Well, the just-published volume on the 1980’s continues in this vein, and is equally terrific. Wonderfully designed, this is the kind of book that’s difficult to put down. You start reading a given section because a particular visual captures your attention, and then, twenty minutes later you look up trying to figure where the time went. Along the way, though, you learned something—maybe lots of things. For example, I didn’t know that while running Marvel, Jim Shooter actually moved forward with the idea of publishing DC’s characters in a standard licensing deal. And fascinating stuff like that is presented on nearly every page. Creators’ rights issues surface, as do copyright challenges, marketing campaigns, and PSA-style propaganda-lite titles—in short, reading what Keith Dallas has put together here means reading about comics, yes, but it’s also really media literacy in stealth mode.

So does this sound like something that could get the teen and tween comics fans you know into nonfiction? Sure it does. Moreover, although sources are consistently cited, the overall tone is completely accessible. Timelines and a clear organization also add to the book’s value as informational text. If you want to check out a preview to see what I’m talking about, here you go. If you’re interested in getting a copy yourself, just follow the simple rules below…

RULES:

1. Double-check that you live in the U.S. or Canada.

2. Leave a thoughtful comment here (through 11:59 pm ET May 27) or on any CTP post about comics. You can find a list of them here:

http://blogs.slj.com/connect-the-pop/category/comics/

3. If you don’t see your comment after several hours, just contact me via email or Twitter (see below).

4. I’ll email the winners, who’ll then be asked to provide (via me) their mailing addresses to the publisher. If I don’t hear back from you within 48 hours of notification, I’ll simply draw another name.

Following is a continuation of my talk with Nick DeMartino, Head of Business Development for Theatrics.com. This week’s first episode bow of Welcome to Sanditon, based on the unfinished novel by Jane Austen and featuring a robust fan participation platform provided by Theatrics, prompted our chat–which soon turned to school-based applications of the technology.

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All right, so what’s a specific curricular example of what could be done with Theatrics…?

A literature teacher could assign a team to create a transmedia adaptation of a story–like the Lizzie Bennet team did–and involve the entire class, grade, or even across distances with other students using Theatrics’ cloud-based platform. The “Calls to Action” and the responses from the participants can vary wildly–why not assign alternative endings? What would happen if Tom Robinson had been acquitted in To Kill a Mockingbird? How would Holden Caulfield have changed if he moved to a new school in Ohio instead of New York City? You get the idea.

Teachers in other subject areas can use the platform to create innovative learning experiences as well by developing their own assignments using documentary-style video production as well as fictional characters, which opens up subjects as varied as history and social studies, health education, ethnic studies–even math and science.

 To play devil’s advocate for a moment, should librarians and teachers be cautious in terms of their expectations for student engagement? That is, if they look to the success of Theatrics in relation to Sanditon, should they bear in mind that the audience that’s creating new characters and videos are already fans of the central text? In contrast, in a class of secondary students I doubt that most of them would self-identify as “fans” of the literary text being used or the historical event being covered…

Yes, setting learning goals and outcomes is essential–it’s what great educators do that enables them to assess student achievement–and this is why Theatrics is eager to partner with innovators who know how to transform a toolset into a learning platform.

The meta-outcome of this kind of constructivist learning is that students learn how to learn. If they are charged with creating a character that responds to events in a story, and then to produce a video in which the story is advanced… well, there’s a lot of learning in that experience, not to mention the interaction it may trigger with the story creators and the other participants. This becomes less about producing “great” videos, and more about empowering kids to grasp the dynamics of storytelling.

Today’s kids are digital natives who take for granted the opportunity to engage with and contribute to the content they love online, whether that is expressed simply via social networks, or more elaborately as content creators on sites like YouTube, Tumblr, video games, even Second Life. Educators are recognizing that there is real learning that occurs through these mediated social interactions and narrative interventions, and are finding creative ways to make sure that learning of this sort does not stop at the schoolhouse door.

And yet many students will be familiar with Jane Austen and comparable canon authors only because of schools…

A narrative experience like LBD is compelling in part because of the great bones of Austen’s story and characters, for sure. But equally compelling is the story form, the opportunity for consumers to engage deeply with those characters, who literally can walk off the page and into the fans’ daily lives through social media and video.

