Persepolis and "Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School"

I was introduced to Persepolis by my husband earlier this year, and quickly devoured both books. I found them to be extremely informative about a subject that I knew close to nothing about. This was the first graphic novel that I (consciously) read and I can honestly say that it changed my mind about the way these books can be used, especially in a classroom. This text would absolutely be one that I would place into an adolescent literature curriculum! Ideally, I would like to work with a Social Studies teacher to make this a cross-curricular unit-- obviously someone in that field would (should) have more knowledge about the issues that Persepolis discusses. Being able to see the crisis in Iran through the eyes of a teenager would only heighten the interest and comprehension of the material in a classroom setting.

The article Using Graphic Novels... was interesting, although, because of my research background, I would have preferred to have a bit more of a solid conclusion than this offered. I see that the instructors using the writing activities along with a graphic novel felt that their assignments/unit plans were successful, but I personally saw no concrete evidence of the fact. My concerns with this article were the fact that the teachers were very focused on these urban students being able to read "illustrated stories;" however, I am not sure how practical this actually is. Does using graphic novels help these students to read non-fiction texts or any other genre? Realistically, what types of texts are the students going to be reading later in their lives? I did like how this article related the usefulness of graphic novels to ELL students... this, obviously, is very practical if for no other reason than to help to learn the language.

On p. 20, Frey and Fisher say that they used Will Eisner's novels because "his subject matter was primarily about urban life and therefore addressed topics familiar to the students..." As a Reading Specialist, I know that any time a reader can connect to a text, their comprehension of that text automatically (in the majority of cases) increases. So, this makes me wonder if the reason the use of graphic novels was effective in enhancing writing in these students was ONLY because of the genre, or if it had more to do with the fact that the novels they were reading discussed topics of great interest to the students!

Despite my criticism, I was able to find useful techniques for the use of graphic novels in a classroom in this article. For example, I particularly like the "shades of meaning" metaphor on p. 21. This is something that I could use in my 5th grade class as an excellent vocabulary activity, which could assist them in their writing. I also liked the idea of giving students disposable cameras to use "illustrate" their stories. This is also something that I could do in my classroom. I am interested to see if there are graphic novels that are suitable for use in an elementary classroom. Persepolis is a text that I could use (maybe) with my highest reading group, but definitely not the majority of my class. Does anyone know of a particular text that would work? Please share!