Why not try giving them a shot in the classroom?

While I now appreciate the complexities of comics and graphic novels it wasn’t until recently that I truly became aware of the advanced art. As a child I came across Calvin and Hobbes every so often in the Sunday paper, but never knew anything beyond the mutiple genres that I’m aware of today. Looking back I cannot help but think about the learning experiences that I missed by being unaware of these types of works.

Just like many of my new media interests, my appreciation stems from conversations with students over the last few years. More and more, I’ve seen kids engaged in graphic novels and comics between classes and sometimes, yes, even in class. When asked if reading for school or pleasure the response is typically, “for pleasure”. Of course, this answer would excite any educator (maybe not if the reading took place during class). More so, it provides the opportunity to consider the value of integrating such sources in the classroom.

As educators, whether in a school, library or other information setting, it is our responsibility to try to find ways to meet students’ interests. With increased popularity of comics and graphic novels we have the chance to tap into students’ interests and engage them in new ways of understanding and interpreting the world. That’s right; comics and graphic novels can foster critical thinking!

As some may question the legitimacy of graphic novels and comics in this era dominated by standardized testing, which tests traditional texts, we must consider the benefits of such nontraditional sources to prove these skeptics wrong. As Carol Tilley presents in Reading Comics, these works, just like standard text, share certain structural elements. These elements make comics and graphic novels unique, complex literatures, which entail special skills to read and navigate. These components demand students to have “conversations” with the text and engage in a more active way that requires students to make predictions, connections and inferences. For many students, when confronted with traditional text, these tasks seem daunting but because of increased interest in comics/graphic novels, as well as the openness they seem to create, the tasks become less threatening. As students develop these skills with comics and graphic novels they will transfer such abilities to understanding other types of literature and mediums of information. Although this should not be used as a sole motivator or reason for using graphic novels and comics in the classroom it does provide an important consideration and justification for skeptics.

Although using graphic novels and comics in the classroom may not help ALL students, they especially provide opportunities for struggling readers and English language learners, a growing group in American schools. Curiosity about this led me to the article Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher. The case presented here explored a group of struggling readers and ELL students in an impoverished San Diego high school. With the goal to design an illustrated story, the teachers involved used graphic novels as a tool to engage students in the writing process. The instructors believed that “the limited amount of text would allow students to read and respond to complex messages with text that better matched their reading levels.” Their predictions certainly ended up being correct. As student engaged with the graphic novels the instructors were able to build discussion centering on skills such as determining tone and mood, as well as vocabulary/word choice, sentence structure, and, overall, ways of expressing an idea. Using these discussions and mini-lessons for scaffolding, the instructors were able to get students to produce works that went beyond their reading/writing level—quite a difficult feat. I'd recommend that article to understand the actual process and for ideas about integrating graphic novels in your classroom.

Examples like the one stated above are not unique. As I mentioned, I have been trying to incorporate comics and graphic novels increasingly in the classroom. So far, I’ve used them to help in student understanding of the Neolithic Revolution, political revolutions, and the Holocaust. As we promote student learning we must consider all resources available. A graphic novel or a comic can quite possibly serve as impetus for student inquiry, understanding and success. Why not try giving them a shot in the classroom?

Librariantics and Manga/Anime Reviews

None of the following is my work, but a classmate of mine in Fantasy Literature and Media for Youth created it as an intro to manga and anime for newbies, and he gave me permission to post it here in response to the post about comics' and pop culture's roles in promoting reading. The author is Ted Anderson, and he also just recently started a blog, Librariantics, where he's also intending to review manga and anime series (here's the first, for Peach Girl). He is extremely knowledgeable about this form, so his blog is worth a look!

TED’S ANIME AND MANGA COURSES

Level 101: What’s with the big eyes?
Cowboy Bebop (anime) Action. Some violence and nudity. Teens and up.
Bounty hunters in the year 2071 make their way across the solar system, hunting criminals and running away from their various tragic pasts. Regarded as one of the greatest anime of all time, and the series that got Ted into anime in the first place. Highly recommended. (Also by the same crew, and also highly recommended, the series Samurai Champloo, about wandering samurai in 17th-century Japan set to a hip-hop soundtrack, and the series Michiko and Hatchin, about a fugitive femme fatale and the daughter she gave up ten years ago on the run in South America.)

Yotsuba&! (manga) Comedy, slice-of-life. Nothing objectionable. All ages.
Five-year-old girl Yotsuba has an insatiable love of life and boundless energy, and her infectious curiosity pulls in everyone around her. Effortlessly charming and wonderfully drawn.

Ranma 1/2 (manga and anime) Romantic comedy. Mild violence and nudity, both mostly comedic. Teens and up.
Probably one of the most famous anime exports of all time, Ranma 1/2 follows Ranma Saotome, who has the unfortunate curse of transforming into a girl when splashed with cold water, and back to a guy when splashed with hot water. Very hilarious, completely over-the-top (ever seen figure skating turned into a martial art? how about flower arranging? or tea ceremony?).

Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (manga and anime movie) Sci-fi, drama. Violence, nudity, dense philosophical musings. Teens and up.
This manga was written and drawn by Hayao Miyazaki, whose Ghibli Studio also produces some of the best-known (and just plain best) anime films of the past twenty years. Centuries after the Earth has been poisoned by man’s wars, the few remaining civilizations eke out a living at the edges of freakish jungles populated by gigantic insects. And when one of those civilizations gets their hands on some of the weapons that almost destroyed the human race the first time, it’s up to the princess Nausicaa to save the world. Gorgeous artwork and heady musings on life, nature, and war make a fantastic combination.

Lovely Complex (manga and anime) Romantic comedy. Nothing objectionable. Tweens and up.
Risa Koizumi and Atsushi Otani have been schoolmates for years, and their constant bickering has made them into the school’s best unintentional comedy duo. But when Risa starts falling for Atsushi, she’s got no idea what to do. Part of the problem? She’s a full half-a-foot taller than he is, and completely self-conscious. Light-hearted and wacky. Look up information on the Kansai dialect before reading or watching—you’ll thank me later.

Kimi ni Todoke (may be called Reaching You or From Me to You) (manga and anime) Romance. Nothing objectionable. Tweens and up.
Sawako Kuronuma’s long black hair and creepy demeanor have earned her the nickname ‘Sadako’, after the ghost-child of The Ring—but deep down she’s just shy, awkward, and unintentionally weird. Everything changes when popular classmate Shota Kazehaya takes an interest and tries to draw Sawako out of her shell. Unbelievably sweet and charming, this new series is one of the standouts of 2009.