So I think the driver for many kids will be the chance to participate and engage inside a storyworld. They get to be more than just fans, they get to be co-creators. And that act of engagement can be transformational, and certainly educational. Also, it may true that by some measures the quality of most student work will not compare favorably to professional content, though I’ve seen many exceptions. Talent is talent.

Okay, so how might Theatrics represent an advance over established K-12 services such as Edmodo or VoiceThread?

Theatrics offers something new to educators–the chance to create a contained story-based learning environment in which students can be stimulated to create in an ongoing process that results in a collaborative story. The show creator—in this case the educator—sets the goals, creates Calls to Action over time, manages the videos, and has the ability to download videos to create compilations. All of the products on the site are fully socialized and gamified, meaning that participants can vote, comment, follow, and interact. I like to call it a live-action role-playing social network inside a story.

But it’s worth underlining that Theatrics is in beta, which means that we are actively expanding the feature set in response to the needs of innovative content partners who are coming to the platform, which of course includes the team behind Welcome to Sanditon and others whose work will premiere on the platform in the coming months.

My questions about what Theatrics can do are a bit premature, then. It’s educators themselves who can actively help determine those uses.

These innovators develop an outcome in mind for their audience, which is why the partnerships are so exciting for a startup like Theatrics. “Can we do this?” is often the beginning of a conversation that leads to the creation and introduction of new features. In addition, we are exploring strategic partnerships with platforms in social TV and transmedia. If educators require interoperability with leading solutions in a given field, we’re open to these ideas.

Bottom line, emerging companies must always approach existing markets with a sense of humility, recognizing that the purpose of the startup is to disrupt the status quo. Theatrics has built a platform that empowers a deep level of engagement in the storyworlds created by many types of storytellers, with user functionality that is unique and quite powerful. We believe the experiences that educators create by using this platform will be singular, and that takes nothing away from many other products that have already built strong followings in the marketplace.

Great–how can librarians and other educators get involved?

Theatrics.com is running an open beta program right now in order to develop innovative case studies that show how the platform can be used for a wide range of applications. Forward-thinking teaching librarians and other educators who want to invent a new curriculum module, or adapt an existing film-based project using the Theatrics collaborative platform, can open a free account now at Theatrics.com, or contact me.

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Nick DeMartino is a consultant specializing in digital content strategies. As SVP of Media and Technology at the American Film Institute, he has been at the forefront of multi-platform storytelling for more than 20 years.

In case you missed it a couple of days ago, the first full episode of the new web series Welcome to Sanditon went live. Like its predecessor, the phenomenon known as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the series features an updated take on Jane Austen, sharp writing, a likable cast, and overall combo of smarts and fun that’s hard to resist. Of course both series display the strengths of the medium–brief episodes, modest production values, a clever leveraging of ancillary tech, and, most significantly, robust audience engagement. For the latter, the folks at Pemberly Digital have teamed up with Theatrics.com, LLC, which is pioneering fan participation in exciting ways that may have direct application in schools and libraries. With this in mind, I thought I’d check in with Nick DeMartino, with whom I chatted about transmedia and libraries last year, and who now heads business development for the company.

DeMartino has led Theatrics’ shift from a storytelling destination, which had been the model for its homegrown series Beckinfield, to a platform designed to extend storyworlds for its customers, specifically television networks. He facilitated the first such deal that brought the Theatrics solution into an online companion series for Psych called The S#cial Sector, and was product lead on the launch of the beta test of the new online platform at www.theatrics.com .

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Fans of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries could already interact with the characters. How will Sanditon go beyond this?

Fans who come to Welcome to Sanditon will continue to have all of the opportunities to connect to characters that they did with Lizzie Bennet–posting their own YouTube videos, posting on Twitter, Facebook and especially Tumblr, and commenting on all of the platforms. But with Sanditon, they are also being invited to create their own characters and perform in character as the story unfolds. To achieve this, the producers have partnered with Theatrics, whose collaborative storytelling platform is designed to optimize fan engagement.

