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"The kids (and adults) love your stuff!" Sita Canady, Virginia homeschool parent |
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Archive for 2008
Book Review: "Pyongyang" by Guy Delisle
Written on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 [permanent link]I listed in my Teacher reading list a comic for high-school age and up called “Pyongyang,” but wanted to expand on my one-sentence review of the comic.
With the New York Philharmoic performing a groundbreaking concert in North Korea this week, now is a great time to have students read “Pyongyang,” a 2005 comic by Canadian-born cartoonist Guy Delisle. The concert has provided a splash of media attention to this closed, Communist country, but Delisle’s work provides a lot of simple details that show how a government can grind down people. He proves that in the modern rush to digitize and animate and YouTube, the pencil is still one of the most powerful tools a human can wield.
The grayness of his pencils perfectly suits his travelogue about his time in North Korea’s capital city while supervising an animation project. Most of us who follow the news have a mental picture of this nation controlled by one totalitarian family for the past 50 years, but Delisle provides evidence of a cultural brainwashing that goes even farther than I suspected.
The details are human and built naturally:
Peasants sweep the superhighway that no one uses.
Nothing else can hang on a wall holding a portrait of Kim Il-Sung.
Movies and TV shows continue to glorify resistance to the Japanese occupation in World War II or the American fighting in the Korean War. (There was a massive effort before this week’s concert to tear down a lot of street posters showing the same kind of images, but reporters still saw some of them.)
But the most chilling moment comes when the cartoonist notices there are no handicapped people on the clean streets of Pyongyang. His guide answers, “There are none. We’re a very homogenous nation. All North Koreans are born strong, intelligent and healthy.” And that’s that. Delisle concludes that his guide believes it – the propaganda has sunk in.
The best joke is that the North Korean handlers panic about any photography a foreigner attempts. But they never questioned Delisle’s pencil. Their mistake.
CONTENT WARNING: There is no violence or nudity and only a handful of PG-13 swear words.
Posted in Graphic Novel Review | No Comments »
Kempsville Elementary Chalk Talk
Written on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 [permanent link]
How do you hold the attention of 500 elementary students on a rainy day? Show them how a few penlines makes anyone into a superdude! I draw three versions of myself in my Author’s Purpose talks, to show how a powerful imagination can reshape reality (and there is no greater reshaping to be done than to make me into a superhero!).
I had a great time at Kempsville Elementary in Virginia Beach last week. After the opening session in the cafeteria I did break-out sessions with two classes at a time, and we drew up a storm. A brainstorm – there were drawings about Ben Franklin’s kite hypothesis, Thomas Jefferson’s narrow miss of a hangman’s noose and Abe Lincoln’s old magic hat. We even explained why the Powhatan Indians built longhouses out of the reeds and sticks on the ground around them — because no one had invented “Longhouse Depot” for Saturday errands yet.
Elementary students love feeling the power of their own creativity. So did I – so I never gave it up!
Tags: Author's Purpose, Bentley Boyd, Chester the Crab, graphic novels, Kempsville Elemenetary, Virginia Beach
Posted in Author's Purpose | No Comments »
American’s Back!
Written on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 [permanent link]
A few weeks after I posted a blog here about the death of the magazine American Heritage, I was wandering through my local Barnes and Noble and the American Heritage logo jumped out at me! It’s BACK!!
Editor Edwin S. Grosvenor has reinvented it as a quarterly magazine pushing History in the headlines – just look at that cover of women soldiers in the Middle East! Throughout the mag there is a push to use History to understand what the news is now.
I’m happy to see print isn’t dead. But there’s no mistaking the priorities here. The mag is now published only a third as often as it once was, and it really becomes a glossy marketing tool for the staff’s website (which carries the tagline “History’s homepage”). The good news is that the mag and the website are in step in their new, lively dance. The website features:
* the news of actor Heath Ledger’s death because he starred in the well-received historical movie “The Patriot”
* easy-to-find blog entries, including one about how to volunteer on an archaeological dig at Mount Vernon
* news of the rediscovery of photos of Lincoln’s second inauguration, which had been mislabeled long ago
It’s a great resource for teachers making the case to students that History is new everyday. It’s been a great resource for me! www.americanheritage.com
Tags: American Heritage, Bentley Boyd, Chester Comix, historian, History's Homepage
Posted in History Book Review | 2 Comments »
