wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

As new publisher of graphic novel versions of Shakespeare, Dickens, Bronte et al we've found that the response from children, parents and teachers has been overwhelmingly positive. Our free downloads of the Shakespeare set texts launched in December, have been downloaded circa 100,000 times. Not just UK teachers using them, but emails of thanks from all over the world.
They are here http://www.classicalcomics.com/education/freedownloads.html
and vaialble to all.

Teaching with comics makes perfect sense, especially with the expansion of a media culture that’s highly visual. For me, comics were a great introduction to some pretty complex ideas—or even tackled issues better than most all-text representations. I still will never forget that it was comic adventure stories that illuminated American military adventures in Russia during its civil war and its occupation of the Philippines—stuff that I never learned in 12 years of public school or 4 years of college.

And “zounds” I believe is from “God’s Wounds!” or “ ‘s Wounds!”—an old fashioned swear that pops up in Shakespeare and others.

Does the Elizabethan oath/interjection "zounds!" really show up in comic books??

Comics were a huge influence on me as a young reader. My parents are big comic readers and the material was made available to me as far back as I can remember.

I agree with the caller who said that comics increased his vocabulary. While all comics might not be written to the most advanced audience almost all of them are written with a more advanced vocabulary than a four or five year-old possesses. Long multi-part stories also likely helped my transition from one-off stories to chapter books more readily as a child.

PICTURE THIS

Teaching methods

Need to be flexed;

Time for stretching,

For graphic text.

I heard you ask the meaning of "Zounds." It comes from "God's wounds," and the original pronunciation was "zoonds" and not "zownds."

Zounds is a shortening of "God's wounds" (i.e. wounds of Christ from the Crucifixion) and used to be a profanity ("bloody" has a similar origin). It's like the "'swounds" you see a lot in Shakespeare.

'Zounds comes from Shakespeare. It is an abbreviation of "God's Wounds" that was popular during his lifetime

I haven't been a huge comic book reader in the past, but I have read some graphic novels that have dealt with serious and complex issues in very touching and sophisticated ways. Specifically the comic-style series "Maus," which illustrates a holocaust survivor's memoir through storyboards, is a great example of some really high class literature in this form.

Excelsior, Brian!

My very first memory of really being able to read was at the supermarket while my mom was shopping. That was when I would read the comics, The one that I remember was an Illustrated Classic, of Joan of Arc. What I remember was the feeling of being able to get the story and how wonderful that feeling was. I was probably in first grade. I'm a prolific reader now.
I think it is a great idea to introduce, why it isn't already done?

Zounds (pronounced Zoonds) is old english for God's Wounds. Common in Shakespeare

I studied Graphic Design at the University of Georgia. For my History of Design class I had to give a presentation for which I chose to talk about comics as a graphic medium. I used Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud as a reference. That book is now a required text book for the Graphic Design program at UGA.

I am the program director for a not for profit children's arts organization (CAW4Kids). We just had a comic book reading & signing yesterday at the Hue-Man Bookstore in Harlem for a comic book written and produced by middle school children in an after school program. The kids wrote and drew about what they would do if they became president:
http://huemanbookstore.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=storepicks&page=303602

www.caw4kids.org

I moved to the States at the age of 15 and did not speak any English, so when I enrolled in 11th grade English, I could not follow the class when they read Macbeth. So the teacher gave me a comic book version of Macbeth and that's how I was able to participate in the class. The experience was very interesting and really helped me out with feeling like I was part of the class, but also giving me something I could handle. In retrospect, I think she was quite clever to do that and made me less afraid of tackling Shakespeare with my limited English.

That's old hat in France where they call these books "bande dessiné" - I remember being shocked to see a medical doctor reading hardbound comic books to relax.