How To Use Poatry Comics To Help Students In Writing?

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Graphic novels are more popular in our culture than ever before. Whether they are in the form of the traditional Japanese art (manga) or the more popular Americanized version of graphic illustrations such as the Bone novels by Jeff Smith, these books often sit atop a pile of students' chosen books. Canon classics and new young adult literature are even being reformatted to appeal to a new generation of graphic novel readers. Much more than comic strips, today's graphic novels are complex and mature, capturing an intellectual readership looking for more visual stimulation from their reading experiences.

There are two reasons teachers should be drawn to the manga genre: first, the popularity of the genre, measured by sales and distribution, and second, the unique multimodal reading that manga demands (Schwartz & Rubinstein-Avila, 2006). Fortunately, it is possible to marry students' outside interests with those of traditional academia. An example of this would be tackling complicated texts in the classroom using poetry comics. Poetry comics illustrate poetry in the form of a comic strip. The text of the comic strip ...
... is the text of the poem, with illustrations Cartier Replica inspired by the text. To begin this activity with our eighth-grade students, we introduced Langston Hughes's "A Dream Deferred," and after reading it as a class, we presented a poetry comic based on Hughes's poem (see Morice, 2002). A comparison of the two emphasizes the ways in which poetry can be interpreted and illustrated differently by each reader.

Once students had a clear understanding of poetry comics, we asked them to read two complex poems, Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain" and T.S. Eliot's "The Naming of Cats," and demonstrate their understanding through poetry comics. Jasmine tackled Eliot and illustrated the poem with her understanding of the text (see Figure 4). Ordered in a traditional comic strip format, Jasmine also added personalized touches outside of the borders. Jasmine incorporated the entire poem in its traditional form, while giving the narrator a cat personality.

Kaitlin approached Whitman in a different comic format (see Figure 5). Instead of the traditional squares in a linear sequence, Kaitlin opted for ships to anchor each stanza, with characters quoting lines from the poem. Kaitlin understood the poem to be about President Abraham Lincoln's death and chose to depict the country metaphorically as the ship Whitman speaks of in the poem.

Much more than a superficial illustration of poetry, these poetry comics allow for students to experiment with narrator voice, setting, and literal and metaphorical meanings. Layering complex literary analysis skills with visual representations allows students to practice visualizing the texts that they read. Graphic representations of popular texts provide a contemporary canvas for authors to share their stories using a fresh, relevant approach. Educators, librarians, and bookstores that Breitling Replica Watches have embraced this new genre of literature have difficulty keeping titles on their shelves. Further, they are pleased to see more young people choosing books at a time when video games and the Internet seem to take up so much attention. With the growing demand for and popularity of graphic novels, the integration of the genre with traditional English language arts practices should continue to be explored (Schwartz & Rubinstein-Avila, 2006).