Technolandy

Day 93 (of 2025/26) #literacyweek unit proposal: comic books and our new weekly feature: a cartoonist club!

Pretty straight forward – more and more comics (often identified as ‘graphic novels’) are going mainstream as legitimate sources of reading. To the chagrin of some – to the relief of many of us… comics matter.

Today’s Literacy Week share was an introduction to a Cartoonist Club: 

They are powerful. Comic books and graphic novels have a sneaky superpower for emerging readers. They lower the wall without lowering the thinking. Pictures do some of the heavy lifting, sure, but that just frees the brain to tackle vocabulary, sequencing, inference, and humor without drowning. For kids who are “not readers”… funny how many of them will inhale 200 pages of panels and speech bubbles without noticing they’re practicing fluency the whole time.

They are inspirational. They certainly were for me, nudging me toward a double major in English and History, thanks in no small part to the storytelling genius and quiet scholarship of Carl Barks. Long before I could name themes, archetypes, or historical satire, I was absorbing them through ducks, quests, and moral tangles. Turns out deep literacy sometimes arrives wearing a cape… or occasionally, a sailor hat…

Our growing shared understanding of the neurological side of reading helps explain why one size never fit all. Some brains instantly turn words into vivid movies, others process language more like a running inner narrator, and some toggle between the two depending on context. Many readers describe thinking in patterns, emotions, or even physical sensations as meaning clicks into place. None of these are deficits. They are simply different cognitive routes into comprehension, and the more entry points we offer, the more readers discover their own way in. Comics help this by blending so many visual inputs and allow different ways for authors to communicate stories and information!

Comics to read (beyond the comic book that used to be on newsstands… in drug stores… grocery stores… but now more limited to specialty comic book stores…) with a title to start off with – not necessarily suitable for ‘all’ aged readers, but not too spicy!

Comic Books (eg Uncle Scrooge)

Picture Books (eg Tytus the Monkey by Toby Price *Previous PIE Comic Con Keynote)

Graphic Novels (eg Weirdo by Tony Weaver Jr *Previous PIE Comic Con Keynote)

Manga (eg OnePiece)

Collections (eg Calvin and Hobbes)

Webcomics (eg Phone and her Unicorn)

Hybrid novel (eg Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

Infographics/nonfiction (eg Science Comics by First Second)

Storyboards/scripts (eg The Lightning Thief: the Graphic Novel)

Game narratives/lore texts (eg Minecraft: The Island

Zines/short forms (eg Flight)

And consider some as alternatives to straight text – I loved Lord of the Flies as a reader – when I taught it a decade-ish later, the language was very dated in its jargon – read the graphic novel that came out a couple years ago and the delicious parts of the story remain, the divisive language does not… what isn’t said often matters more than what is – which makes comics a masterclass in close reading..

Comics as easy reads? Pshaw I say… comics have more unique words/1000 than any other literature…

Comics demand constant inference (and models visuals vs text presentations)

Comics enable complex narrative structures – decoding words and images

Comics invite purposeful rereading (I mindfully mis-understand the prompt that ‘Good readers Re-Read’… it is meant to re-read words for context meaning; I like it to be re-reading favourite books… Comic books re-read… they pass… backtrack… linger… reinterpret panels… self-regulation and rigor build… metacognition and stamina grown – even if it looks suspicious like the reader is “just flipping through pages”. 

Online Resources for finding (consuming) or making (creating) comic books:

https://jarrettlerner.com/activities/ artist/author with a variety of ideas

https://beguilingbooks.com/ – has a variety of categories to explore! *for ALL ages…

https://www.canadacomicsol.org/comic-book-resources/websites/ based in Toronto, the free loaning library is amazing… for reading and creating… hint: how parents can read comics with their children: https://www.toon-books.com/tips-for-mom–dad.html