Level 201: Oh, those wacky Japanese!
Nana (manga and anime) Drama, romance. Nudity, drug use. Teens and up.
Nana Osaki is an aspiring punk singer who leaves her boyfriend to find herself. Nana Komatsu is a hopeless romantic who comes to Tokyo to find her true love. The two end up sharing apartment 707 (‘nana’ is also the Japanese word for the number 7) and falling into a tangle of fame, love, and rock-and-roll. Possibly one of the finest manga or all time; definitely high on Ted’s list.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan (anime) Action. Comedic nudity and some suggestive language. Teens and up.
Simon has lived all his life in an underground village, but the day he discovers a strange robot buried in the earth is the day everything changes. Along with Kamina, his over-the-top, sword-wielding partner, and the busty sniper Yoko, he sets out to save the world. Actually, ‘over-the-top’ is a pretty good phrase to describe this entire show. Imagine giant robots fighting each other. Now imagine them fighting a giant robot that’s the size of a city. Now imagine that robot fighting a robot that’s actually the moon. And it just get crazier from there.

Azumanga Daioh (manga and anime) Comedy, slice-of-life. Nothing objectionable. All ages.
It’s hard to talk about the plot of this series, because there really isn’t one. Six girls in high school and their various wacky interactions. No romance, no crushes, in short, no boys. The manga came first, but the anime might be easier to understand; the musical cues make the subtle humor a little less subtle. (By the author of Yotsuba&!)

Haibane Renmei (anime) Fantasy, drama. Nothing objectionable, but highly abstract and ‘talky’. Late teens and up.
In a walled city in an unknown country, there are the Haibane: young girls and boys born with miniature wings sprouting from their backs and halos above their heads. They are born in cocoons, they live apart from the normal people, and they have no memories of their lives before. And they each have their Day of Flight, when they leave for the world beyond the wall. Highly fascinating series, though very slow-moving—not for action junkies.

Ghost in the Shell (manga, 2 anime movies, anime TV series, movie based on TV series) Sci-fi, action. Nudity and intense violence. Late teens and up.
In the near future, anyone can be a cyborg, the internet is everywhere, and information is everything. The special forces of Section 9 take on terrorists, rampaging robots, hackers so good they can erase themselves from people’s eyes on the spot—the bleeding-edge criminals. The manga is probably a good place to start; the first movie is considered an anime classic and spurred a wave of interest in anime in America, but it’s also densely philosophical and sometimes hard to understand. The more recent TV series is more action-heavy, but doesn’t sacrifice big ideas for the sake of explosions.

Ouran High School Host Club (manga and anime) Comedy, slice-of-life. Nothing objectionable. Tweens and up.
Haruhi Fujioka, student at the ultra-elite Ouran High School, is pulled into the Host Club, where beautiful young men entertain high-class girls with money to burn. One small problem: she’s a girl, too, but nobody knows it. It parodies cliches of anime romantic comedies—each of the other Host Club members cater to a specific audience of young girl—so it’s good to have a background in this kind of material first.

Tekkonkinkreet (manga and anime film) Action. Violence. Teens and up.
The orphans Black and White make a life in the sprawling metropolis of Treasure Town, fighting off gangs and weirdos of all stripes. When the local yakuza come in to turn the city into an amusement park, Black and White are pulled into a dark, strange world where they might have to give up their innocence just to keep their lives. Visually distinctive and wonderful.

Paprika (anime film) Sci-fi, drama. Nudity. Late teens and up.
When an experimental device that lets the user travel into others’ dreams is stolen, the dreamworld and the real world start to blur together, with dangerous consequences. It’s up to the icy Dr. Atsuko Chiba and her impish alter-ego Paprika to keep reality together. A visual tour de force from revered director Satoshi Kon. (Also check out his psychological thriller Perfect Blue and comedy Tokyo Godfathers.)

Level 301: No, seriously, what’s with the eyes?
Neon Genesis Evangelion (anime) Action, psychological thriller. Violence, nudity, sexual situations, suggestive language, intense psychological weirdness. Late teens and up.
Fifteen years after the world was almost destroyed, the futuristic city of Tokyo-3 can only be defended from the alien Angels by the gigantic Eva robots and their teenage pilots. But as these teenagers start to crack under the pressure, and as an enormous conspiracy comes to light, things start to get weird. Enormously complicated: this series has had academics puzzle over its mysteries for years. Personally, I think it’s overrated, but it’s definitely had an impact on the anime industry.

Revolutionary Girl Utena (anime and manga) Fantasy, drama, romance. Nudity, mild violence, psychological weirdness. Late teens and up.
The teenage girl Utena is attending Ohtori Academy when she gets pulled into the strange world of the Duelists’ Club, where the winner of the duels gets the honor of being ‘engaged’ to the mysterious Rose Bride, a silent, seemingly passive young girl. A strange, gender-bending, post-modernist take on the Western fairy tale, if you put in the effort, it’s endlessly interesting.

Genshiken (manga and anime) Comedy, slice-of-life. Mild nudity and mild suggestive language. Teens and up.
The college students of the pop culture club have their infights, their crushes, their relationships and their interactions like any other group, but they see it all through the lens of anime and manga. For that reason, it’s good to have a thorough grounding in the tropes and cliches they reference, though anyone can get the relationship aspects of the show.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (anime) Sci-fi, comedy. Suggestive language. Teens and up.
Haruhi Suzumiya is an overexcited, obsessive teenager searching for the mysteries of the universe: time travelers, aliens, and psychics. She forms a club of mostly unwilling ‘volunteers’ to search for them, but there’s a twist: the other club members are time travelers, aliens, and psychics. And Haruhi, unbeknownst to her, is God. She can change reality on a whim, and it’s up to them to keep her from accidentally destroying the universe. One of the most critically and commercially successful anime of recent years, in both Japan and the US.

FLCL (may also be listed under Furi Kuri or Fooly Cooly) (anime) Sci-fi, action, comedy. Suggestive language. Teens and up.
When Naota is hit in the head by a guitar-wielding, Vespa-riding woman with pink hair, that’s weird enough. When strange alien robots start sprouting from his forehead the next day, things start to get downright psychotic. Prepare for mile-a-minute pop culture references (a whole sequence animated in South Park style? why not?) and inexplicable wackiness; dropping acid before watching would be redundant.

And here's his addendum for librarians:

Also, I should mention two more series, only because they're of interest to library students.

Read Or Die (three-episode direct-to-video series, followed by a 26-episode TV series with a different set of characters) Action, comedy. Some mildly suggestive costumes. Teens and up.
Yomiko Readman is the world's greatest bibliophile, spending every last cent she has on books. But she's got two secrets: first, she's a Paper Master, able to telekinetically control sheets of paper and turn them into any kind of weapon or tool imaginable; second, she's a secret agent for the British Library, helping to track down the rarest manuscripts in the world. The first, three-episode series is about her adventure facing down a group of clones of historical figures who want to make the entire world commit suicide using Beethoven's secret masterpiece. The second, 26-episode television series is about a different set of characters, three Paper Master sisters who operate a detective agency out of Hong Kong and get embroiled in a secret war between the British Library and their Chinese counterparts that could destroy space-time itself. In case you can't tell, it's pretty weird.