Fans will create a “Persona” through which they interact with the show creators. In character, the fans can generate videos, stills and blog posts in response to Calls to Action posted by the show creation team. Audience members can rate, link, and share this content, and by so doing earn points and badges, because the Theatrics platform is fully “gamified.” Along the way, the work of some fans may be plucked from the Theatrics site by the producers and shared across the entire storyworld of Sanditon, creating additional incentives for fans to deliver “great performances.”

To what extent is the series being produced with this interaction and character- or persona-creation in mind? In other words, in what ways is Theatrics organic to experiencing the series rather than just a neat add-on?

The folks behind Lizzie Bennet and Sanditon are such brilliant storytellers for this new socially-engaged generation, and they’ve set up the story container for audience engagement in a very inventive way. First, they’ve adapted Sanditon in a range of ways to advance the audience’s opportunity for engagement. Like LBD, they have moved the location to California and of course made the setting a contemporary situation. Second, they have brought Darcy’s sister Gigi from LBD into the Sanditon story, and prepared for the launch of Sanditon by posting a teaser video that sets up the premise, namely, that she is moving to this new town which is trying to bring itself back with the help of Pemberley Digital, the company Gigi’s brother runs. Pemberley is launching a new piece of video software called Domino, which was a big element in the climax of LBD. In Sanditon, this fictional “app” will be used by residents of the town–this is the activity that occurs on the Theatrics.com site.

Gigi Darcy

Thus fans will not only have the opportunity to interact with the story, but actually be a part of it. The platform will power the in-story beta test of the fictional Domino “life-revealing” application, allowing fans to create their own characters and interact directly with the storyline, offering a completely new interactive experience.

We’ll see how the LBD fans take to this new concept, but given the level of their engagement with story and characters, it seems very likely that they’ll jump on the chance to perform. Which means there may be lots more “location”-style video uploaded, in addition to the “vlog” style of LBD.

Does Sanditon being an unfinished novel enter into this at all? Will fan participation drive how the narrative itself ultimately plays out, or is that already close-ended?

As Margaret Dunlap, co-showrunner of Welcome to Sanditon has said, “People were constantly asking us about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: ‘How did interaction with fans affect the story?’ And the truth is that when you’re working from an amazing and well-loved story like Pride and Prejudice, there’s only so far you can stray from the original before you aren’t telling a version of Austen’s novel anymore.  Using Sanditon—where literally no one knows what Austen’s ending was going to be—as the basis for our next project seemed like the perfect way both for us to do something new, and to be able to invite the fans to help create the town alongside us.”

The show creators refer to Sanditon as a “bridge” series–they raised nearly $500,000 from fans on KickStarter to support a DVD boxed set of LBD, and to launch a new series in the fall, based upon an as-yet unannounced property. Sanditon will bridge the two full-scale productions this summer,  and will by design include fewer fully produced video segments. The story will more fully unfold as the fans create characters and co-create the story.

Does it make sense to think about educators working with students to create their own low-budget series shot in everyday settings like LBD that are based on other works of canon lit in the public domain? Will Theatrics be a viable resource for media and edtech specialists in this respect?

While I was at AFI we created a curriculum under the banner of “Screen Education” through which teachers helped their students use the vocabulary and techniques of digital filmmaking to explore all sorts of subject matter. We saw filmmaking as a literacy issue, a means to an end, e.g., harnessing kids’ interest in filmmaking and storytelling as a way to explore subject matter. Teachers who were comfortable managing this sort of constructivist learning process achieved amazing results.

With the Theatrics platform, the entire classroom assignment can be structured within a contained and controllable story container. Teachers can give assignments on an ongoing basis through the Call to Action feature. Students can create videos in response, can comment and vote on each others’ work, and can share it across the open Internet (or not, it’s the teacher’s choice).

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Please check back tomorrow, when we will get into more specific possibilities involving Theatrics and curriculum… Thanks!

