Graphic novels are perhaps the most popular types of books among young readers today, and chances are your learner has already read dozens of them! But fully comprehending and appreciating them requires greater savvy than many readers realize. This course will take students on a deep dive into the graphic novel, teaching them about the variety of elements that authors and illustrators use to tell their stories. We will learn about important vocabulary including panel, foreground, onomatopoeia, emanata, the difference between graphic novels and comics, and much, much more. Readers will be able to apply their learning immediately, to any graphic novel they read. There are no required texts for this class, readers can bring along any graphic novel they would like as we hunt for and share examples and discuss our noticings as a class. Due to the very visual nature of most of our learning and discussions, this would be the perfect class for any ESL learners or for reluctant or struggling readers!
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What is a Graphic Novel?
An introduction to Graphic Novels
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Parts of a Graphic Novel
We will learn some of the important elements of what is seen on the page, including panels, frames, gutters, foreground, background, and graphic weight.
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Characters
Today's focus will be on characters and what we can learn about them from the illustrations and the text. We'll examine facial expressions, hands and feet, body language, and the use of enamata to communicate nonverbal elements.
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Setting and Panels
We will take a close look at the importance of setting; how it is introduced, when it's important and when it's not, how authors let us know it has changed, the role of panel size, and how illustrators communicate concepts of time.
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Text Types and Other Elements - Part 1
For the last class, our focus will be on the written text itself, the different types of print that are used and what they mean, captions, speech balloons, asterisks and onomatopoeia.
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Text Types and Other Elements - Part 2
This lesson continues from Part 1, where our focus will be on the written text itself, the different types of print that are used and what they mean, captions, speech balloons, asterisks and onomatopoeia.