Library War (anime) Action, comedy. Violence. Teens and up.
In an alternate-history Japan, the Media Betterment Committee is legally authorized to perform censorship raids on bookstores and libraries throughout the country. However, libraries are also legally authorized to defend their collections--if necessary, by force. Iku Kasahara joins the library militia in order to protect intellectual freedom, accidentally falling in love with her commanding officer along the way. Worth seeing just for the idea of gun-toting librarians. Don't miss the episode where Kasahara goes on a secret nighttime mission to acquire the last remaining Japanese-language edition of Farenheit 451.

Civ III and Multimodal Literacy

Alright, I’ll admit that my view of literacy is very narrow. It’s probably my age, not that that is an excuse, just fact. I am open minded enough to admit that through reading others’ responses to my blog on video games (Civilization III and the Classroom) and through the readings for this class, I’m getting a clearer picture.

I was startled to read in NCTE’s Summary Statement, part of our readings for this week that, “Multiple ways of knowing” (Short & Harste) also include art, music, movement, and drama, which should not be considered curricular luxuries.” That registered with me, more than other articles on this subject did. If I think of literacy as a “way of knowing”, then it can encompass music, art, video games, and comic strips. I can know a variety of things from any of those mediums.

I am beginning to see that people have various talents and express themselves in ways that best display those talents. The understanding of the consumers of those products also varies. If literacy is a way of knowing something, then one can gain literacy by using or producing in any of these mediums. In addition, if we develop our critiquing skills in each medium, we can better understand those who “speak” through those various mediums.

I also read this week that exclusive emphasis on digital literacies is not the answer either. It’s too limiting. Using digital technology all the time just for the sake of using it is counterproductive. This kind of emphasis would limit students’ access to other modes of expression. A better approach is to use the medium that will best express what the producer is trying to convey.

So, for instance, maybe the subject matter of a complex video game is not the only valid reason for it to be in a classroom. I am starting to see the value of role playing as a literacy in itself. Through play, one can try out different personas and work out differences with others who are playing the game. In a game like Civilization, moral and ethical values can be worked out as well as developing decision-making skills. When I think of literacy as “ways of knowing”, my view of being literate opens wide.

Today, in the Chicago Tribune Live! Section (yes, I still read my news in paper form), Christopher Borrelli wrote about a new genre of books, the mash-up. This specific book is called Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. Seth Grahame-Smith also wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, another mash-up. Now, this does not exactly fit into the multi-modal category but it is a mix of genres – biography and vampire stories. And furthermore, this is just the kind of book that I would have dismissed out-of-hand before this class. The obvious value, one of many, I’m sure, is that teens and adults that would not read straight history, might pick up a mash-up simply because it has zombies and vampires in it. I am starting to see, however, the literary value of the mash-up simply because it is one “way of knowing” for the producer and the consumer.

Me...a comic book creator?

As a graduate school student for the past three years, I have been required over and over to write. This process has been about stating a point and backing it up with research. However, this semester I have been immersed in stories. I get to take a storytelling class as well as a young adult literature class and these classes have activated a creative side of my brain that has been dormant for a long time. As I approached the task for this week to create a storyboard/comic of a life experience, I felt much more excitement for this assignment than the standard scholarly essay.

I saw the benefits of Mutlimodal Literacies firsthand. As I created the comic strip I thought of my writing in an entirely different way. I was visualizing the event, imagining the arc of the story, and enjoying the process. The National Council for Teachers of English Multimodal Literacy statement has this as their first point: "integration of multiple modes of communication and expression can enhance or transform the meaning of the work beyond illustration or decoration." My little sketch of dogsitting for friends is scribbled on a piece of scrap paper and the illustrations are of the quality that it is hard to determine who is the person and who is the dog, but this form of expressing an idea really enhanced and framed my story in a new way. When I tell stories, I usually can create a good setting and draw the listener into the tale, but the ending always falls apart. However, with this story created in comic strip form, I am communicating a whole complete strong idea with a solid beginning, middle, and end. Creating comics is a brand new experience for me, and I can how it would have been beneficial in classes like social studies or English. Overall, the visual and narration aspects combined engaged me in the creative process and allowed me to create something that had more interest and meaning for me.

Reluctant Board Gamer

While Sarah wrote about her resistance to video games, I have to admit that, before some of our readings and the great talk by Professor Dubin, I was snobbish about not all board games, but certain kinds. I have some friends who are extremely into board games (one of them attended a big board game convention called Gen Con in Indianapolis last year). These friends have introduced me to some great games, which I love, including Liebrary (like Balderdash, but you try to trick your friends by writing the best fake opening lines of actual books) and Dixit (a French game with beautiful, fantastical pictures, which you write captions/titles for) and Ticket to Ride (a game where you build train routes between cities in Europe or the U.S., depending on the version you are playing) and Pandemic (there’s a pandemic starting in Beijing! Hurry! Stop it!). These are fun and re-playable and work well with lots of different people (my friends, my parents, etc.).

For me, I like games that are quick to learn and don’t take hours to play. Perhaps that has changed as I have aged; as a kid, my sisters and I used to play marathon games of Payday (one round through the board is a month, and we would decide to play several years in one sitting), for example, and not have a problem with it. On the other hand, maybe it is just my natural impatience with complicated tasks (the reason why I never learned to play bridge, despite several attempts by my mom and uncles to teach me). Whatever the reason, I have trouble getting on “board” (sorry) when my friends want to play more extended/complicated games like Livingstone (which I also didn’t like since you have to play the part of a British/Scottish imperialist/missionary robbing Africa of its precious resources – politically/morally icky, even though it’s “just a game”), Power Grid (I know Professor Dubin said it was good and so did my friend who went to Gen Con, but building a power grid in Germany? I’m sorry, but to me, even the cover looks boring! Check it out!), Arkham Horror, or any other game where I have to learn the rules for a whole entire world in order to play and every game lasts for hours and hours.

