Aw, the video doesn’t seem to want to embed. But: awesome video about comics and graphic novels in the works.
Also, Happy Banned Books Week!
Exciting!
A week or so ago, I applied to be a reviewer for the website No Flying No Tights, which reviews graphic novels with an angle of helping librarians choose for their collections. And I’m in! (The site will be re-launching soon with new content, including my first review for them.) It’s a super-cool website, and is also somewhat of a Big Deal in the realm of online resources for librarians. (It’s even mentioned in the textbook for the Young Adult Lit class I took two semesters ago.) I’m thrilled about this. Woohoo!
In other news, am continuing to make progress on The Book of Foxes. I’m still going through the completed text and creating the illustrations to go with it, and it’s exciting to see the scroll bar sliding lower and lower on the document.
Goings-On! And Thesis!
It’s thesis time! By which I mean it is my last semester, and I’m having oodles of fun working on my thesis, which is a study to try and determine the most effective and popular way to shelve graphic novels in public libraries. I’m super-psyched about this project. It would seem my department likes it, too – they gave me an award for the best research proposal of the semester. Woo!
Several months ago, after meeting with the director of my hometown’s public library, I located all of the eighty-plus graphic novels in the building. They were scattered through the Juvenile Fiction and Juvenile Nonfiction, Teen Fiction and Teen Nonfiction, Adult Nonfiction, and even Science Fiction, sections. I took note of all of them and started recording how many times they checked out each month.
After getting three months’ circulation data, I have moved to Phase Two of the project: pulling all of the graphic novels to place in a separate section. They are now marked in the catalog as graphic novels, and green tape on their spines will hopefully get shelvers to return them to their new spot – here.
Another shot:
I will now see whether, and how, the circulation rates change. My hypothesis is that they will go up, as I suspect many patrons who like graphic novels simply didn’t realize the library had these.
The display on top could be a spurious factor, certainly, but I put it there for two reasons:
- It promotes the new section – and graphic novels! – for the library and its patrons, the interests of whom are at least as important as the pristine scientific nature of my study.
- I need it to display, and give IRB-required information on, the survey that I’m asking patrons to fill out about the new section. Hopefully, this will help to support the data I gather on circ rates by showing which shelving system patrons actually prefer.
Also, I worked hard on it.
All those middle-school posterboard projects finally pay off! Huzzah!
Overdue Update
*Generic final exams/holiday/family stuff happening-related excuse for not posting*
Work on the graphic-novel-ish project is coming along well. I’ve been doing both the writing and the drawings for it, though the writing is far ahead of the artwork (eight chapters written, two illustrated). I’ve already scanned the drawings for the first two chapters and integrated them with the written parts in a sort of mock-up of what the story should be like.
The written work is in its first draft, of course. I’m not sure, draft-wise, where the drawings are. I’ve been sketching them in mechanical pencil, then tracing with pen and erasing the sketches. I’m quite happy with them, but I am beginning to look at tablets that would let me use a pen-like tool to draw things directly on the computer. This would make changing them immeasurably easier, and also give me the valuable ability to draw lines that have the potential to be erased, but also the potential to be final draft lines. As it is now, I basically draw every illustration twice, and occasionally – despite things being just how I want them in the sketch – the pen just goes jagging off on its own and does something else.
My brother has a tablet that he rarely uses, but when I tried it once before, I found it unintuitive and difficult to use. I plan to try it again over winter break. Lots of artists I admire – especially webcomic ones – use tablets to do awesome art, so obviously it can be done.
Anyway, the project is still very exciting to me. And it provides a brand-new list of strange things for me to research, e.g. hummingbird species of northern California. I do love me some bizarre research!
Unexpected Development!
Well, I’m still not actually participating in NaNoWriMo, largely because this development came a few days late and it is HARD to catch up on word count, but I was broadsided a few days ago by the need to work on a new project. This project combines a storyline I’d been tossing around for a year or so and a format I’m excited about.
I’ve kept a journal since 1996, and have often doodled in it to record what something looked like, or illustrate a sarcastic point, or show how I imagine something. I also once wrote a story in my sketchbook, with words and pictures together. These were always fun, but I didn’t take them seriously, and assumed no one else would, either.
Enter The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
When I read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I filed away the interesting knowledge that hey, people besides me actually like this format. And I love it. I’ve seen these called “semi-graphic novels.” As with graphic novels, one key point is that the pictures are not just illustrations – they’re involved with the text. In these diary-style books, the conceit that the first-person protagonist actually drew the pictures is a powerful way to strengthen the connection between character and reader: “I’m not just going to tell you about this, I’m going to show you.”
(Also, pictures are fun.)
So I was happy to see that this kind of project was actually, you know, publishable, but I didn’t think much more about it until a few days ago, when that plot I’d been playing with tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Um, I could do that,” shortly followed by, “YOU WILL WRITE ME NOW.”
So that’s what I’m working on at the moment. It is more fun than should really be legal.
In closing, another fun thing combining books and comic-style graphics.
Because Pictures are Worth a Thousand Dirty, Dirty Words
So, here are the ALA’s top ten most challenged graphic novels and the rationales given:
Absolute Sandman by Neil Gaiman – Anti-Family, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
Blankets by Craig Thompson – Sexually Explicit content, Other (unspecified)
Bone series by Jeff Smith – Sexually Explicit content, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel – Sexually Explicit Content
Maus by Art Spiegelman – Anti Ethnic
Pride of Baghdad by Brian Vaughn – Sexually Explicit Content
Tank Girl by Alan Martin & Jamie Hewlitt – Nudity and Violence
The Dark Knight Strikes Again by Frank Miller – Sexually Explicit Content
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill – Nudity, Sexually Explicit Content and Unsuited to Age Group
Watchmen, by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons – Unsuited to Age Group
So . . . Maus. “Anti-ethnic.” Also, Bone is on this list. Despite what the name might seem to imply, Bone is not porn, I promise. It leans far more toward “adorable,” really.
On a sillier note, a study of library use . . . by marshmallow Peeps.
Just got back from the excellent James River Writers’ Conference. More about that soon!