"School of Comic" Presentations from 2011 Miami Book Fair are Now Available!

Click here to access the presentations! For free!!

Bill Zimmerman's MakeBeliefsComix Adds Content!

The Graphic Classroom's Chris Wilson covers the news. It looks like many of the new additions are characters who are disabled. Bill has been striving for inclusivity with his comics-making site, so this is a welcomed but not surprising development.

Katie Monnin Talks about ESL on FL Fox News Affiliate

It's Katie's Corner on TV! She mentions several TOON Books as good for ESL early readers.

Some Nice Lynd Ward Images

Thanks to The Spurge for the link!

iTunes Bookstore Now Has Comics/GN Section

"One Million Moms" Organization to Boycott Toys R' Us Over Gay Marriage Archie Comic

See the details here.

The Huffington Post Talks about GN Adaptation of The Constitution

and mentions Katie Monnin, who wrote a study guide for the text published by Round Table Companies.

Oprah.com Calls Craig Thomspon's _Blankets_ One of Best Love Stories of All Tme

Seriously.

That's high praise. I was late to the Blankets train, never really liking it enough to purchase it and not believing the hype until I finally sat down and read the entire thing rather than what I saw in previews, etc. Not sure if this endorsement will do anything to help get high school teachers to put the books in their shelves, though it's a clear example of Young Adult lit, but the power of Oprah works in mysterious ways.

And for what it's worth, I'm a total Blankets fan now. Anything Craig Thompson, really.

John Carter of Mars is Coming to the Big Screen. In the Meantime...

Maureen Bakis talks about her Book and Comics in the Classroom

In the article with a link embedded in this post's title, high school teacher and current doctoral student Maureen Bakis talks about teaching a course full of graphic novels and what she hopes teachers can gain from her book The Graphic Novel Classroom.

Belgian Court Makes Weird Legal Decision; TinTin Not Banned

While I'm happy to know that a court has decided on the legal hubbub surrounding TinTin's place in its home country of Belgium (someone had filed a case against TinTin in the Congo to get it outlawed due to racist content), how the court has handled this seems a little strange.

The books will not be banned, as was the complainant's desire, but the court essentially ruled that the volumes could remain widely available because it, and Herge's intent, was not inherently racist.

Had the court felt otherwise, the decision might have not been the same, so while this is not exactly a victory for free speech, it is a victory for proponents of the notion that anyone should be able to read whatever they like from the past, when "historical context" regarding what is racist and what is not was different from what it is today.

Yeah, it's a muddied situation. Read more about it here.

GNR Publishes discussion Guides for 3 Graphic Novels

See librarian Jack Baur and middle school teacher Jessica Lee's discussion guides for Persepolis, Smile, and American Born Chinese here.

The guides are born out of work done with their Comix Club over the last three years.

Dylan Horracks PSA for New Zealand Writers in Schools Program

Click here to see it.

Literacy Expert Stephen Krashen: " For Me It Was Comic Books"

Click here to listen to USC professor, literacy expert, and, oddly, current rabble-rouser Stephen Krashen talk about language acquisition , pleasure reading (or narrow reading), and academic discourse. Right before the 21 minute mark, he begins talking about his love for comics and respect for their importance in his own literacy development:

"For me... it was comic books, and I gotta confess, it's still comic books.... Batman, Superman....What a wonderful foundation that gave us for higher levels of literacy, and we treated it as literature...."

He then talks about having Stan Lee taking him to lunch -- and paying! :)

Continuing on, he says, "I've never gotten over comic books. There's nothing like a new graphic novel."

His basic thesis is that language acquisition, especially academic language acquisition, is best facilitated by lots of reading in the forms and genres that you love best.

Krashen's synthesis on many studies and writings on comics and reading in The Power of Reading should be among the first things comics-and-literacy scholars read, in my opinion.

YALSA's "Great Graphic Novels" for 2012

See YALSA's list of exemplary graphic novels here. And since they made finding their top ten a little difficult (what is it with folks this year? Is it suddenly not hip, or is that not hipster [librarians were the original svelte, black-glasses-wearing, know-it-all hotties, afterall], to make top ten lists?), here's a link to it too.

Among the top ten, there's an interesting mix of genres. Even the capes got a nod or two.

University of Chicago Hosting Comics Mega-Event!

The University of Chicago's Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry is hosting a conference this May. "Comics: Philosophy & Practice Conference" will run from May 18-20 and feature an amazing line-up of top-tier comics talent. Visit the link in this post's title for more information, and be sure to click the "Conference Participants" link too.

Go Maroons!

See My "Comics" Entry in the Massive *Encyclopedia of Adolescence*

Edited by Roger J.R. Levesque of the University of Indiana, this impressive tome (3363 pages!) covers a range of topics pertinent to the development of adolescents and features my "Comics" entry on pages 460-468. What makes this encyclopedia unique is that not only were experts invited to talk about their areas of interest, as with many such texts, but were asked to highlight their own work in the area.

I'm honored to be included in such a worthy, if not expensive ($2050.00) project that will make a great resource for educators and researchers everywhere. It's a library purchase, to be sure, but a great contribution to adolescent literacy studies and all other areas of interest to those who study young people and their habits and behaviors. It just published and is available online as well. Get on the phone with those campus librarians, people! ;)

Check Out These Great High-Low Covers from Marvel

Click here to see the bulk of them. Or is that the "Hulk" of them? :) Here's my very favoritest:

Rationales Project Gets Attention in Education Review

Rationales for Teaching Graphic Novels, a project I edited with around twenty other teachers and teacher educators last year, has been reviewed for Education Review/Resenas Educativas, a multi-lingual journal of book reviews.

Available as a CD-ROM, an Ebook, and in chunks through publisher Maupin House's a la carte feature, Rationales offers reviews, lesson ideas, and advice for integrating 108 graphic novels into the classroom.

Reviewer Tiffany A. Flowers calls the project "practical and useful" and "a great resource." Read her full review here.

Thanks for the kind words, Tiffany! :)

*The Comics Journal* Recaps 2011: "A Year of Comic Ambition"

TCJ has come up with a cleaver way to avoid posting a "best of" list. ;)