Children's and Young Adult Literature

A timely and unique collection of implementable lessons from an experienced secondary English language arts teacher who specializes in teaching graphic novels. Maureen Bakis shows how middle and high school teachers can integrate graphic novels seamlessly into their curricula, and use them to foster deep thinking, vibrant discussion, and thoughtful writing from their students. Graphic novels are enjoying a great leap in popularity within schools, and gaining acceptance as part of the canon, but teachers don′t yet know much about the genre itself and how to help students interpret and work with them. This book is unique in its depth of treatment about how to use graphic novels in the classroom rather than dwelling on the rationale for doing so.

Starting in the mid-1980s, a talented set of comics artists changed the American comic-book industry forever by introducing adult sensibilities and aesthetic considerations into popular genres such as superhero comics and the newspaper strip. Frank Millera?'s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbonsa?'s Watchmen (1987) revolutionized the former genre in particular. During this same period, underground and alternative genres began to garner critical acclaim and media attention beyond comics-specific outlets, as best represented by Art Spiegelmana?'s Maus . Publishers began to collect, bind, and market comics as a?graphic novels, a? and these appeared in mainstream bookstores and in magazine reviews. The Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Contexts brings together new scholarship surveying the production, distribution and reception of American comics from this pivotal decade to the present. The collection specifically explores the figure of the comics creatora?--either as writer, as artist, or as writer and artista?--in contemporary U.S. comics, using creators as focal points to evaluate changes to the industry, its aesthetics, and its critical reception. The book also includes essays on landmark creators such as Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware, as well as insightful interviews with Jeff Smith ( Bone ), Jim Woodring ( Frank ) and Scott McCloud ( Understanding Comics ). As comics have reached new audiences, through different material and electronic forms, the publica?'s broad perception of what comics are has changed. The Rise of the American Comics Artist surveys the ways in which the figure of the creator has been at the heart of these evolutions."

The Boxers & Saints Boxed Set from Gene Luen Yang, one of the greatest comics storytellers alive, brings all his formidable talents to bear in this astonishing work. In two volumes,Boxers & Saints tells two parallel stories. The first is of Little Bao, a Chinese peasant boy whose village is abused and plundered by Westerners claiming the role of missionaries. Little Bao, inspired by visions of the Chinese gods, joins a violent uprising against the Western interlopers. Against all odds, their grass-roots rebellion is successful. But in the second volume, Yang lays out the opposite side of the conflict. A girl whose village has no place for her is taken in by Christian missionaries and finds, for the first time, a home with them. As the Boxer Rebellion gains momentum, Vibiana must decide whether to abandon her Christian friends or to commit herself fully to Christianity. Boxers & Saints is one of the most ambitious graphic novels First Second has ever published. It offers a penetrating insight into not only one of the most controversial episodes of modern Chinese history, but into the very core of our human nature. Gene Luen Yang is rightly called a master of the comics form, and this book will cement that reputation. This boxed set includes the trade paperback Boxers as well as the trade paperback Saints, packaged together in one slipcase. A New York Timesbestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature A New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2013