All right, so that’s somewhat of an exaggeration. Fundamentalist Hinduism and the Miss India pageant do provide the twin narrative pillars, with alternating perspectives tied to two young women involved in each respectively. Prachi Trivedi is upfront about everything, to the point of being disarming. “I hate Gandhi,” she announces at one point. Ruhi Singh, meanwhile, is extremely articulate—as are some of the other pageant contestants—about the new freedoms enjoyed by Indian women, the role of “westernization,” and so on. You might feel sad that beauty pageants apparently represent such a key vehicle for female self-actualization, but from the social context we witness in the film, they are downright progressive. That context, by the way, is one in which we see footage (disturbing but not too graphic) of women being attacked by certain traditionalists for simply being seen with a man or drinking alcohol.

Of course the men who engage in such violence for modesty’s sake can be contrasted with those whose recent acts of rape have shocked the world. Although the latter is not covered in the film, it’s that schizo juxtaposition of sexual and anti-sexual violence that revealingly speak to common roots in misogyny. The value of The World Before Her, though, is that it focuses on women as subjects, not objects, and so Prachi’s status as a proud female is complicated by her disdain for her westernized peers (“I’m different from girls,” she confides. “I’m different from boys.”) In fact, her attraction to violence as a way of maintaining what she feels are time-honored Hindu mores, including those related to gender roles, superficially recalls the “strong women vs. violent women” conundrum I’ve posted about previously.

Still not convinced about the universality of the central themes here? That’s all right. If you check out the trailer you may get a better sense of what I’m talking about…

Need a bit more? Well, you’ll just have to seek out a screening. You can use this guide to find a nearby theater, or you can request a screening via Tugg.  And bring a teen or college-aged person with you if you can. I think they’ll find the content highly relatable. After all, The World Before Her is largely about the search for freedom and the search for meaning—pursuits that, arguably, occupy young people in all cultures—and how they are co-opted by larger groups and other agendas… whether these be religious extremists or commercial interests that treat sexuality as just one commodity for sale.

Yesterday Citizen Hearst was released on DVD, and I think it could make a fine resource for media specialists who want to focus on the study of mass media itself. Public performance rights are available for schools, and screening it would certainly provide a sense of how newspaper, magazine, and broadcast journalism have changed (or in some ways haven’t changed) over the last century and more. In fact, by choosing as its subject matter the “Hearst Empire” from its origins to the present day, this doc by acclaimed filmmaker Leslie Iwerks does something that I like very much, which is not consider each medium in isolation. For example, comics and newspapers have enjoyed an important relationship both commercially and culturally, and it’s just one of the interesting topics covered in the course of Citizen Hearst.

So why, then, am I so on the fence about recommending this well-produced and often engaging film? And to make matters even more confusing, why does this hesitancy of mine exist despite my opening contention that Citizen Hearst “could make a fine resource for media specialists”?

The answer lies in that tell-tale could. You see, I think it all depends on how much any given educator or librarian would want to use a “critical media literacy” pedagogical strategy not only to the various topics, but to the doc itself. That’s because it functions very much as an authorized biography—as such, it features some neat insider-y content, but also an overall approach that feels like it’s been way too validated by its very subject. And the subject in this case is, of course, the Hearst Corporation, a still mighty media giant that, among other holdings, owns a 50% stake in the Biography Channel, the station that aired Citizen Hearst. Indeed, the overall tone of the doc is self-congratulatory, with very little attention paid to, say, the risks of media consolidation in the first place.

The end result is the kind of moving-image love letter that gets screened at company holiday parties; the only difference is one of scale, as we’re treated not just to a year of proud accomplishments, but decade upon decade of them. The irony, if you want to call it that, is that critical or even just opposing voices are missing in a way that professional journalists would routinely avoid in the interest of providing balance. Sure, the general stance can be positive, but to ignore the negative entirely is something else again.

So… yeah, consider Citizen Hearst for school or library acquisition—but only if you feel that you or others can bring a critical sensibility to the text as well as some necessary background about the doc itself. If you can do that, you’d actually have the makings of a very interesting teaching-and-learning opportunity. However, if you can’t, you’d have the exact opposite.

About midway through the impressive new animated film Superman: Unbound, which just so happens to bow on home video today, it becomes clear how little the story actually concerns Earth. Sure, in the final act the planet that we call home is in jeopardy, but that almost feels like an afterthought, a dramatic necessity. Well, maybe that’s putting it too strongly: a major theme involves how the aliens we call Superman and Supergirl have made our world their home. Still, throughout Superman: Unbound we are reminded that the story’s villain has already subdued 10,000 planets, stealing cities that he then shrinks down to specimen-jar size.

