"In a well-crafted story, everything makes sense." Gene Luen Yang, author/illustrator (and narrator/guide) in DRAGON HOOPS.
And graphic novels help us "In a well-crafted story, everything makes sense." Gene Luen Yang, author/illustrator (and narrator/guide) in DRAGON HOOPS.
And graphic novels help us to make sense of these stories in ways that are both inviting and inclusive. A recurring word resonates through DRAGON HOOPS: "Step."
Get ready to step into a new graphic novel by an author/illustrator that brought classroom teacher's attention around the potential for graphic novels with AMERICAN BORN CHINESE.
As a Hero's Journey story, DRAGON HOOPS presents each and every step in the wraparound of Mr. Yang's experiences as a writer looking for a new idea after BOXERS & SAINTS (which. . .well. . .can we stop and talk about the year that both BOXERS and SAINTS ((part of a set)) were both nominated for the National Book Award?). The small illustration of Yang pulling his new book set out of a shipping box in 2013 will not be lost on readers/fans of the artist's work.
Mr. Yang must walk across a small sidewalk from the classrooms to the gym to approach Coach Lou Ritchie with an idea for a new story. That he has to walk down a flight of stairs and quips that the coach's office is like a dungeon will not be lost on students of the Hero's Journey for Crossing the Threshold and Entering into the Belly of the Whale (sometimes, in order to find a story, we have to go down and dig deep).
This is all in the Prologue to the story before entering into Chapter 1 named for Coach Lou. Here we see the graphic novel presenting in chapters that can be read and enjoyed (and. . .if they have to be analyzed).
Coach Lou's story takes us back to the mid-80s through his four years at the school he will eventually come back to as a history teacher (he tells Mr. Yang, "You have to know your past in order to create a future."). Chapter 1 brings the new head coach all the way to a new season in 2015 wherein the intersection of two lives come together to begin the story of a season.
But, first, moved by the words of Coach Lou in regard to past and present, Mr. Yang, the narrator, brings us a history lesson on the game of basketball. Our narrative becomes nonfiction text within the early parts of a graphic novel.
As we meet the principle players on the new team, Yang does not ignore the macro settings of the story in presenting the impact of Michael Brown upon the young Oakland players who want to make a statement. In this regard, DRAGON HOOPS presents setting in a way that invites conversations around geography and opportunity and social issues surrounding the team as they enter into what they hope to be a championship season.
One of the strengths of DRAGON HOOPS is Yang's recognition that he is working within panels and not on the planks of a hardwood floor. Nothing is lost in the basketball action in the graphic novel which will help with the page turning of the most reluctant reader who is interesting in basketball. What Kwame Alexander's THE CROSSOVER has done for basketball in verse, Gene Luen Yang's DRAGON HOOPS is set to do with vision.
Yang expertly selects palates and fonts and schemas to communicate flashback, another gift of this graphic novels in the hands of a genius author/illustrator.
With the Coach Phelps chapter, Yang takes us back to a professional basketball without a league and introduces in this backstory material a reference to The Harlem Globetrotters which will surely make a natural "ladder" (Dr. Teri Lesesne) with a new picture book by Don Tate about The Harlem Globetrotters (you read it here first. . .maybe).
The backstory on Coach Phelps (Coach Lou is predecessor) hints at the racial tensions in the early history of basketball expressed in the macro infiltrating into the micro. The narrator, Mr. Yang works through the tension of including the Phelps story in panels depicting a consultation with his wife who agrees to leave Phelps out of the story (even though he has been presented). We also see the intersection of the lives of Phelps and Yang as Mr. Yang was Phelps's replacement in the classroom after Phelps "makes the news."
What Yang is able to do in graphic novel format borders on both phenomenal and meta. When one of the players asks Mr. Yang (the writer of the story) to fix his hairline in the sketches Yang is creating, we, the reader get to see creative process and editing/revision happening in real time over the course of a few panels (something that could not happen in prose but sets here to demonstrate a decision Yang is making as a writer and as an artist to capture the unique identities of the players he is writing about in the book).
In Chapter 6, Gene Luen Yang takes the reader out of the action and conversations regarding touch coaching choices that seem to mirror the authors's own difficult choices to find balance and back to the origins of female basketball. Again tone and schema here signal to the reader that this is backstory to be brought forward and opens up more opportunities to extend DRAGON HOOPS beyond its covers to include more stories about the game and its history.
Yang invites female players to step into early history into the game that would eventually see both male and female leagues despite early holdings that playing the game of basketball would give females "ugly muscles" and "scowling faces." Georgeann Wells gets to take center court for this portion of the book and gives all readers an opportunity to to read (and see for the graphic novel format) a story within the storied sport they might not have otherwise read, seen, or heard.
