Graphic Novels That Teach, Part 2

Last month, I posted about my search for good books in a graphic novel format that can be incorporated into lessons.  Graphic novels add a whole new dimension to storytelling. I certainly don't have a child who is turned off to books in general, so I am just looking for good content.  The Odyssey, Homer's famous epic poem, was composed in ancient Greek in a complex meter known as dactylic hexameter.  Imagine the headache of trying to translate it properly into modern English, without major losses!  Much, of course, will be lost no matter what- so a graphic novel has a chance to give something back to the reader.  Certainly, the story becomes a new thing altogether, but a skillful artist can show a new audience of young people why this story remains one of the greatest of all time.  The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds lives up to the challenge. The pictures are stunningly beautiful.  He has a particularly good eye for the human form, and for faces. It's a thick book, at 256 pages, but readers will find it easy to read and hard to put down.    And the lavish illustrations definitely make it more accessible to  younger kids.  As in the original, there are parts which require parental guidance for the very young.  Of course, Hinds has also authored The Iliad (Marvel Illustrated), as well as one of the better graphic novel versions of Beowulf, and even some Shakespeare,  King Lear and  The Merchant of Venice (Graphic Shakespeare).

Speaking of epic heroes, Lewis & Clark by Nick Bertozzi may be of special interest to homeschoolers in the Pacific Northwest, for whom these explorers are a practically mandatory starting point for local history.  Since they were, after all, on a voyage of discovery, most accounts focus on the wonders they were observing where no white men had been before.  They were interested in recording the biology, botany, geology, anthropology, and cartography of the land.  Their journals are written in a language which sounds very eloquent, and at times overly formal and flowery,  by today's standards.  This graphic novel is a contrast to most books on the subject.  It centers squarely on the human drama of the expedition, mostly leaving the natural wonders out. Aside from the dialoge written for Thomas Jefferson, it is mostly written in plain, modern English. The people come across as much less heroic and much more human.  They had a lot to cope with on this journey.  The story is definitely an interesting one, and could contribute significantly to a history lesson.

Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species", while a bestseller of its time and hugely influential, is a book few today will get through, especially kids.  Making it into a graphic novel  would have to be either a simply awful idea, or a terribly brilliant one.    Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation, written by Michael Keller and illustrated by Nicolle Rager Fuller, I'm happy to report, is brilliant!  It begins with a chapter describing the history behind the famous book, and then launches into the ideas laid out in the book itself.  The illustrations of people are okay, but the illustrations of the natural world positively soar.    One feature of the book is that the text is often illustrated with key discoveries of science that did not take place until much after Darwin's book was published.  For example, some fossils from the Cambrian,  not discovered until the 20th century, are used to illustrate the point that there are many more extinct species than species now living.  At first, I found this exasperating, because I felt it was interfering with hearing the authentic voice of Darwin.  But I found that when reading the book to Jasper, it was helping him to make connections with scientific discoveries he's already learned of.   An afterward goes even further, showing how recent discoveries in genetics relate to Darwin's ideas.