Preconference: Comics in Education

Gene Yang came back for a little Q&A about his history as an author and artist. He spoke at length about the participatory culture that follows graphic novels. Beginning with American comics, artists have looked for input from their fans (whether that be through monthly letters, or voting to kill Robin from Batman).

Today fan input comes in many forms which I will discuss later. Fans participate by communicating with the artist/writer, creating their own graphic novel, fan art, cos play and more! It is this participatory culture that has kept comics going and kept the fans interested. This is of particular interest to teens because they have the chance to create content, to make their mark on the world.

I will talk about this later in my post about participatory culture and fandom.

Here are some of Gene Yang's recommendations:

The Essex County Trilogy by Jeff Lemire (or anything printed by Top Shelf publications)
Robot Dreams by Sara Varon
Monster by Naoki Urasawa
keep an eye out for a new publication from Jason Shiga called Meanwhile that will be a choose your own adventure/graphic novel

On the left are more recommendations from First Second (Yang's publisher).

Preconference: Adult and International GN Publishing for Teens

Peggy Burns is the associate publisher at Drawn & Quarterly a graphic novel press. Burns spoke about the wide variety of graphic novels that are published each year but go largely unnoticed in the United States. Many of the artists that Drawn and Quarterly publish are from outside the US.

A large part of the American graphic novel market is made up of manga and superhero comics (the traditional Batman or Superman). However, there are many authors and titles being published in the United States that would appeal to a different audience. These are the kind of books published by Burns and her colleagues. She suggested just a few titles for everyone to read and recommend. These are just a few that caught my eye.

Epileptic by David B.
What It Is by Lynda Barry a how to write manual
Aya by Marguerite Abouet

Preconference: Gene Yang Key Note

Gene Luen Yang made an amazing key note speech about graphic novels and how we read now. Yang was a high school computer science teacher before he made it big as a graphic novelist. So much of his speech drew from that personal history.

Yang explained that graphic novels are an interesting melding of words and pictures. What we traditionally think of as reading is what in computer terminology we would refer to as sequential access (words, sentences, pages, chapters that all need to be read in order to make sense). Images are random access (it does not matter where you look at a painting first or where your eyes go, you understand it anyway).

Graphic novels are the interesting combination of random and sequential access, words invading art and art invading words. In other words, comics is sequential art. Yes, you probably noticed the seemingly incorrect grammar in that sentence but that is how Yang used the word comics and so I will continue to use it as a noun.

Yang went on to explain that teens today have come to expect a complex relationship between pictures and words. Everyday you come across examples of pictures invading words and vice verse, your daily weather forecast for example, blog posts, newspapers, graphs, there is rarely a time when you don't see both working together to communicate. This is why comics connect with teens so well.

As we all know, people process information in different ways, audio learners, tactile learners, visual learners etc. There seem to be more types of learners than names for them. Graphic novels are a unique format that communicates on more than one level making them a perfect teaching tool. Comics as a format share the narrative responsibility between words and pictures making them easily accessible to a wide range of readers. Yang has frequently used his art to teach his computer science and math classes at his high school in California.

Let us as librarians help to blur that line between image and text, between fun and educational. Use comics as a way of communicating, encourage teens to communicate through that same medium, get them reading and thinking about what it means to read. Get out there and draw some words! Write some pictures!

Gene's recommendations:
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud (or any book by Scott McCloud)
getgraphic.org created by the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library
Will Eisner books on creating comics

Preconference: Manga Madness

Stella Farris, a teacher from Texas, spoke about her experiences learning about Japanese culture and incorporating it into her library. Farris traveled to Japan several years ago on a grant to learn more about Japanese culture. This was an informative presentation but was mostly about resources. Her bibliography is below.

Preconference: From Writer to Reader

The Preconference was titled "Picturing the Story: Teen Readers Get Graphic @ Your Library." It was all about new ways of thinking about reading.

The first speakers of the day were manga creator, Svetlana Chmakova, publisher Kurt Hassler of Yen Press, Angela Frederick, teen librarian for the Nashville Public Library, and two teen guests. Svetlana and her publisher talked about the manga/graphic novel industry and how it is changing. Yen Press is putting out a new manga serial called Yen Plus that looks interesting and you should keep an eye out for.

Manga's inclusion into American culture has been relatively recent, Kurt Hassler explained. And when it first travelled to America, no one hated it more than American graphic novel readers. But eventually manga won over it's own readers. It began in the bookstores, not a traditional comic geek destination. The major chains began with manga collections and expanded into American graphic novels. The advantage of this was in the new market, graphic novel readers were already going to comic shops but new readers may not know they like the genre. Their presence in bookstores made them available to new readers, especially girls!

Now graphic novels and manga are everywhere, including in the library. Angela Frederick recommends listening to the teens, because there is no possible way to read every series they are a good touchstone for collection development.

note: look out for a graphic novel version of the popular Cirque du Freak books from Yen Press in the near future.