artists talk about the importance of Comics in Visual Literacy.
Hosted by Françoise Mouly, publisher and editorial director of Toon Books (and yes, from RAW Magazine and New Yorker fame), the first person to present was Batman himself, Gene Luen Yang.
Yes, Gene is Batman- by day he is a teacher and by night he is a cartoonist! So who better to talk about the roll comics can play in education than someone who does both? After hearing about Gene’s process, we heard about Gene’s Master’s Thesis about the role comics can play in education (online info about that can be found here). Gene shared with us how when he was a long-term substitute teacher for an Algebra 2, he found supplementing his lesson plans for substitutes and the lectures themselves with comic versions of the day’s lesson was extremely helpful for students.
Gene also shared that he believes comics are important because they teach people how to communicate in the medium most accepted in the 21st century- multimedia! In addition to helping students learn how to express themselves and understand others in both a verbal and visual manner, comics also help develop critical thinking skills. An activity we did with Gene where we had to guess the missing panel on a page, highlighted the how much thought goes into interpreting the emotion and actions on a page that we don’t even think about until one of the “pieces” is missing.
At the end of his presentation, Gene gave a quick Q&A, answering questions. Two questions in particular stood out:
- What’s one book you would pick to show someone that comics aren’t trash? Show people Maus– it’s pretty hard to say comics are useless when one has a Pulitzer Prize on it.
- What do you say to people that are concerned about kids being exposed to content they aren’t ready for (i.e. violence)? As a father of four, he said it’s important to follow the kid’s lead. He’s found that his 11 year old will gravitate to books he is ready for.
That’s it for now-more later!