Teaching with Comics: A Reading Guide

In the course of the Drawing on Forced Marriage project, I’ve been doing a fair bit of research on how to teach comics to students, and how to teach students with comics. I’ve really enjoyed the process and have learned such a lot, but I realised that the reading list I’ve been compiling would probably be helpful to the teachers who are our target audience for the teaching pack. To that I end, I give you: a reading list!

• The Graphic Novel Classroom: POWerful Teaching and Learning with Images by Maureen Bakis (Corwin: Thousand Oaks, 2014)
• Teaching Graphic Novels: Building Literacy and Comprehension (Waco: Prufrock Press, 2014) by Ryan J. Novak
• Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom Grade 4–8 (2010) by Melissa Hart
• Teaching Graphic Novels: Practical Strategies for the Secondary ELA Classroom by Katie Moninall (Gainesville: Maupin House, 2010) – the above gives lesson plans that teachers can be use in classrooms.
• Teaching the Graphic Novel, this is an anthology edited by Stephen E. Tabachnick (New York: MLA, 2009). It’s aimed at university instructors, but it still has some solid introductory chapters on understanding comics that would be useful for teachers to read before delving into social issues, individual creators, and the like in their classrooms.
• A Comics Studies Reader, edited by Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester (Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2009), this one contains some amazing essays. Again, more university focused, but useful for teachers who want to brush up their own knowledge before introducing comics into the classroom.
• The Power of Comics: History, Form, and Culture, edited by Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), great for comic history.
• Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (New York: Harper Collins, 1994) is a classic for a reason. It’s a comic that teaches the history and methodology of comics – it’s so meta, it’s delightful.

Now, I haven’t fully read all the books I’ve listed above, but please understand that I have recommended them from sources I consider to be reputable! And if I come across any more books on teaching graphic novels/comics, then I will probably put together another list in due course.

Until then, happy reading and happy teaching!

Written by Alex Carabine