Although I personally don’t know if I will ever totally get into games like these, I started to understand the interest in them more after reading the Buckingham article (Buckingham, David. "Game Literacy in Theory and Practice." Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia 16: 3 (2007)) and hearing Professor Dubin’s talk. I guess I hadn’t thought much before about the social world created in playing these games and the richness of the narratives that are central to so many games. As an English teacher, you’d think I would be drawn to the games with multiple characters and complicated narratives; I was struck by Buckingham’s observation that in games there is the added component of being able to manipulate the characters and, in some cases, change the narrative, making us not just observers in this world (as we are when we read a novel) but also actors in the world. In addition, I think I was also discounting the social aspect of game playing; as Buckingham reminded me, “Literacy practices [of all kinds] are embedded in social contexts and social relationships; they involve forms of social action that have social purposes and consequences. . . individuals do not create meanings in isolation, but through their involvement in social networks, or interpretive communities, which promote and value particular forms of literacy.” In game-playing (whether online or in person), this social element – this community learning together – is so much more transparent than the social network required for me to understand The Great Gatsby when I read it. I could see where the transparent dependence on a group in game-playing to learn and understand and progress could be a really positive developmental experience for students and adults. Also – since, as Buckingham says, “literacy is not merely critical but also creative” – I love the idea of exploring what you could learn by creating a game yourself – some of the skills would be similar to those required to write a story, but it draws on so many other skills as well (the spatial set-up of the board itself, the rules, the logic, etc.).

In other words, I think I need to give Power Grid a try. I can’t promise I’m going to start hanging out with my friends at Chicagoland Games (also known as the Dice Dojo) where, according to a Chicago Tribune article, “they don’t close until the game is over,” but I do have a newfound appreciation for the relevance and richness of game-playing.

How Comics & Pop Culture Make a Reader

At a teacher conference the year my son was in kindergarten, the teacher expressed concern over his reading ability and talked of a possible referral to a reading specialist. He was learning, but at a slower pace than others. Of course all sorts of alarm bells went off, but I tried to not to overreact. This was also the year that Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggie books were making their debut -- what great timing! These books are simply the best early readers I've ever seen. They are true early readers, with very limited text, very simple illustrations and usually blank backgrounds (less distractions I think). Plus, the stories are funny and clever, with loads of child appeal. The illustrations are cartoon style, and the characters speak and think in balloons -- just like comic strips use. The background colors of the balloons correspond to the color of the character (pink for Piggie, gray for Elephant). This is simply brilliant – it makes is so clear to a young reader who is saying what. The typeface is large and larger or expressive when needed to convey emotion. Motion lines and emanata are frequently used. It seems so obvious when I review these books, but yes, they are comics. And if it wasn’t clear enough, when searching for an illustration so that everyone could see this for themselves, I found an Elephant and Piggie comic in comic strip form from Mo Willems’ blog:

Post Mo Willems, where does a young reader turn? I’m not sure, as mine has taken a varied and probably unusual path. Pokemon was allowed in our house because it was a game my son could play with his older brother and they did play it together for extended periods of time. To play the game, one has to be able to read. On a car trip over Christmas break in first grade, my son read the Pokemon Handbook for several hours. I mean total absorption. I’m pretty convinced that Pokemon was a major step on his way to literacy. Peer pressure was a great motivator as well. He was aware that others were reading the Magic Tree House books and really wanted to try them. Yet his speed of decoding didn’t always allow for full comprehension. So we checked out the audio version and the print version and he listened first (something you can do in the dark of those early winter days stuck in a car) and then read the books. This repetition wasn’t boring for him, but rather facilitated his reading them on his own.

Currently he’s in second grade and one of his favorite series this year has been Jeff Smith’s Bone books. He discovered these in his elementary school library, though in the public library he has to go to the YA section two floors up from the children’s section to get them. He knows he can’t just pick up any books from the YA Graphic Novel section though! This has led me to start searching for graphic novels and comics for younger readers. My Neighbor Totoro was a wonderful discovery – accessible, enjoyable, age-appropriate (he is only 7) and it keeps the Japanese format – reading from back to front, right to left. This feature only added to the appeal for my son and is great at raising an awareness of another culture, another way of doing things.

If you know of great graphic novels for the elementary age, I’m still looking for titles and always welcome suggestions. I have found two great websites for educators/teachers/librarians on graphic novels and comic books. One is The Graphic Classroom, which is created by a teacher and is all about incorporating graphic novels into the classroom. Another is the Good Comics for Kids blog from School Library Journal. I feel like this is only the tip of the iceberg though . . .

The Poetry of Comics

I had never thought about comics as analogous to poetry before reading the article “Reading Comics,” by Carol Tilley. After the very first mention of poetry, though, where she compared the variation of panels to the poetic line breaks and punctuation, I saw how reading comics and reading poetry have so very much in common. Perhaps my analysis is too simplistic, and maybe some ideas are stretching the connection a bit much, but this is where my mind went!

First of all, you need either training or a lot of reflective experience to really understand them. I remember reading poetry for class in school; a lot of it seemed pretty dumb to me (much like many comics do). Some of it probably was (just like some comics likely are), but some of it I probably just didn’t have the training or experience to really understand, and I probably missed out on some insightful stuff because of it. I never took a class just on poetry, and the smattering of instruction I did have dealt mainly with conventions of poetry, not the language or art of it. There is probably common symbolism I have misunderstood, styles I rejected out of hand, methods I didn’t comprehend—things that have kept me from not only understanding the poem itself (or the poet who wrote it) but similar techniques and references in other forms of literature and media. Comics are much the same way. I never got into comics as a child (beyond the “funny pages” my grandmother saved for us out of her Sunday paper every week—which we read and then used for wrapping paper!), and, although I have become interested in graphic novels in particular through my youth literature classes, I still struggle to read them as fluently and with as deep of comprehension as I am able to do with other forms of writing. They look easy—simplistic—just pictures, just words—but they are not (at least, not the good ones).

Additionally, there are a variety of types, and just because you appreciate and understand one type doesn’t mean you like them all. I like haikus, rhyming verse (generally funny), and poetry about nature. I don’t like sappy poems, poems with unfamiliar rhythms, and poetry so vague that I think the author must have been on something. Then there are comics: Mary Worth, for example, or Rex Morgan, M.D. (both still going!-- http://www.seattlepi.com/fun/comic.asp?feature_id=Mary_Worth, http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/rmorgan/about.htm). Weekly comic strips that were, frankly, soap operas. I hated them. They were boring. And I only read them if I ran out of cereal boxes and shampoo labels and –really- needed something to read. The colors were dull, the people were too realistic, the storylines unbearably slow to unfold, and, frankly, not funny. Not at all. That’s what I liked in comics at the time, although now I’ve branched out to appreciate clever comics and graphic novels about a variety of topics (but mostly history with which I’m already familiar—The Murder of Abraham Lincoln, for example—and current issues—like Persepolis and American Born Chinese). I liked The Far Side, Garfield, Zits…and now Baby Blues and Unshelved. The art is different, the contents are different—but so am I. My tastes have changed not only as I have aged and have new experiences but also as I have been exposed to and taught about what is available out there. I still have comics and graphic novels I don’t like, but I am now able to read them and (usually) understand what’s going on!

