MeAnWHile

by Jason SHiga SisTerS

by RaIna TelGemeIer

Graphic novels align nicely with the High School’s emphasis on “close reading,” a method of teasing deeper meaning out of facets of a story in order to better understand the whole, said Katherine Dunbar, head of the HS English Department.

“Instead of taking a landscape view of a story, close reading requires English students to keep a tight lens on the page in front of them,” Katherine said. “By keeping their eyes trained on the details, they make thematic discoveries. They read from the page out instead of bringing preconceived ideas from the outside in, and graphic novels are a beautiful way to do that work.”

Consider American Born Chinese, Katherine said. A page can show a character breaking out from a panel. What does that mean? What does it mean when a character falls off the edge of a page? Why does one page have speech bubbles and another no text at all? Why has a character become smaller, or why does one character block the view of another behind him?

“The point is, the non-written content tells crucial stories too,” Katherine said. “The world is not always written down for us.”

Nora Schrag ’25, a self-described voracious reader, said she loves graphic novels but has to “actively work harder” to read them. The art styles can be complicated, she said. At the HS library, she picks up a few comics and flips them open to make her point. In one book, a panel fills an entire page. In another, the reader must flip the page around to read it, an interactive element that adds to the storytelling.

“Pictures don’t really work with my brain,” Nora added. “So there are moments when I’ve stopped reading [a graphic novel] and said: ‘I’m going to sit with this for a moment and take it all in.’”

These stop-and-think moments can be the most rewarding for students and teachers alike. Michael, GDS’s in-house comic writer and illustrator, said he remembers a student a few years back who picked up on a visual element in the graphic adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass: a figure standing on a precipice casting a shadow that partly spelled the word “shadow.”

by Mo WilLemS

by AnTony JoHNsTon

“I was so astonished when I read it in the student’s paper because I had never seen it before, and now I can’t unsee it,” Michael said. “It was one of the greatest gifts I got from a close reading assignment because that’s exactly what we ask students to do, to dwell on the material with focus and attention.”

SixTH-gRade sTudenTs met witH u.S. Rep. JoHN Lewis in 2017 to disCusS His memoIr, March.

“I wanT tHe reAderS to feEl as if tHey’re livinG in tHe cHaracTer’s worLd”