It’s a conceit that I remember from Supe’s comic book adventures going back to forever, but I must admit that I’m unfamiliar with the specific Geoff Johns-penned source material from Action Comics a few years ago. Apparently in those pages the classic baddie Brainiac, a knowledge-junkie cyborg, was kinda rebooted in terms more stark, streamlined, and terrifying. Thus we find ourselves witness to a struggle that pits cold intellect against the warm corporeality of Krypton’s best known refugee. Which is really what superior sci-fi is all about. Killer robots and missiles pointed at suns and mind probes are all very good, but it’s ideas writ large and delivered via bold metaphor that characterize science fiction for me… and which is why I feel that Superman, with a 75-year canon to draw upon, should be included in any curriculum that covers the genre.

So to those who are not approaching Superman as the most enduring and popular science fiction character ever, I invite you to make a reappraisal.

That’s right. The exemplar sci-fi character.

Not Luke Skywalker? Not Captain Kirk? Nope—Superman. And the reason we might not realize this is that superheroes are typically viewed as their own specific niche genre—one that is considered too new or immature or pop culture-y to take its place among the other genres. In truth, though, superhero narratives fit comfortably under categories such as fantasy, action-adventure, crime, and the aforementioned science fiction… or of course some hybrid of two or more of these. The point is, superhero fare isn’t off somewhere on its own generically speaking. While it’s tempting to maintain that position, doing so serves an agenda of marginalization.

As proof, go ahead and check out Superman: Unbound and tell me if it isn’t one of the most satisfying and, in the end, philosophically thrilling science fiction films you’ve seen in quite a while. Then do a little research and find out how often it is being reviewed or discussed that way. Go on now—I’ll wait.

Last month I had the honor of being asked to speak at the annual conference of NJCTE, a state affiliate of NCTE*. I actually presented twice that day, but this wasn’t so hard since the topics covered represented a kind of personal “greatest hits”—critical thinking via pop culture, scriptwriting as a means of connecting core curriculum and media education, and the literacies of fandom. It was this last topic that generated most of the audience interaction, which was all positive and supportive.

So where’s the problem?

Well, those who were enthusiastic about “fandom pedagogy,” even to the point of already putting theory into some actual practice, had a few, um, questions. Questions I couldn’t really answer—at least not in any definitive or pragmatic way. These were questions that had wiggled in my gut for some time, ones that I’d always categorized as matters “deserving of further consideration”:

1) How to preserve in classrooms both the full self-expression and the usually requisite total anonymity that characterizes online fandom?

2) How to avoid divulging students’ participation in specific fandoms when they would rather not share such private information with classmates?

Yes, these are not wholly original concerns, and there are some tentative work-arounds (e.g., student work can be anonymous to peers, not to the educator). Still, a far more troubling truth—maybe a truism, it seems so obvious—suddenly hit me: a key part of the power of the fandom is precisely that it lies outside the realms of codified hierarchy we find in school and in the workplace. In other words, all along my endless rationales and complaints regarding how curriculum doesn’t embrace fandom but should have been largely misplaced: it’s the fan, not the curriculum writer, who may be most averse to the idea of a partial overlap.

So until we can answer those questions above in a way that works for both educators and students, let’s hold off on importing youth fandom directly into the classroom, shall we? And no, this is not a full retreat, just an acknowledgement that things are trickier than they may have initially appeared.

Already I can see a possible way of reconciling the challenges with the benefits, and that’s by being mindful of the distinction between drawing on students’ personal, individual participation in fandom… and drawing on their fan practices—the general literacies they have developed that can be reinforced and transferred. We’ll see where this goes, and please drop me a line if you have any guidance for me. As you can see, I need it.

*the National Council of Teachers of English

When we adults engage in the constant scrutiny of mass media and the effects on children and teens, it’s easy to point the finger at pop culture, for better or worse. I’m pretty positive overall: hence this blog. Others are more negative, and they are sometimes supported by data, sometimes simply driven by the need to scapegoat.