Each player on the squad gets a turn in the graphic novel to have their backstory told by Yang who at this point is traveling with the team and on a journey of his own through the game of basketball and the balancing act of teaching, basketball, family, and comics.
When DC makes an offer to Yang to draw the new Superman series, we are reminded that we are reading into a real season in real time.
When Yang is confronted by his wife and his conscience (which shape shifts under the influence of the graphic novel's gift), readers get to see the complex decisions authors must make even in memoir to capture the essence of a story without taking an easy way out or leaving any part of a story out that really is integral to the whole.
If classroom teachers are still on the fence about what graphic novels can do, here are some talking points around DRAGON HOOPS:
Basketball Writing/Drawing Storytelling Backstory Nonfiction Elements Allusions Complexity and Tension between the Macro, Meso, and Micro settings. Social Issues and Themes Awareness and Empathy
Taking that first step toward challenge, growth, and eventual change.
If we're talking about reading depth and stamina, the digital ARC of this graphic novel was about 450 pages with the embedded nonfiction elements serving to take the place of multiple illustrated texts on subjects related to, and of interest to, players and fans of basketball.
DRAGON HOOPS is a gift to the graphic novel format for its ability to utilize its panels as portals to the past creating paths back to the present. What could have been multiple volumes, Yang has seemingly compressed into a most accessible book that keeps the action going even when it seems to leave the court action to become, once again, a "book."
Reluctant readers are going to have a hard time putting DRAGON HOOPS on the bench. It is sure to get hot-passed from hand to hand, reader to reader. Someone (a librarian or classroom teacher need only put the ball into play).
Oh. . .and let's talk about all of those panels wherein the MacArthur Genius Grant recipient recalls early experiences with comics (Superman) and the narrator's sleeping attire (Superman) and the multiple references to the DC deal that brings DRAGON HOOPS full-circle with the new Superman series (which offers more extended reading to young adult readers).
All of these gifts of the graphic novel. . .and, in particular, THIS graphic novel are the products the gifts and talents of a classroom teacher become graphic novel artist. Like we wouldn't notice, Mr. Yang (I know that you are not comfortable with the nicknames).
I read a digital copy of this title for an early review. We will definitely be adding DRAGON HOOPS to our Room 407 classroom library....more
There are moments in a reader/teacher's experience when you can see a book getting ready to release and he, she, or they have already begun to pull thThere are moments in a reader/teacher's experience when you can see a book getting ready to release and he, she, or they have already begun to pull the "ladder" texts (READING LADDERS by Dr. Teri Lesesne) that might wrap-around the book to come. Of course, subject matter, especially historical periods, can create their own sense of ladders. Experienced readers, including librarians, reviewers, and classroom library curators, who have read middle grade and young adult for some time can point beyond the novels right to the other graphic novels with which THEY CALLED US ENEMY could reside and work in a ladder configuration. As one who has read Larry Dane Brimner's VOICES FROM THE CAMPS, I found many of those voices coming back to "tell of their accounts" while George shared his.
THEY CALLED US ENEMY meets and exceeds expectations for what it might present by way of subject and approach. For those of us who know George Takei for his witty presence in the social media spaces and his trademark "Oh myyyy" (or perhaps sci-fi fans will remember that there is an asteroid out there that named after the author) will experience more than a shift in the author's persona as presentation here becomes more of a revelation of who this figure has always been as witness to and advocate for those affected by an American government that would intern its own people. In his Today Show appearance with the book's release, the hosts were embarrassed to say that they were not taught about this moment in history and discovered this time period later in life.
In this light, I am designating THEY CALLED US ENEMY as a "gatefold title" that opens up and creates its own connections to other books about the internment of Japanese people by the American government during the 1940s. Part of what I am learning in visiting this time period is that to call this a Japanese Internment suggests something that is in error regarding those demanding and enacting internment and the internees. What's more, THEY CALLED US ENEMY opens itself to historical archives and documents that could be (and perhaps should be) used to help the book to open itself up beyond memoir into classroom resource that satisfies standards requiring the synthesis of text in the classroom experience.
As a "lightship" title, THEY CALLED US ENEMY, George Takei's memoir provides a narrative arc that begins "in media res" of the Takei family being taken into custody by soldiers. This is a moment that Takei references in his Today Show appearance on 16 July as an early formative memory related to the internment of his family and provides a place where classroom teachers might go to provide a quick, four-minute introduction to the story to come. This moment is depicted in eighteen panels over the span of four pages to set the scene for the book. Those sharing graphic novels with young readers will see the craft of story presented in panels that present dialogue and sound and silent response that make graphic novels a power medium by which to communicate quickly what might take prose paragraphs and pages to present. Three panels lead the reader out of the opening scene into a transition to. . .
