Graphic Novels That Teach!

It all started with Clan Apis by Jay Hosler, a scientist who studies bees.  This book was recommended to me by cool homeschooling mom Sarah whose son is crazy for science, like mine.  It's a wonderful read, with amazing illustrations.  Clan Apis is the scientifically based story of the life of a bee.  Jasper naturally loved it, and learned a great deal about bees at the same time!  Graphic novels are very engaging and fun to read.  This got me wondering- what other graphic novels are there that teach?  

I asked this question on a national homeschooling forum and got some wonderful responses.  As my library reserves roll in, I thought I'd share the results!   

One nice find was the books of Larry Gonik. First of all, you must know that they are intended for adults. One positive aspect of this is that they do not insult the readers' intelligence.  Jasper loved Cartoon History of the Universe 1 Vol. 1-7 (Cartoon History of the Universe) (Pt.1) .  I have to sneak history into our lessons because Jasper does not immediately think of this as his favorite topic, and this book is a marvelous help.  However, history is naturally full of unsavory incidents, so parents need to use their own discretion when reading aloud to very young kids!  The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry proved to rapidly get over his head, but succeeded in explaining the periodic table of the elements to my 6 year old!  Other titles include The Cartoon Guide to Physics, The Cartoon Guide to Genetics (Updated Edition), and Cartoon Guide to Statistics.  

Graphic Library is a publisher of hundreds of graphic novels for teaching a wide variety of topics, including American and world history, science, civics, and biographies of famous figures.  Jasper loves the "Max Axiom: Super Scientist" books, and I like them too!  They have a variety of authors and illustrators, but definitely maintain a consistency of style.  They are accurate and informative while also being great fun to read and somewhat humorous.  A few favorite titles are The Surprising World of Bacteria With Max Axiom, Super Scientist (Graphic Science) (Graphic Library: Graphic Science)  and The Explosive World of Volcanoes with Max Axiom, Super Scientist (Graphic Library: Graphic Science series).  

We also checked out Isabel Soto Archaeology Adventures.  While they are engaging and fun to read, I definitely felt that they didn't cover the subject matter in enough depth to be of much interest to include in any serious study.  Uncovering Mummies: An Isabel Soto Archaeology Adventure (Graphic Library: Graphic Expeditions) has Isabel traveling through time and distance to see mummies.   I expected a focus on Egypt, and instead we got a kind of visual list of mummies found throughout the world, with little detail about any of them. Tracking Bigfoot: An Isabel Soto Investigation (Graphic Library: Graphic Expeditions) features a topic of particular relevance to those of us in the Pacific Northwest.  It proved to mostly be a rundown of various hoaxing techniques.  The only truly interesting fact in this book, in my opinion, is the brief mention that some of the evidence for Bigfoot includes hair that has been shown to not belong to any known animal.  A better book on this topic might have covered how the scientific method has been used to examine evidence, and what the possibilities and limitations of modern methods are.

We also read some Manga Math Mysteries.  These books are Manga style graphic novels in which kids solve mysteries using various math concepts.  The idea of using story books to teach math concepts is a good one.  Not only is it often more engaging for kids than traditional worksheets, it also reinforces the idea that math is not so much an abstraction as a set of skills with endless useful applications.  Jasper loved the drawings and enjoyed following along with the math challenges.  But I am giving them the thumbs down because the plotlines generally revolve around kids bullying each other, stealing things from each other, pulling mean pranks, etc.  There are many better living math books out there! 

We read The Mystery of Nine: Number Place and Value in Action (Mandrill Mountain Math Mysteries).  Do you ever read a book and genuinely wonder how it ever got published?  This book is subtitled "Number Place and Value in Action".  I naturally expected it to demonstrate and explain the concept of place value.  It didn't.  Math is used in the narrative, but unlike most "living math" style books, the reader  just follows along with the story without being given a chance to stop and work out the math problems for themselves.  And the book hardly focuses on place value- it's all over the place, throwing in some division here, some percentages there...  The story itself is part of a series, which is far from immediately apparent, but perhaps goes a long way towards explaining why the story doesn't quite make sense by itself, or really reach a conclusion.

Horrible Histories have both a huge army of fans, and a lot of detractors.  The position of the detractors is well put by fabulous homeschooling mom Anna, who says, "I kind of don't like kids' books that try to make something exciting by playing up the gross, violent, etc. elements of a subject. I think it's a small fraction of kids, even boys, who would find a subject interesting with that angle, but wouldn't otherwise. Also, most little boys' 'interest' in violence and the grotesque involves their working through the fact that they're impressed by the potential power of violence, but also troubled by their own violent impulses, and scared of bad things happening to them and other people. It's fairly deep and complex, and worthy of respectful rather than shallow and dishonest treatment. Read them Beowulf!" I checked out "Awesome Egyptians", by Terry Dreary, and I didn't find it too violent or gross.  However, I refused to read it to Jasper because I found too many statements that were misleading, irrelevant, or flat out contradicted what we'd read elsewhere, and because I quickly became annoyed by the grating overuse of the word "awesome". There are many better books for learning about ancient Egypt, which is a pretty engaging topic to begin with. The "Histories" books all seem to have the same author, but other authors write Horrible Science, Horribly Famous, Horrible Geography, and Murderous Maths, which we have not yet seen. They may be better...

One of our favorite graphic novels is Terra Tempo: Ice Age Cataclysm! (Terra Tempo, Volume 1) written by naturalist David Shapiro and published locally.  It tells about the Great Missoula Flood which took place in the Pacific Northwest during the last Ice Age.  (The publisher has set up a pretty cool website for the book, featuring some neat flash animation.)  It's a pretty dramatic event in prehistory that really comes to life in the pages of this book, with a compelling story and gorgeous illustrations.  The flood itself is the center of the story, with many of the fascinating animals of the Ice Age highlighted as well.  Highly recommended!


**UPDATE** Since I posted this, a mom added to that thread to recommend this blog:  http://graphicclassroom.blogspot.com/, written by Chris Wilson, a grad student getting a degree in elementary education, and several others who are passionate about the subject.  This blog is an exhaustive resource on this subject.  It contains extensive lists and detailed reviews of graphic novels with the idea of evaluating them for classroom use.  I noticed that they have reviewed many of the same books that I have.  Their criteria are different- they include reviews of fiction that does not teach anything per se.    I also noticed right away that their standards are much, much lower than mine!  Their reviews are intelligent and thoughtful... Hmmm...  I wonder if the problem many teachers are confronting is classrooms full of kids that get quickly bored when they are not watching tv or playing video games, and they are looking for learning materials that will engage kids who have really low attention spans for books.  That could explain why they praise Isabel Soto books, noting that their format is nearly identical to several kid's tv shows.  Similarity to tv shows is not any kind of selling point for us. To me, a graphic novel makes good teaching material if it compares well in content to other books on the same subject, not  television shows or other graphic novels. And I read my 6 year old books that are well beyond those recommended for his age bracket, which tend to be kind of dumbed down.  They mention that kids instantly detect and are repelled by anything that looks like it is trying to sugarcoat educational content.  My son, on the other hand, prefers a lot of things that are blatantly educational.  But I am excited to find this blog, because they have certainly found and reviewed many more graphic novels than I have seen myself.  I bet there are plenty we will agree on!


**HEY, YET ANOTHER UPDATE!**  Mr. Hosler, author of Clan Apis, graciously commented that he has a website for educators looking for good graphic novels:  http://comicbooksyllabus.com/  Lots more good stuff here! Time to fire up the library card again!