Initially, I planned on having this book be one of the blogs I skipped. But after reading it there was no way I could skip writing this blog. When I had heard of graphic novels being taught a part of me thought it was ridiculous. Ok all of me. I couldn't figure out why students would be interested in reading a graphic novel--then I realized I was thinking of myself; I would not be interested in reading a graphic novel. When I was working at the middle school though I found that middle school students would love to have a graphic novel as their book to read. I saw this in two ways. The first was in Mrs. Gutierrez's (the teacher I follow relentlessly) intervention class. This is a class of five or six students who have had problems with reading or writing in the past (whether in class, testing, or both) and Mrs. Gutierrez gives them extra help with reading and comprehension. In this class a girl had finished reading all of the Maximum Ride books and was now reading the graphic novel versions of them. All of the other students wanted to look at the graphic novels and in the end made one young boy I paid special attention to want to read Maximum Ride. This is a boy who has an English teacher that is not preparing him well in the slightest. He must read a book and write a half page on what is going on . . . that is it. The teacher isn't reading the same book--the students get to read what they want--so she doesn't know if he is actually understanding what is going on at all. Graphic novels was a way to get the students interested in reading and see that reading can be fun. Another instance in Mrs. Gutierrez's class that I saw that graphic novels would be useful was when she read the picture book Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne. In this book every page is filled with little details that even Mrs. Gutierrez had never noticed, and she has read this book many many times (she taught it when she taught elementary school and now the two years of middle school). The book also has four points of views and explains the same story but from a different characters point of view. And the kids LOVED it! They were raising their hands constantly, wanting to share what they had found in the pictures. They didn't even know that they were learning but they were. This showed me that graphic novels can get students excited to learn and excited to be involved. The graphic novel American Born Chinese I think would be perfect for middle school students. There are some inappropriate aspects to the book but I don't think they are bad enough to make it so I could not teach it--middle school students are not oblivious and are at that age where they are noticing the opposite sex.
I loved how there were three parts of the story and how throughout you had no idea where they came together. For me, when I first started reading I thought the section with the cousin was so obnoxious! I kept thinking "ok there has to be a point to this. This is far to offensive" but I realized this was planned. I think that story was showing how Jin thought people saw him. Even the monkey story had to do with Jin. The stories showed great character development. I think this would be a great text for seventh graders in my Identity unit. Jin is struggling with this idea of identity, both being in middle school and being a Chinese American. But I think all students could relate to this graphic novel--and they would be engaged and want to read it.
I am not going to touch on this much since I discussed it above but I think the fact that it is a graphic novel will appeal to adolescents. They will be intrigued by both the story and the pictures. Even though they may want adults to see them as adults and goof off about "little kid things" I know they would love this graphic novel. I also think it appeals to adolescents in what it talks about. A first crush. How to act on a first date. Wanting to be what you think people want but then realizing that's not who you are. These are all things middle school students face but in a unique twist. There are so many things I could have students do with this. Create their own graphic novel line for their life, acting out a scene from one of the sections that I assign, creating a video thing for the story and what it says. So many options! I'm so excited to start planning!
My rating: A
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