George Takei presenting at TEDxKyoto in 2014. His TED talk, "Why I Love a Country That Once Betrayed Me." For teachers of older students, this talk clocks in at sixteen minutes as a means of leading into the memoir. THEY CALLED US THE ENEMY draws upon thirty-eight seconds of the talk in order to lead into the narrative to come. This provides an opportunity to "front load"the book or to serve as a summary of the text at the end as Takei becomes real to the readers who have experienced his memoir in graphic novel form.
Like other graphic novels presented about this time period, a singular and arresting color schema provide a mood for the text not distracted by the use of colors and effects. However, the creators of this book do present lighter moments within the memoir that begin to look most manga and anime style which will appeal to young readers who recognize the approach.
That the book does have lighter moments (don't miss a young George's attempt to conjure treats from American soldier/guards with the use of a "magic word" passed down by older boys in the camp) does not detract from the overall message and embedded themes of the work.
As the story unfolds, a time jump brings George Takei to Hyde Park in 2017. Footage of Takei's visi to the F.D.R. Museum and Presidential Library are available at platforms like YouTube which provide for multi-media interludes within the reading. This first interlude takes place at about the 10-15% of the totality of the text which might provide that "break" for young readers that help them to center the author's account with the words shared in real life.
The next look at an older Takei takes the reader backward in time to 2000 when he was appointed by President William Jefferson Clinton to the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. This moment is depicted at about 60% of the total text and provides an opportunity to bring into the reading more of the historical arc that wraps around Takei's account.
Yet another historical allusion happens near the conclusion of THEY CALLED US ENEMY wherein Takei meets Martin Luther King Jr.. Even this moment is presented as a means to point the reader back to the influence of Takei's father upon the author's activism and advocacy.
As a hero's journey text, readers will see conflict between the experiences of a young George and the George who will age four years while in the camps. An older George questions the decisions, actions, and intentions of his father that are responded to in a way that provides an opportunity to talk about the lessons of our fathers. Takei references his father's lessons in his Today Show appearance and this moment is rendered clearly by way of expressing a theme of the book in the graphic novel form.
And, this memoir would not be complete without Takei's being offered the iconic role which be defining in the sense of media folklore, but the moment that Roddenberry offers Takei is not to be missed by readers for what this role has meant by way of representation. I don't need to suggest that students might be introduced to clips of Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu (who will ultimately achieve the rank of Star Fleet Captain of the USS Excelsior (Stardate 9521.6).
THEY CALLED US ENEMY is a powerful look at one man's experience while imprisoned as a child to bend toward current events that invite this graphic novel to not only be a stand-alone text as introduction to the subject but as a precursor to stories straight out of current events. Here, we move from "ladder" by way of historical event to "leading into" current events that allow Takei to present a beacon of hope achieved over a period of time to a moment in time that calls for that same hope.
It is my hope that a review of this graphic novel might create awareness of its release and availability to classroom teachers and how it might be presented in synthesis with other text to illuminate social issues that ask and require social response.
Memoir and graphic novel come together to bring out the author's experiences as a young, third cycle immigrant to the United States. Arriving in 1960sMemoir and graphic novel come together to bring out the author's experiences as a young, third cycle immigrant to the United States. Arriving in 1960s Marion, Alabama, the memoir brings in significant events within the Civil Rights Movement lending the book to further conversations around the subject. The artwork itself becomes symbolic throughout the book and will present opportunities to discuss how illustrations and artwork can be used as interior monologue and exterior presentations and interactions with others. ...more
I purchased this book after finding the reference to Helen Betty Osborne in David Alexander Robertson's other graphic novel, SUGAR FALLS. In Betty, weI purchased this book after finding the reference to Helen Betty Osborne in David Alexander Robertson's other graphic novel, SUGAR FALLS. In Betty, we get the backstory to the reference and an invitation to consider the disappearance of indigenous females in Canada. This is a shorter graphic novel that might ask the classroom teacher to consider the event and the presentation of the event before inclusion within the classroom library. ...more
When Daniel is assigned to write a first-person report on boarding school experiences, his friend, April, introduces him to her "Kokum" who in turn shWhen Daniel is assigned to write a first-person report on boarding school experiences, his friend, April, introduces him to her "Kokum" who in turn shares her personal account of the boarding school experience.
SUGAR FALLS is a short story rendered in the graphic novel format. It is based upon the true story of Betty Ross, Elder from Cross Lake First Nation. The author of this title is also the author of the Governor General's Literary Awards title, WHEN WE WERE ALONE.
Online resources point to the difficulties of this book's depiction of corporal punishment and suggestions of, and allusions to, instances of sexual abuse. A suggested connector text for this book would be the graphic novel, THE LIFE OF HELEN BETTY OSBORNE (at the time of this review, I have not read this title). ...more
A very enjoyable graphic novel about one summer's camping experience.