Finally, there is the comparison between different devices they each use. Like the article said, poetry has line breaks and punctuation where comics have a variety of panels. Comics have frames where poems have stanzas. Where poems use imagery to produce visuals that aren’t there, comics have gutters. Balloons show character’s thoughts and speech in comics, and poems often use different punctuation or fonts to signify those words. In a poem, you may have to pay attention to verb tense or point-of-view to decide if the narrator is interjecting, and comics have narrative boxes for information not contained in the dialog. Just like comics, poetry often also uses typography to enhance a mood or convey an idea, most specifically in concrete poetry. (But can you imagine the difference between a love poem printed in soft, curvy script and the same one printed in bold, angular letters?) A comic has motion lines, and poetry uses line breaks and page placement to convey motion. Where a comic might use emanata (some of her examples were the light bulb or the anger cloud), poems use imagery again--this time in the form of language about color, rhyming, assonance, or alliteration—to give us ideas about the characters. And, of course, there are style differences within the form that create different feels and looks and appeal to different people.

So, comics are like poetry. Who would have thought?

The Reluctant Gamer

I have to say that before this class, I had a very negative view of video games. I saw them mostly as time wasters and destroyers of creativity. I think that it was because I had never been successful playing most video games even going back to my family’s first system, Nintendo (jealousy perhaps?). In my mind, traditional tabletop games and video games never seemed to have the same merit. Again, I believe this was because I spent my childhood playing traditional board games and having great success and fond memories of these toys. So I recognize now that my viewpoint was skewed by my own personal experience and failure to find my own niche within the gaming world.

This being said, I have grown to see a different side of video games. It started when I viewed the video of game creator Will Wright, describing his video game called Spore. This creator of The Sims and SimCity definitely sees the power that video games can have, when done mindfully. Spore is essentially a video game that explores the topic of evolution through player created creatures in a fictional universe. At the beginning of his speech, he brings up his Montessori schooling and how it inspired him to create toys that sparked discovery. His video game Spore essentially is a 21st Century Montessori toy which helps players explore and discover extremely profound philosophical questions and advanced scientific principles. I love the goal that Will Wright had when creating this game: to help players better understand long-term thinking and planning. This is a complex idea for more than just kids. I know plenty of adults that can barely think past their own impulses when they should be able to self-control and think about their future (know anyone that has thousands of dollars in credit card debt, but simply must have that new pair of shoes?). In this game, players become invested in their characters because they have created them. They get to see how the world evolves by changes to the flora, fauna and environment.

I love the idea that Will Wright has employed Montessori methods in his game design. I first became interested in Montessori principles after my cousin was sent to such a preschool. At a family party, I began to have a discussion with him, expecting the typical responses of a four year old. I was shocked to find him extremely articulate, polite and inquisitive (He described in detail his love for the Star Wars movies and favorite characters, his preference for the horchata at El Famous Burrito and used please and thank you more times than I could count!). When I questioned his mother about her secret powers in parenting, she responded that Montessori was the main reason for his success. I began to research like crazy. If only all of my students could become so well-rounded as this child! I learned that essentially, the Montessori method was a pedagogy that emphasized student independence in learning. The goal of the teacher is not to preach concepts and memorization, but rather to facilitate individual learning and discovery within each student. Games and toys specifically designed for teaching concepts help students discover knowledge on their own terms and in their own time frame. The goal is to help students fall in love with process of learning and teach them that focused attention and perseverance pays off in the end.

Although I was never raised in a Montessori setting, I feel that I have grown up with that same desire to learn more about the world. I think that perhaps the reason I loathed so many video games was because they seemed so pointless. Simply getting to the next level did not interest me. I did not care about winning this way. I wanted games that challenged to think, and most games went too fast for careful contemplation. However, at the on-campus day, I began to find a world of puzzle games that have truly intrigued me. My new favorite is Red Remover which forces the player to figure out how to remove the red squares while saving the green ones. Part of the learning process of the game is failure (and I have failed many, many times!), a process which Montessori recognized was essential to learning. This game requires such concentration and planning on my part that when I pass a level I feel immediately elated and cannot wait for my next challenge. It has also forced me to reconsider my position on gaming. Although I still believe that some games have more merit than others, I no longer believe that all games are evil. Baby steps...

Thoughts on digital media

New Media Exemplar Library
On this site, I watched the videos of ‘TAT’s cru’ from the newmedialiteracies.org web site and I saw a perspective on media and art that I had failed to appreciate in the past. Graphitti to me has always meant vandalism and therefore carried a negative connotation. The one man in the ‘crew’ said that others have seen them that way and he and the others he works with have had to explain that they don’t do this criminally, though that may be the nature of what they were doing when they were younger spraying their art on subway trains. Now, they are courted by businesses and other organizations both locally and internationally to paint big murals which surprised me and showed to me that many more others are viewing media expressions like this as true art. Proof that its true art to me although I admit I have a novice’s point-of-view, was the explanation the guys in the group gave regarding the quality and different types of spray paint cans which they use, how one from Germany is good in one situation and another from Spain is better in other ways. They also discussed the different types of nozzles on the spray cans and how that affected their work. Further evidence of this being a legitimate expression of art was the works themselves which were shown throughout the video clips and how each artist applied just enough paint and with a certain technique that you understood the control which was required. In other words, not just anyone I think could walk up off the street and produce the kind of quality these guys did with this media. They also talked about the various ways one could write letters and how each of these had its own label, such as hand style, throw-up (or at least that’s what I think the guy said), wild style, and simple. This was really a good insight into a world which I knew little about.

Literacy, ELL, and Digital Storytelling21st Century Learning in Action, Life Academy, Oakland
This video to me was a reaffirmation of the things we were learned in ‘teacher school’ about learning styles and multiple intelligences. It makes sense that you should give students opportunities for different forms of expression as they themselves may communicate and learn better in a certain way or ways. Also, it isn’t just a few students who have a particular learning style or intelligence as there are others like them and they appreciate material being presented in a variety of ways as well. The video stated at one point that digital storytelling was especially beneficial to ELL learners as it helped them with literacy skills in many ways. I imagine that is the case as people in that situation may have little or no verbal or written skills for the new language they’re learning and new media with their user-friendly nature make expression possible for these individuals. I wonder though, how are modern media technologies being used to teach traditional literacy skills such as reading and writing? These certainly shouldn’t be overlooked as they are essential skills for everyone. The students in the class from this video certainly seemed more engaged than those who sit through traditional lectures or who are filling out worksheets. Use of emerging technology should be encouraged since it does make the material covered seemingly come to life for many of the learners in a classroom. It’s no longer a static display or a bunch of spoken words which fail to cause one’s brain to conceptualize what’s being communicated instead it’s in front of your eyes or it’s dynamically introduced to your ears and you really learn it. I do have to agree with some of the critics at my school to the extent though that these things are fine and good but, you have to have the technology or the means to get the technology in the first place and with many states Illinois included, that isn’t as easy to do as it once was or will be in the future. There are free or cheap options and we could find alternative sources of funding such as grants too.

