Comics and Post-Secondary Pedagogy Issue ImageText Now Live!

Click here to read essays from folks teaching comics across a broad array of fields and disciplines. Thanks to co-editor Najwa Al-Tabaa for asking me to guest edit the issue. I'm thrilled with how it turned out and know -- whether you're a K12 teacher, a teacher educator, a librarian, a graphic designer -- you'll learn from this issue.

Great essays; great reviews, and great resources for all interested in comics and education! What are you waiting for? Read! Read! 

Forthcoming Articles/ Appearances

It's been a slow week for the type of news I try to cover here, which suits me fine as I'm grading finals and doing averages this week while also attending to some annual medical stuffs.

But, to keep the posts current, here's some news:

This fall I have an article co-authored with Katie Monnin and Brian Kelley appearing in the award-winning journal Inland. Inland serves Washington state and Idaho NCTE chapters. You may recall that I was a speaker at the Idaho Council of Teachers of English a year or so ago. The article considers "visualizing and visually representing," two of the 6 English Language Arts defined by NCTE/IRA and illustrates how the use of comics and graphic novels in the classroom attend to them and to many of the NCTE/IRA standards. Look for the article in Inland some time in September 2010.

Then, in November, see another co-authored article of mine on blogging, American Born Chinese, and special needs students. California English teacher Cheryl Gomes and I teamed up for this one, which is slated to appear in a volume of English Journal which focuses on revisioning disability.

I also have two other big projects underway that I need to tell you about, both of which have been alluded to in this blog as of late, but I'll keep you waiting on these details. :)

Speaking of one of those projects, though, you can learn a little about what it might be by searching the NCTE Annual Convention Program once it is available on line. At the November convention, I'll be joining a group of teachers and teacher educators to talk about censorship issues regarding schools, libraries, and graphica.

_Teaching Graphic Novels_ Continues to Rack Up Recognition!

In addition to being a book of the year finalist for ForeWord Magazine, Katie Monnin's Teaching Graphic Novels (Maupin House) has now also been named a finalist for the Association of Educational Publishers' Distinguished Achievement Awards for grades Curriculum & Instruction, grades 6-8.

I'm so happy to call Katie and colleague and friend and to be working with her on several GN-related projects, one of which is also slated for release from Maupin House, which really knows how to market its books and to make sure people take note of their excellent quality. Teaching Graphic Novels deconstructs the form so thoroughly for teachers, it is no wonder it is being honored. I like it so much, I've got two copies on my shelves!

Rock on, Katie!

Katie Monnin's Teaching Graphic Novels in the Secondary Classrooms Nominated for Foreward Magazine's 2010 Book of the Year in Education

You go, Katie!

New Books = No Excuses Anymore! (Quick Reviews of Two Salient New Texts)

With the publication of the Stephen Tabachnick-edited collection Teaching the Graphic Novel, teachers at the collegiate level have a vast array of strategies, ideas, philosophies and lenses regarding the critical viewing of graphica in the classroom. While the book features a wonderful cohesion in key concepts -- such as reveling in the ambiguities of form, terminology, and place so inherent in higher-order considerations of comics -- it also reveals that academics from various fields are studying comics. With a book like this available, there's no longer any excuse for a post-secondary educator to avoid accepting comics place in academe.

Katie Monnin's similarly titled single-authored Teaching Graphic Novels offers a complete and thorough deconstruction of how to study comics as comics and as literature. The various methods for viewing frames and exploring other elements of comics as text constitute a breakdown of the medium like no other text on the market geared towards secondary educators. "But I just don't understand the form!!" and "I just don't get comics and don't know how to teach their formal properties to my students so they can adequately read them" are now relegated to lame excuses, folks.

I have to admit, I'm a "part" of both books, which were published in the latter part of 2009. As some of my previous posts revealed, I have a chapter in the MLA book, and Katie was very kind to mention me as a mentor figure in the front matter of her book. I'm very proud to say I was able to give Katie a hug at this year's NCTE, where she hand-delivered a copy of the text to me, after seeing such a kind sentiment expressed. So, I may be guilty of bias, but it is very exciting to see texts filling in gaps such that the overall body of comics-and-literacy scholarship and research becomes more well-constructed bridge to learning than little islands of insight surrounded in between by vast oceans of disconnect.

I recommend both texts to anyone with an iota of curiosity regarding why all these teachers seem to be accepting a once maligned medium.

Go Read: Katie Monnin's New Book Teaching Graphic Novels

The folks at Maupin House sure know how to market a book on teaching graphic novels in the English Language Arts classroom. This hot new text looks to be an important and necessary addition to the comic-and-literacy movement.

I know I can't wait to read it. Click this post's title to learn more about the book, and be impressed by the multimodal efforts to draw attention to what is surely going to be an excellent addition to the growing body of work on teaching comics in the secondary classroom.