How are graphic novels viewed in libraries across the country today? While attitudes toward graphic novels and manga are changing, and librarians were among the first to change them, we wanted to learn more about how the formats are received and perceived today. So we asked some librarians to share their experiences. Their responses were fascinating.
While I was watching the Academy Awards, one thing struck me: Comics movies were definitely conspicuous in their absence. Not that they were totally absent: The show’s host was Wolverine, for one thing, and he made sure to promote his upcoming movie. But Hugh Jackman’s opening song-and-dance number also gave a nice nod to The Dark Knight and Iron Man and rightfully asked why such huge movies aren’t properly represented in more awards categories.
So, did you go see Watchmen? That is the question everyone seems to be asking lately, isn’t it? I went to see it last week with Carol and had so much fun talking about it afterward. Both of us stood outside the theater for a good 15 minutes on a freezing cold Manhattan night (seriously, it was really, really cold) before one of us thought to ask, “Do you want to find a place where we can grab a cup of coffee and have this discussion inside?!”
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March 2009
Fifteen-year-old Lydia Pasternak watches her family implode after her older brother, Danny, vanishes. Against a backdrop of surreal police and parent interaction, media coverage and peer attention, Lydia struggles to find her place in a world that makes even less sense than usual, in a finely wrought and quietly devastating story.
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March 2009
By turns heart-tugging and hilarious, Myron Uhlberg's memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents --- and his life in a world that he found unaccountably beautiful, even as he longed to escape it. HANDS OF MY FATHER is filled with stories about growing up not just as the child of two deaf people but as a book-loving, mischief-making, tree-climbing kid during the remarkably eventful period that spanned the Depression, the War and the early 1950s.
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March 2009
A family is torn apart by the very thing they most desired: a baby. This child, so wanted, has a disease so debilitating that the mother is convinced to bring a malpractice suit. But who can say whether they would have been better off had the child not been born?
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I doubt anyone was waiting for my recommendation, but let me add my voice to the chorus of people giving praise to Coraline, the new 3-D animated movie based on Neil Gaiman's book. The animators did such a fine job with this (loved the effects used on the tunnel between the two worlds in particular), and there's an added bonus for French & Saunders fans: Both ladies are in there and do a hilarious off-color song that will probably go over the heads of most young viewers. (The 3-D is fun, too, not to mention far removed from the flimsy paper red-and-blue glasses of my youth. You actually get sturdy plastic ones now.) Also, the opening title sequence is so creepy and delightful that it's mesmerizing. I loved the film all the way through.
This is the second year of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project, an endeavor to teach narrative through graphic storytelling. Our goal is to treat the graphic novel as a collective, collaborative project and as a team create a book during the winter term of each year. With co-instructor Tom Kealey, our 2008 class wrote, storyboarded, illustrated, designed, and published a 224-page graphic novel called
Shake Girl. Fifteen students drew the 700 illustrations for
Shake Girl in six weeks. This year, our students are currently at work on a 256-page graphic novel set in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Happy March --- the month that roared in like a lion with snow and wind. I am ticking off the days until spring and hoping that it arrives right on time. I would like another color besides gray looking in at me from my window, and the trees can use some color, too. I like my world colorful!
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March 1, 2009, 716 voters