Digital Storytelling web site
This again confirms the usefulness of media in conveying the meaning of material one wants students to learn. The media presented here would also be powerful in their effect of producing confidence in those who use it and that would be an awesome additional benefit of using things like digital storytelling. Looking at this web site, I think how great it would be for the staff at my school to use for these for the above reasons. It has just about everything I think someone would want to and need to know about using these technologies. I have to admit though, I was a little intimidated by all the copyright information you have to consider first before making anything. I thought at one point that I might want to send out the link for this web site in an ‘all staff’ email at my school. I think a few would be bold enough to at least check it out and maybe a few of those would look into it further and possibly apply the ideas presented. However, I also hear those critics again saying it would be too difficult to teach the students some of these things and that they already don’t have enough time in the year to get their required material covered in the first place. To be honest, I understand what they’re saying to a point, but I think learning to utilize this kind of media is important enough that it merits the effort. It would be a step in preparing students for the world they will be encountering, not the one of our youth.

Google & Privacy

I saw this article in The Onion (a brilliant and satirical newspaper if you aren't familiar with it) and it seemed applicable to many things we are discussing.

Google Responds to Privacy Concerns with Unsettlingly Specific Apology

It's pretty funny . . . but also a little scary.

Response to Civilzation III and the Classroom

I couldn't get my post to work as a comment, so I just put it here.

Right away I have to state that I am not a video game player. My boyfriend is and I leave the room every time he starts to play. But sometimes he stops me and tells me what his task is in the game. I have been shocked at the different historical aspects that are part os what I call his "blood and guts games". In one such game there is a character that must face Aries, the god of war. I remember the test that I took in high school where I had to memorize the different Roman and Greek gods and now I have no recollection of who they are, but my boyfriend knows them all from his game.

All this to say that I think that video games can and do cover some content areas that have historically been a part of traditional scholarship in an interactive, memorable, and exciting way. My boyfriend's engagement with the material is much greater than mine and his recollection is instantaneous.

Buckingham and Burn, in their article entitled Game Literacy in Theory and in Practice, place additional value on gaming not as a teacher of curricula or to re-engage learners, but as a valuable entity unto itself as a cultural medium. As Buckingham and Burn describe gaming literacy, I am definitely illiterate. I find other ways to play that have not included the video game scene. So I wonder how prevalent gaming literacy is currently and how popular it will become. Is it a valuable literacy to teach in the classroom?

Video Games and Literacy: More Than Meets the Eye

I've been doing a lot of thinking about video games and literacy, and I just want to put a couple of ideas and questions out to the group to both extend my own thinking, and maybe to frame the conversation a bit, moving it outside of the "video games are not as good as books" argument that I hear a lot.

First, I think that it's really important to define terms in a discussion like this one. One central term is literacy. Are we thinking of literacy as being able to decode symbols to create meaning (functional literacy) or are talking about literacy as the ability to understand, critique, and question text, media, or other things interacted with (critical literacy)? Or are we saying the ability to read and comprehend books (print literacy)? Another central term is video game. Is the discussion around "mini" games such as Tetris, MarioKart, BrainAge, or around "complex" games, games that require players to take on a new identity, play for more than 10-100 hours to complete the game, problem solve and face consequences for their decisions, such as Final Fantasy, Spore, Sims, DragonQuest, etc? (BTW, I borrowed these terms from Marc Prensky, who talks about them in his book Don't Bother Me Mom, I'm Learning.)

From the reading and studying that I have done, I think that complex games can probably improve critical and perhaps even functional literacy. James Paul Gee makes a case for this in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, in which he argues that educators can study games to observe extremely effective teaching techniques. (Whatever you think of the content of games, they are very good at both motivating people to keep playing them, and teaching them an internalized implicit set of rules so that they can understand and play the game.) One example of Gee's arguments about how games can support even print literacy (there are many, and I really encourage you to check out his book if you are interested!) is that games teach players "to learn about and come to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex system, [which is] core to the learning experience." To paraphrase, learning to read at its most basic is really a process of learning how to decode and understand a symbol set. While games may be teaching players to understand a different kind of symbol set (not the English language), they are honing the same underlying skill.

In addition games provide a unique chance for players to immerse themselves within narrative structures, becoming part of the story creation itself. Some games have better stories than others, true, but they also do something that books can't (even Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books!): they give the "reader" / player agency and power over shaping the story line.

Finally, I'm borrowing from Steven Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good for You to make this little chart about the differences between books and video games. While books do many things very well, and we have invested them in Western culture for hundreds if not thousands of years because of the things they do well, video games do other things very well, and I don't know that it has to be an either/or dichotomy. Maybe print literacy is not the main benefit of video games, and maybe it shouldn't be. But perhaps there are other, just as valuable, skill sets that video games have to offer. Take a look and see what you think.

Civilization III and the Classroom

Gaming is something I know next to nothing about, I’ll admit that. I was a mother by the time Atari came out and was introduced to the industry when my sons got one from their grandmother for Christmas. They loved it and gaming is still the favorite past time of both of my grown sons.
My elder son, Tim, was a new teacher in 2005 and as a gamer, he, and Jim McIntosh, another social studies teacher at Roosevelt High School in Chicago, decided to introduce Civilization to their World Civilizations class as described in MTV’s article http://tiny.cc/SEmgz.
Tim and Jim wrote Firaxis, the creator of Civilization III and asked for a donation of the game for their class. The company sent 25 copies of the game so that the entire computer lab could be loaded up. It was Student Development Day, a monthly day in which the students take a break from literature and math and study things that enrich their lives in other ways. Teachers were supposed to teach something that they themselves were good at and/ or about which they were passionate. Gaming was a natural for Meegan and McIntosh.
"I think one of the things video games provide students is a sense of an immediate reward," Meegan said. He wanted to tap into that. "I want to use it as a tool for them to discover more about what really happened and who these people really are," he explained. Meegan said the game can help illuminate such concepts as guns vs. butter, supply and demand, and the pros and cons of military strength.
I agree with Tim in that the most valuable part of this experience is in learning about supply and demand, but Buckingham piqued my interest in his discussion of gaming as a medium in and of itself because the user has to interact with it and that that creates a literate gamer.
Is it true that everything I interact with makes me more literate, more knowledgeable? That is what I think of when I think of literacy. Knowledge – both in knowing how to do something and in understanding what it means, or could mean, either to one personally or to the neighborhood, or to the world at large. Are video games really making us more literate? I would have to vote no, not by what I have seen so far. Sure, the storyline of a game like Civilization could have value in a classroom but to say that gaming brings a literacy all its own Is really stretching it, in my opinion.
That is not to say that gaming does not have a place in school or in the library. I just argue that it is not making our children more literate. Additionally, I think that the time today’s children and teens spend with video games is detrimental to their literacy. Interacting with a character on a TV screen is not as valuable as interacting physically with another in play or sports, nor is it the same thing as broadening horizons with a book.