But what all of us overlook every day is that curriculum itself is the biggest, most powerful multimedia influencer of youth by far. In fact, curriculum is so effective as a persuader, legitimizer, and arbiter of what is “true and real” that it has pulled a kind of Kaiser Soze sleight of hand on society: convinced everyone that it’s not a form of media that presents certain human-constructed notions as wholly external, objective facts. Instead, students are provided with curriculum in much the same way that religious adherents are provided with scripture, as something whose source and authorship are not be discussed, much less questioned. And no, this analogy is not as inappropriate as it may first seem.

Photo courtesy Kino Lorber.

Interestingly, this notion of a captive audience—one that can’t really talk back and “question the text”—is vividly illustrated by the day job of Don McLeroy, whose tenure with  the Texas State Board of Education is the central dramatic focus of The Revisionaries. As a dentist, he holds forth on his religious, political, and scientific views (these are intertwined, ‘natch) while patients are in his chair and unable to dialogue with him, let alone oppose his views. Actually, just take a look at the clip below and you’ll see what I mean. Or maybe you’ll feel that I’m overstating things, which is fine. The point is, McElroy himself would very likely agree with the idea that “curriculum is media”—which is why, he’d maintain, that every sentence, every instance of word choice, in a school textbook deserves critical analysis because their combined meanings will largely be passed on to students as truths.

Of course the manner in which McLeroy and his allies “interrogate” such texts is something I would take issue with, not to mention the way in which they’d revise them to make them more palatable with fundamentalism, both religious and political. Hence the, um, title of the film. In any case, this eye-opening doc from director Scott Thurman is available today on home video, and I urge you to check it out with the goal of perhaps obtaining screening rights so that it can be shared with students and faculty alike. Thurman doesn’t do a flashy job, but rather a highly competent one, letting the material (and folks like McLeroy) speak for themselves. Sometimes, though, that’s all that a smart documentarian needs to do: choose the subject and the subject matter carefully, capture the former speaking about the latter with conviction, and let the story tell itself. Those audience who fully grasp what the stakes are—a group that includes McLeroy supporters as well as opponents such as Kathy Miller and her supporters—don’t need a lot of loud drama: the battle for the intellect of America’s young people is all the more chilling for how quiet and out of the spotlight it is.

In January 2013 I gave a talk on comics and libraries at this year’s American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter. The gist of this talk was how librarians failed to capitalize on the enormous popularity of comics among young readers during the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, we often actively discouraged comics reading for fear that children and teens would become vicious and debased, as well as incapable of reading or enjoying ‘better’ literature. When in 1954 the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham along with the US Senate publicly scrutinized comics as a potential incitement for juvenile delinquency, librarians stayed silent. We breathed a collective sigh of relief when comics publishers implemented the Comics Code Authority later that year, eviscerating comics content and sending youth readership on a downward spiral.

During the discussion period for my talk at ALA Midwinter, one of the people in attendance asked how many librarians in the audience still encounter opposition from parents, teachers, or school administrators in promoting and collecting comics. I was astounded to see the majority of the librarians in the audience raise their hands.

Despite comics’ increasing popularity and critical validation, librarians working with young people still face resistance. Sometimes, I realize, that resistance also comes from within our own profession. Even though we may not realize it, let alone admit it, we librarians bear our profession’s legacy of fearing comics.

Trust me: I’m not trying to make you feel bad and I’m not trying to belittle our often beleaguered profession. I know that if you’re reading this blog post, you’re open to—if not a proponent of—comics in classrooms and libraries. I’ve spent my lifetime reading comics, and for the past twenty years—first as a high school librarian, then as a doctoral student, and now as a professor—I’ve been thinking critically about comics. But in realizing how much resistance to and suspicion of comics still abounds, I want to share a few simple things I’ve learned about comics that may help you if you are one of the librarians still working to convince people that comics have value in libraries.

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photo credit: Luigi Novi

• It’s okay to call them ‘comics.’

Comics is both a medium—some would say it’s an art form—and the texts produced in that medium. They take on different forms such as comic strips, comic books, webcomics, manga, and graphic novels. Comics can be short-form or long-form, serialized or stand-alone, and released as hardcovers, trade paperbacks, floppies, or ‘zines. They comprise different genres including superheroes, memoir, horror, funny animal, slice of life, and fantasy. They encompass various verbal and visual styles from ponderous to punny, abstract to realist.

