The Graphic Cannon

I want to start out by saying that I think The Grapic Cannon is really cool and I am glad I purchased it. I have already spent a few hours just looking through the book and reading snippets of the stories or looking at the art and style of each section. I agree that maybe an essential thing for English teachers to own for their students, if not just for themselves. But there are some issues that I could see arising from it depending how you let students use it.

The Graphic Cannon has an assortment of styles that it uses to illustrate iconic stories. While some illustrate the entire story summarized, others only illustrate a chapter, or an image. A problem could occur when a student uses the summary as an excuse to reading the actual book, or tries to get by reading stories from these volumes rather than the actual books themselves. I think The Graphic Cannon is a good tool for students to use to get them interested in reading one of the stories portrayed in it. Seeing just a picture based on the story or a few comic strips could really get a student interested in wanting to read it. I could also see using it as a comparison if you read the chapter that is depicted in the Cannon and compared it to the actual text to see how the artist interpreted it and how the students might have interpreted it differently. I don't know how you could teach a lesson solely on just the picture, like Scarlet Letter, so I am interested to see how Cecilio does it in his presentation today!

Again, I am still very happy that I purchased The Graphic Cannon and I am interested to see how I can integrate it into my classroom someday. I just have to make sure that it is not the only thing that the students read and make sure that they read the actual stories as well. I went through most of elementary school saying that I had read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when in reality I had only read a Graphic novel version of it. When I finally read the story I saw how much better it was using my own imagination for the images rather than the ones that were already given to me. So I will just have to be careful with how I use graphic novels in general in the classroom.