His and Hers Gaming, Facebook Style

I must admit that I play more Facebook games than is probably healthy for a grown woman. I am, in fact, relatively embarrassed by my level of involvement, and I actually try to mask the extent of it by only allowing posts for a particular game to be seen by other friends who are already playing. (Yes, my friends are nerds like that, too.)

Some games I got into because a friend or relative asked me to get involved so that they could level up. Many of these games I’ve abandoned because I figured out that I don’t actually have to play for them to get something out of my addition of the application. Some games I got into because I saw them in other people’s posts and wanted to see what they were about. Many of those I have found not to be nearly as interesting to me as they first appeared. Some games have absolutely sucked me in for various reasons. Some things I don’t even really consider games. I’m going to try to analyze my and my husband’s Facebook gaming styles here.

(NOTE: I am a recent stay-at-home mom living far from family and friends, and we’ve moved each of the last two summers to a new area because of my husband’s career track. My online connections are sometimes my only connections since I take a long time to get acclimated to a new group of people (and then we pick up and move!). I didn’t used to be like this!) J

YoVille. One of my college friends was already playing when I signed up for Facebook shortly after having a baby and moving cross-country. He asked me to be his neighbor (to advance his game play), and I accepted. Then my internal interior designer started raging because I was living in a tiny rental and couldn’t do anything to my actual home. I did what I had to do to make my apartment (and later, my house) look like I wished my real-life house looked. Unlike a lot of younger users, I always make my avatar as much like me as possible, but the rest of the game was purely vicarious living. I didn’t interact with other players; I just created my own little happy place that I could call my home. (Now that I’ve made my living spaces just like I want them, I rarely visit anymore except to occasionally redecorate when I’m procrastinating for something else.) I am embarrassed to ask my husband to play this one. He is not into interior design.

Mafia Wars. My brother is the one who got me into this one, and no one less than family could have made me do it. This is one game in particular of which I am ashamed, but clearly not enough to stop playing now! The first time I clicked on “Kidnap a Businessman’s Children,” I felt a terrible pang of guilt. You don’t see a picture of it happening. You don’t act it out yourself. You click on a button and your completion percentage bar fills in a little bit more. That’s it. But the required tools include an automatic rifle, and my maternal instinct balked at doing this job. However, my somewhat obsessive personality took over—I just couldn’t leave that job tier incomplete!—and I did the job. I actually don’t even look at what the job is anymore; I just systematically complete the jobs, one country at a time, one tier at a time, one level at a time, in decreasing energy requirements, until I’m done. Another item crossed off my list. (That is, by the way, the way I do chores around the house as well—one room at a time, biggest jobs first, moving on to the next adjacent room when I finish. That’s how I roll.) Sadly for me, they keep adding new countries to the game, so I just keep going! My husband also started playing, but his play is somewhat sporadic, so he goes in little spurts of strategy and game play and doesn’t get far. He also randomly selects jobs to complete, so he’s never quite sure of where he still has progress to make.

FarmVille. Yep, I’m one of those people. I started playing when my husband invited me to be his neighbor and because my dad was a farmer before we were born. It also seemed like a peaceful kind of game, like the online version of one of those Zen gardens with the sand and the little rake. My focus is not so much on advancing as it is on making my farm look cute. Sad, I know. My husband and other guys I know play by making as much of their farm plot into profitable space as is possible, even if it means all their animals are layered so close to one another that you can’t tell what’s there. (I actually know one woman who also does this.) This is aesthetically offensive to me. :P I play Café World in the same way. (My brother-in-law is at fault for this one, and he doesn’t even play anymore!)

Wordscraper. Ah, Wordscraper. It’s like Scrabble, except you can play it online. I therefore like it. All my consistent opponents are male. I generally lose because I like to make big words and don’t plan very strategically. I still like it because I have to think about words, and I like words.

African Safari and Willy’s Sweet Shop. These are the non-game games. I have no idea why they call them games or say they’re fun. They’re really not. I go to them religiously, however, because participating supports a worthy cause (Nothing But Nets and St. Jude’s, respectively).

Where does this leave me in terms of the readings? I don’t know. I guess they’re all rather passive games, so I’m stereotypically female in that way. I don’t know that any “game literacy” likely applies to them since there aren’t really characters and, the way _I_ play, at least, the ones there are don’t really do anything. I don’t play most console-based video games because my hand-eye coordination is abysmally poor and they give me a headache from how fast they move. I do play Wii games with my husband, though, because the physical movement of the controller is more natural to me than poking buttons, so I have a little more success. (I can’t be game literate if I am “simply hopeless,” now can I?) We never had a game console in our home growing up although we borrowed a Nintendo a couple of times and we played Tetris, Sleuth, and Sim City on the computer growing up. I’m sure that influences my gaming choices, too (although my computer-programmer brother has every console known to man in his home and is quite proficient). Does anyone else have a similar gaming style to mine, or am I the odd (wo)man out?

Media Literacy: Crib Notes

While I was doing my research about media literacy education in elementary schools, I saw that there were occasional references to even younger children. I didn't have the time to go off on that tangent and had forgotten all about it, but this morning while talking to my almost-two-year-old, I realized that I actually do elements of media literacy education all the time with her. She had just finished watching Clifford, and I asked, "Are real dogs red?" (expecting and getting the response most little kids are conditioned to give when you ask a question in that "Isn't it silly?" kind of voice)--"Nooooo!" "Are real dogs as big as houses?" (again) "Nooooo!" We do this with books, too, and I have noticed that I do it with more serious issues as well--a kid is being mean to another kid in a book or on a show, and we talk about how mean that is and how it makes the other kid feel--if someone gets hurt, we talk about how they should be more careful or how someone should help them--if someone does something kind, we talk about how nice that was and how we should all do that kind of thing. (We do this for real-life situations, too, since babies are learning to be life literate as well!) When we listen to music, we sing along with the words, dance in time, talk about how it makes us feel ("Does this music make you happy? Does it make you want to jump and jump and jump?"), and sing the tunes later with new words that fit our everyday situation (which she has started doing independently as well). We use words and ideas from her favorite books and shows to help her understand new situations in real life and make connections between media ("Remember when Alpha Pig's shoes didn't fit because he was growing? You're growing, too! Your shoes are too small!"). These things might be basic and random, but they are, to me, the very beginning of media literacy for my little girl!