Comics are created by people of all different ages for people of all different ages. They’re not only produced in North America and Japan: comics come from everywhere. There are comics creators and readers in diverse locales such as India and Ivory Coast, Mexico and Malaysia, Argentina and Australia, South Africa and Spain.

Don’t get too hung up on terms. Most important: don’t be embarrassed to call something a ‘comic.’

• Some readers won’t like comics.

If you were to step back in time to the 1940s and 1950s, you would perhaps be amazed to see almost every young person—boys, girls, kids, teens, black, white, brown, rich, poor—reading comics. In fact, reading comics was a more popular and pervasive pastime among young people during these years than playing video games is today!  (If you’re wondering, the advent of television, the introduction of the Comics Code Authority, a contracting comics market, and a host of other factors contributed to the decline of comics readership among young people.)

We’re experiencing a renaissance of sorts in comics publishing and readership these days, and it’s tempting to think that comics are the answer to the question of how to reach reluctant readers. It’s important to understand, though, that even in that golden age of comics readership during the 1940s and 1950s, not every young person enjoyed reading comics.

We should not expect that every young person who visits our libraries today will be inspired or riveted or transformed by comics, and that’s okay. Libraries should have materials that interest everyone.

• Some readers will love comics.

Recently an acquaintance of mind posted on Facebook about a comic he read as a child. He was maybe eight years old and the comic was a random issue of Doctor Strange that had been abandoned by one of his older brothers. Reading that comic was transformative for him: he spent his adolescence searching for the next issue and continues to read comics today.

Any librarian who has worked with young people can recall at least one instance of a child or teen getting hooked by something they read or viewed. It’s fascinating and satisfying to observe. We can’t predict what particular comic (or other resource) might be the spur for a lifetime’s beguilement, so the best we can do is have varied and extensive collections that kids can explore.

Buy more than superhero comics. Study your readers, and anticipate what will get them hooked.

• Comics are more than stepping stones.

Sometimes librarians justify their comics collections by characterizing these materials as stepping stones or ladder rungs or delicious desserts. That is, they view comics as materials to get kids hooked on the reading road to better books. Yes, some comics are ephemeral fluff (but that’s not necessarily bad; see below). Still many comics have narrative depth, visual integrity, and compelling characters that have at least as much literary and artistic merit as more conventional texts for young people.

Comics can transport readers to hidden worlds like North Korea. They can help readers gain insight into history altering activities such as the development of the first atomic bomb. Young readers can experience nursery rhymes, folktales, and classic works of literature in new ways. Kids can get lost in a lush fantasy or learn about unconventional friendships. Girls can learn to find power within themselves, and so can boys.

• Comics can be—simply—fun.

As with nearly any kind of text, comics can be used for instructional purposes. In fact nearly eighty years ago as part of its first comprehensive curriculum document (The Experience Curriculum, Hatfield, 1935) the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) recommended integrating the study of comics in elementary and secondary school classrooms. They can also enrich readers’ lives and impart important moral lessons. Still, don’t forget that anytime we turn books into lessons and must-reads, we risk spoiling them for readers. (Poetry, anyone?) Use comics in the classroom, sure, but give kids and teens plenty of opportunities to find them on their own too. Libraries are about learning and knowledge, but they’re about helping people engage with stories, too.

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As part of my current research, I have been interviewing people who were childhood comics readers during the 1940s and 1950s. Most of these folks are now in their seventies and eighties, but their comics reading experiences are vivid. They can speak in detail about the stories they remember and how they reenacted the exploits of their favorite superheroes. They tell me about the strategies they employed when figuring out what comics to purchase from the drugstore and the conversations they had with other comics readers about stories, characters, and creators.  Yet often the interviewees distinguish their comics reading from ‘real’ reading. After all these decades comics still bear the taint of being something less than. Let’s change that for the young comics readers who visit our libraries.

