Since You've Been Asking... Presenting, the Graphic Poetry series!

3/25/2014

by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com

An Award-Winning Series that Presents Contemporary and Classic Poems in a Graphic Format

The Graphic Poetry series by Rubicon/Scholastic is one that is near and dear to my heart. As you'll recall from my earlier blog post on "The Literary Features of Graphic Novels," I served as series editor, having proposed a couple of panel pages for it and provided a rationale to the folks at Rubicon.

What makes the series work is that it uses a highly visual format of presenting poetry to a roughly middle school audience (although it can be used with younger or older students). However, the poems read just as they would in a text-only format because there are no extraneous sound effects or narrative asides. Sometimes the text of the poem is in narrative caption boxes and sometimes it comes out of the mouths of the characters, but it is uninterrupted by material that is not a part of the poem proper.

Each book contains one or two poems and there are twenty- one titles in all. Each also contains the poet biography's in a Between the Lines section that additionally focuses on developing children's familiarity with a specific literary feature or trope.

The series won the 2010 Textbook Excellence Award from The Text and Academic Authors Association and the 2011 Teachers' Choice Award for Children's books from Learning Magazine. For more information on the series and to look at how it can be used in the classroom, visit www.graphicpoetrybooks.com and then click the link for Canada or the US. As well, there is a PDF resource on the site, Teaching Graphic Poetry, that you can download and use in your classes!

2 Comments

Michael Carens Nedelsky link

3/25/2014 10:54:03 am

A few small things. First, I think you mentioned another graphic novel poetry series, a three volume one? The Graphic Canon I think? Would you tend to recommend this series over that one, and why?

Second, the hyperlink for Rubicon goes to the Rubicon homepage but sadly not to your rationale (perhaps it is not publicly available).

Finally, do you have a favorite work within the series? What about the combination of text and image in that particular work do you find most effective? Do you ever seek to teach the poem first without the words, and only the images provided? Or do you prefer students to initially conjure their own mental images having only heard the words?

Glen Downey link

3/26/2014 07:22:29 am

Hi Michael!

Great questions and insights. Re: the second point--you're right! I should hyperlink the article to the previous post where I talk about graphic poetry or the rationale of teaching comics in the classroom! The other series you mentioned in your first question is The Graphic Canon, and would be a better fit with, say 9-12 than middle school. It's a trade rather than an educational publication, but I'll be blogging about it in an upcoming post (it's the full range of genres as well, not just poetry!). For the Graphic Poetry series, I'm very fond of "The Cremation of Sam McGee." The artist was Francesco Francavilla, who has gone on to do wonderful work for DC, among others.

Thanks for your questions!

Glen

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Glen Downey

Dr. Glen Downey is an award-winning children's author, educator, and academic from Oakville, Ontario. He works as a children's writer for Rubicon Publishing, a reviewer for PW Comics World, an editor for the Sequart Organization, and serves as the Chair of English and Drama at The York School in Toronto.

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