Ten Billionth Download: ITunes and the Music Revolution

This article, http://tiny.cc/qbBIV, talks about the soon- to- be 10 billion song countdown on ITunes, the digital music vendor for the IPod. This milestone was reached this week by the downloading of “Guess Things Happen That Way” by Johnny Cash, by Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia. The article states that it only took ITunes 5 years to blow past all the major music retailers and that 70% of global digital music sales are ITunes. By the end of 2010, the IPod should overtake the Sony Walkman as the single most popular consumer device of all time. What does this say about how we view music and how we use music in our lives? Has the music industry been put out of business?
Have digital music files – mp3s – killed the music industry? As I ponder the readings of two weeks ago regarding music literacy, I am fascinated by the rapid fire way music has changed in the past 40 years or so. A teenager in the early 70’s, most of my friends bought albums. One could also purchase 45’s, singles sold separately for a fraction of the cost, but the real money maker was the album.
Each of the innovations that have been introduced during the last few decades since then, have changed music. Vinyl records, FM radio, cassette tapes, CDs and MTV have all affected the music industry, but have not killed it. In fact, it seems to me that popular music has infiltrated our lives more with each new innovation. Everything in our society today, at least in the West, is about instant gratification and this – push a button and get the song you want instantly - is a healthy part of that. No going to the store, no asking for your album, you don’t even have to buy the whole album anymore. This has many critics saying that the music business is gone forever. I disagree. At no other time in my life has music been so prevalent in everyday life. Now that we can download music from the internet and onto mp3 players, like the IPod, popular music has exploded into advertising, TV shows and movies, as well as at the gym and in our cars.
The more easily we can get our hands on our own copy of our favorite songs, the more we listen. When the Walkman came out, and we realized we could record our favorite songs and bring them with us where ever we went, it revolutionized how we listened. Sure, we had portable radios before the Walkman – transistors – but we still had to rely on the DJs to play songs we wanted to hear. By being able to record our own, we could choose when and what we listened to.
This change in the music industry has also been good for new artists like Colbie Caillat who wrote “Bubbly”, posted it to Youtube and her career was born. Maybe instead of thinking that the music business is dead or dying, we have to re-evaluate and just admit that it is alive and well…but different. We cannot be afraid to change with the technology, in our thinking and in how we do business, or we will become obsolete.

The Tiger Woods scandal and kids

So Tiger finally came out from the woodwork last week (no pun intended) and publicly apologized for the multiple affairs that sparked a huge scandal last November. He not only apologized to his mother, wife and family, fellow players, sponsors, and fans, but also included a special and specific apology to kids that he inspired as a role model and those whom he actually helped through his foundation, The Tiger Woods Foundation.

Before I had seen the actual apology, I had run across this Bloggingheads video (part of the Opinion section in the NYTimes Online) which discusses Tiger's apology and it's affect on kids. One question that came up was whether or not kids should have role models who are famous sports stars, actors/actresses, musicians, etc.

What do you think? Personally or as a librarian or both! If we encourage kids to interact with various media then we must also expect that they will be influenced by or have opinions about the people they encounter in those various types of media.

Growing up, Dennis Rodman was my role model. My room was covered in Chicago Bulls posters, pictures cut out from Sports Illustrated and other sports magazines, and even a life size stand up of Rodman in action (I'm sure you guys are getting an 'interesting' perspective into who I am from the nature of my recent posts ha-ha!). I went down to our local and very small bookstore when his book Bad as I wanna be came out and was turned away because the book peddler didn't think it was an appropriate book for a 13 year old girl to be reading (little did she know I just turned around and bought it somewhere else!).

So what was it about Dennis Rodman that made him a 'role model' in my eyes? Well #1: he was a hell of a basketball player and I had been playing basketball since I was 6 so I respected that. #2 and most importantly: he wasn't afraid to be who he was--he stepped out covered in tattoos with a different color of hair each week and killed it on the court (you must remember that heavily tattooed basketball players were rare in the 90s, unlike today when you have dudes like Allen Iverson and Chris Anderson among countless others). Off the court he partied hardcore and did drugs, but I tended to ignore that side of him because I was only interested in who he was on the court. Whether what I saw as positive role model traits actually existed in who he was and how he represented himself, it didn't cause me to be a bad person or kid--I didn't drop out of school or start drinking and partying heavily, or anything like that (though I am heavily tattooed but I wouldn't attribute the motivation for that to Dennis). Basically, I think it came down to me being realistic about who he was both on and off the court and simply choosing to admire what I saw were the good traits that he had to offer.

Adam Haslet interview

This morning, on my way to work, I was listening to NPR, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123542128, and Morning Edition. They were running an interview with a first time novelist, Adam Haslet. His book, Union Atlantic, has just arrived on the bookstore shelves.
Most of the interview was only mildly interesting, mostly because his novel, written and sent off to the publisher, before the collapse of the large banks in 2008, is about just that – the collapse and possible bailout of a major bank in the US and the implication to America’s economic system if it is allowed to fail.
However, what really caught my ear was when the interview turned to human nature, culture and fiction.
"The world is so insanely complex and fast and distracting, and one of the things I think a good book can do is slow the reader's attention down a little bit and give them a chance to think through some of the consequences of these changes which otherwise are so quick that all you can do is react," Haslett says.
So is literature the answer?
"It's an ameliorative," Haslett says with a laugh. "I don't think it's an answer, I don't think it will solve our problems but I think how we pay attention to the world matters and if you can spend time inside an imaginative world then there's a calmness and an ability to think.”
That is what caught my attention. That is exactly why I love realistic fiction. It allows me to slow down, escape for a short while from my too busy life – school, work, son’s wedding, and think about someone else’s life. But it isn’t total escapism. I am drawn into someone else’s life but then invited to stop and think of how this would play out in real life. What would I do in such a situation? There is a certain freedom in the fact that it is make believe and yet, realistic enough to draw me in and make me think.
That would not be the case with fantasy fiction, for me. I have not been able to identify with the characters in fantasy – at least not yet – and that is an important ingredient of the enjoyment for me.
This can also be said of film or, video. A good fiction played out on the screen allows me to get lost in it, leave my world behind for a time and live in someone else’s but at the same time allows me to slow down enough to think and feel, just like a book.
Film and video, however, bring another element to fiction, as we learned this week. The scene, characters, and sounds are not left up to our imagination as much as I thought. We still need imagination to suspend our lives for awhile and become one of the characters, but we are provided many of the details by the director who puts all of this together. As the short video in our study guide suggests, Mise-en-Scene, if well planned, can bring another element to our viewing.
So, I learned tonight that I think I react viscerally to good realistic fiction because of my interpersonal nature. And, I still think that is true to a certain extent; I agree with Haslet, in that. Additionally, I think, as does Haslet, that good realistic fiction can slow us down and make us think about our world, how and where we fit in it. However, I now know that many of my visceral reactions are there because of the staging of the director, cinematographer, sound man and costume designer. Somehow, that is not quite as romantic!