How Comic Books Can Make Kids (and Adults) Smarter
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Can comic books make you smarter? It seems too good to be true, but as graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang explains, they've come a long, long way. Imagine this: in the early days of comics, a caption would read: "Superman punches Lex Luthor," and it would be accompanied by a drawing of—drumroll!—Superman punching Lex Luthor. Basic, right? "That contributed to this idea that comics were meant for the mentally deficient. If you weren't smart enough to understand those words, then you could at least read the picture," says Luen Yang. Since then, graphic novelists have shaken things up, and the relationship between the words and pictures is more complex, with narrative responsibility going back and forth and occasionally shooting off into ambiguity. So why does Luen Yang think modern comics have a place in every classroom? Because our brains are not computers: "The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor," as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote. We depend on narratives to help make sense of our world—whether that's algebra, history, or chemistry. Educational comics are turning out to be powerful tools that help kids learn at their own pace. Gene Luen Yang's most recent book is Paths & Portals.
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GENE LUEN YANG :
Gene Luen Yang began making comics and graphic novels in the fifth grade. In 2006, his book American Born Chinese was published by First Second Books. It became the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association’s Printz Award. It also won an Eisner Award for “Best Graphic Album – New.”
In 2013, First Second Books released Boxers & Saints, a two-volume graphic novel about the Boxer Rebellion. Boxers & Saints was nominated for a National Book Award and won the L.A. Times Book Prize. He’s done a number of other comics, including Dark Horse Comics’ continuation of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender and DC Comics’ Superman!
In addition to cartooning, he teaches creative writing through Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. I teach alongside amazing authors like Anne Ursu, Gary Schmidt, Laura Ruby, Matt De La Pena, and more.
In January 2016, the Library of Congress, Every Child A Reader, and the Children’s Book Council appointed Gene as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
Yang was named to the 2016 class of the MacArthur Fellows Program, receiving what is commonly called the "Genius Grant". The MacArthur Foundation that names the fellows said that his "work for young adults demonstrates the potential of comics to broaden our understanding of diverse cultures and people."
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TRANSCRIPT:
Gene Luen Yang: Out of all of the visual storytelling media that are out there – film, animation, television – comics is really the only one that is not time-bound. That’s what I call permanent. Which means, you know, when you’re watching a movie or when you’re watching an animated television series, the rate of information flow is actually determined by the creator of the content. It’s not determined by the viewer. You know, you could slow it down, you can go slow-mo but it’s not the same experience.
Comics on the other hand, with comics the rate of information flow is firmly in the control of the reader. And for certain students and certain kinds of information, that aspect of comics, that control makes for a very powerful educational tool.
In an Algebra II class that I taught whenever I was absent I would create these comics lessons for my students. And that was some of the feedback that I got from them is that, you know, with these comics lessons it was visual, unlike their math textbooks. But then on top of that the students themselves could control how quickly or slowly they read through that lecture. Unlike when I was lecturing in person, right? When I’m lecturing in person I decide how fast or slow I speak. But when they’re reading it in the form of a comic, if they didn’t understand a passage within that comic they could reread it as quickly or as slowly as they needed to.
In the past I think parents and teachers had almost a hierarchy of reading. They saw picture books as almost the lower form of reading than pure prose novels. And comic books, which is my area of expertise, were either left out of the equation altogether or they were seen as lik...
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