Or is this book about what it means to be on the outside and the outside nature A very enjoyable graphic novel about one summer's camping experience.
Or is this book about what it means to be on the outside and the outside nature of the campground is an allegory for the main character's experience at home?
A very enjoyable graphic novel about learning to fit in with one's peers.
Or is this book about the difficulties of discovery of what happens to us in those "tween" years when we are too young to fit in with the olders and not quite knowing what to to do with the youngers?
A very enjoyable graphic novel about learning how to deal with tricky social situations.
Or is this book presenting a sort of dress rehearsal for what we do when we have to make a choice for our own conduct when it comes to the treatment of others.
This graphic novel is layered. At its surface, we get a summer camp memoir, but, deeper within the book is the idea of self-discovery and an awareness the develops over the course of a season.
I got to read this first at ALAN 2016 in Atlanta, but I revisited the book this summer to really dive into what was being presented in the visuals aloI got to read this first at ALAN 2016 in Atlanta, but I revisited the book this summer to really dive into what was being presented in the visuals along with the story. This is a great example of what graphic novels can do to present, in a visual way, what might take pages and pages of description to do. This one is discussion ready in regard to healing and loss, preservation of tradition, and personal accountability and action. Lots of potential "ladder" material here. ...more
The author/illustrator of THE GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL and DROWNED CITY is back this fall (just in time for the new school year) to offer an almost eiThe author/illustrator of THE GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL and DROWNED CITY is back this fall (just in time for the new school year) to offer an almost eight-year retrospective on the Syrian refugee situation. The back matter of this graphic novel include first-hand account of refugee settlements and the efforts on the part of those making the difficult journey and those receiving and tending to their needs. Brown presents the story through a perspective of personal account with voices of the images breaking through a sense of a "fourth wall" to address the reader directly in regard to difficulties, losses, motivations, hopes, dreams, and determination.
As a textual braid, Don Brown's graphic novel would work well with the picture book, STEPPING STONES: A REFUGEE FAMILY'S STORY and Alan Gratz's REFUGEE. We've added graphic novel categories to our shelves to capture the idea that this graphic novel is part of an ongoing event and world concern to which our students could become aware and plugged into with the release of books like this one in this particular format. ...more
A good graphic novel for those readers looking for the "next" graphic for summer reading or otherwise. Musicians and fans of "baby bands" might like tA good graphic novel for those readers looking for the "next" graphic for summer reading or otherwise. Musicians and fans of "baby bands" might like this title and find a connection to thirteen-year-old Bina. ...more
Amazing. Simply amazing. This book would make a wonderful read-alone or read-along with Thainha Lai's INSIDE OUT & BACK AGAIN. Amazing. Simply amazing. This book would make a wonderful read-alone or read-along with Thainha Lai's INSIDE OUT & BACK AGAIN. ...more
A lovely graphic novel. I have readers for this in mind already. They usually come to class wearing the warm up jackets from their dance company. Now.A lovely graphic novel. I have readers for this in mind already. They usually come to class wearing the warm up jackets from their dance company. Now. . .what kind of lead learner would I be if I didn't find this for them?...more
Instant ladders to RED SCARF GIRL. Set in the 70's, this graphic novel serves as a memoir as powerful as STITCHES in places while as playful as KNUCKLInstant ladders to RED SCARF GIRL. Set in the 70's, this graphic novel serves as a memoir as powerful as STITCHES in places while as playful as KNUCKLEHEAD in others (see the sister's attempt to emulate the ideas of their society and the chicks who "benefit" from this). ...more
The second volume in the Bayou series. Again, some scenarios may not be appropriate for all readers, but for the violence and mayhem there is no questThe second volume in the Bayou series. Again, some scenarios may not be appropriate for all readers, but for the violence and mayhem there is no questionable language. This one is rich with allusions to deep south mythology and references to Uncle Remus's tales. The artwork is super crisp in this one with dream sequences really popping out from the classic feel of the art and the paper in the rest of the book. A promise of more volumes to come. I bought the two available and now I am hooked on this series....more
I got to see the Advanced Reader Copy at NetGalley. Much of the artwork was unfinished which makes me looking forward even more to October when I can I got to see the Advanced Reader Copy at NetGalley. Much of the artwork was unfinished which makes me looking forward even more to October when I can finally see the finished copy. Looking at the ARC is like looking into Barry's artistic process.
A sword, a troll, a meteorite, a magical transformation, a Mirka doppelganger, a contest that will have a winner. . .and a loser who will have to leave Hereville forever.
A longer review to come with the finished project in October, but put this one on your reading radar now. . .especially if you enjoyed the first book!...more
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