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A former school librarian, Carol Tilley is now an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois. She teaches about and studies comics, youth services librarianship, and media literacy. Follow her on Twitter at CarolGSLIS, learn more about her research at http://www.caroltilley.net  or e-mail her at ctilley@illinois.edu. And if you’re attending the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2) this weekend, come hear Carol along with Josh Elder, David Rapp, and Jim McCann talk about how comics fit with the Common Core (Friday, April 26, 12:45 p.m., W470b). 

From “Planet Ocean”–human beings as just one more creature colonizing the sea.

Here we are, then: at that point on the calendar known as “the rest of the year.” It’s not Earth Day any more, or even the day after Earth Day, and while some groups nobly engage in week- or month-long related activities, most of us have returned to thinking about the planet only occasionally (everpresent background anxiety notwithstanding). When we next see images of hurricanes raging and glaciers shearing, when a colorful new picture book both celebrates and mourns Amazonian rain forests, when politicians and Op Ed pages debate environmental regulation, and when we stumble across compelling cable content on networks devoted to science and/or wildlife—well, that’s when we’ll become impassioned, thoughtful, aware.

That is, it’s not through any authentic, firsthand interaction with, you know, the natural world itself.

Which is why I’ve always felt that the science curriculum is one of those areas that would truly benefit from a large, hypodermic injection of media literacy. After all, aren’t most of our public policy debates informed by factoids/partial data/dramatic images supplied by media coverage rather than the relevant research? With this in mind, the next time you’re screening “nature videos” to young people, you may want to pause to consider how concepts such as “Nature” or “Earth” or “The Environment” are pretty much constructed by such media representations.

One of the key production elements in this respect is voice-over. In short, just who is narrating a given doc? Is it an older gentleman whose demeanor suggests a fatherly approach to nature, one of wizened stewardship? And if not that quality exactly, then at least a deep sense of integrity built up over time? After all, that might explain the value of a legend like David Attenborough to recent production stand-outs such as The Blue Planet: Seas of Life—he’s not the driving creative force as earlier in his career, but the prestige he brings as part of his “brand” bolsters credibility from the get-go. Similarly, John Hurt’s narration of Human Planet, a series that may be the best overall choice for Earth Day-type viewing in that it covers multiple ecosystems and human coexistence with them, leverages his persona of trustworthy intelligence. Actually, a better combo of associations to cite might be magic and science—just consider his roles in the Harry Potter, Hellboy, and Indiana Jones movies.

“Human Planet.” (Photo Credit: © Timothy Allen/BBC 2010)

Or should producers opt for a younger narrator, perhaps an actor with whom the youth demographic might identify? That’s certainly the case with Planet Ocean, in which Josh Duhamel does a surprisingly effective and earnest job handling voice-over duties. And that’s not an easy task in this case, as he actually acts for a good deal of the running time, delivering what comes across as a dramatic monologue often heavy with poetry both in text and imagery. In fact, at times things may seem overly dramatic, but I liked the self-accusing and activist tone that Duhamel and the script bring to the subject of our endangered seas. It distinguishes the film from others, as does some of the bolder, often abstract choices in cinematography. That Planet Ocean is polemical in so many ways while also being so lyrical is something of a marvel.

Somewhere in between the gray beards and the Transformers actor in terms of age and stature is Daniel Craig, who does a terrific job with One Life. Billed as “an epic adventure with the heroes of our natural world,” this terrific new release on home video lives up to such claims and is greatly helped by Craig’s efforts in this respect. By having a figure no less formidably masculine than James Bond speak for nature, the idea that exploring the connections and commonalities that bind all creatures suddenly doesn’t seem too “sensitive,” “nerdy,” or “mystical.”

So if you screen worthy titles like these for kids or teens, the idea isn’t to avoid enjoying the respective voice-over talents and what they accomplish. Go ahead and be entertained, even beguiled. The trick is to recognize that this is happening, and how this process positions audiences in relation to a given doc or series’ messaging… and ultimately how our relationship to the natural world is affected as a result. As a final point to ponder, then, we might ask why so few nature videos that we screen feature female narrators. Do we so require “male authority” when it comes to the environment, or is it that the feminine is already thought to be represented in the form of “Mother Nature,” the true star of these media products?