Paul Register is a school librarian at Ecclesfield School, Sheffield and organiser of the Stan Lee Excelsior Award for graphic novels and manga aimed at 11-16 year olds created in partnership with the Stan Lee Foundation, dediciated to improving literacy worldwide...
I've just been reading a document recommended to me by a teacher. It is the National Union of Teachers guidelines for increasing 'Reading for Pleasure' across a whole school.
Obviously, this is a laudable goal and something all schools should be thinking about. It's connected to a conference they've recently held called "Reading4Pleasure". (Why they've chosen to use 'text speak' when naming this initiative I have no idea. Do today's next generation of teachers really need simple English dumbing down for them?)
Anyway... Have a look at the piece below. It's copied from this document and attempts to highlight how best teachers can create a "classroom library" with a wide variety of reading material for students:
In order to fulfil all these functions, there needs to be a wide range of categories of reading materials within a classroom library, for example: stories and narrative accounts, eg, fairy tales, folk tales, and biographies; picture books with thought-provoking images and examples of artistic talent; information books; computers with bookmarked Web pages, including major reference sources; miscellaneous reading materials, such as popular magazines, newspapers, catalogues, recipe books, encyclopaedias, maps, reports, captioned photographs, posters, diaries and letters; joke books, comic books, word-puzzle books; and student-authored books and stories.
No mention whatsoever of graphic novels or manga titles and "comic books" are lumped in with joke books and puzzle books! Brilliant,eh?!
Clearly the 'teacher' that wrote this has no concept of comics beyond Beano and Dandy! Even the description of "picture books" is a bit strange, as though the actual story/writing is of no consequence.
Last month, comics writer Al Ewing (who's writing a
series of increasingly regular reviews and musings for the Travelling
Man website) gave the thumbs up to 2000AD, urging readers past and present to give it a try.
With Al's permission, we're cross-posting his enthusiastic feature here...
2000AD 1753 - on sale now
So! I’ve put this off long enough. Let’s talk about 2000AD
– the UK comic that exploded onto the scene in 1977, kickstarting the
careers of dozens of top-flight writers and artists, and is still going
strong today. I started reading it when I was nine, and – barring a
couple of hiccups – I’ve read it ever since. Around ten years ago, I
sent them in a five-page horror story. Now I make my entire living from
writing of one sort or another. 2000AD has been very good to me.
So excuse me if I get a little evangelical.
Now, there are lots of good reasons for not reading2000AD.
You may, for example, be unable to read, although if you’re reading
this I’ll assume that’s not the case. You might dislike the medium of
comics in general, although again, if you’re here reading this that’s
probably not true. Or, possibly, you might have sustained a terrible
head injury that’s destroyed certain parts of your brain with the result
that every time you enjoy something you violently defecate all over
yourself, your immediate surroundings, and the cat.
These are all excellent reasons not to read 2000AD. However, if you can read, if you like reading comics and if you like enjoying things, you really should try it.
For a start – it’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s the sale of the century et cetera.
If you’re in the UK – or on the internet – it’s cheaper than just about
any American comic, and you get more and bigger pages of story. And the savings don’t end there! Because
individual episodes are usually around five pages long, there’s
literally no room for padding. So you get more story per page compared
with your favourite American comic too.
Which all means nothing if the stories aren’t up to scratch – but the
quality has been on a consistent high since at least… well, the year
2000 AD. (At this point, the name of the comic is a trusted brand of
excellence rather than a far-off future date. It’s an idiosyncracy fans
happily turn a blind eye to, like the regular insistences by alien
editor Tharg that I – and everyone else who ever worked at 2000AD, including Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Jock, Duncan Fegredo and Chris Weston, to name a few – am in fact a robot.)
Low Life by Rob Williams and D’Israeli, which started in Prog 1752
Case in point – the current run of 'Low Life', a strip set in the world of Judge Dredd and dealing with Justice Department’s undercover agents. Rob Williams,
on script duties, is busy crafting one of the greatest stories of his
career, bringing new depth to his great comedic creation Dirty Frank as
the undercover Judge explores the underbelly of a future Tokyo in search
of a missing fellow officer.
I hope Rob will forgive me for saying that
– while I love all his work –'Low Life' is, in my
opinion, his best. Every panel – every line of dialogue – is packed with
intelligence, life, heart and soul, and any fans of his, or of good
writing in general, need to be reading it.
Matt Brooker – alias D’Israeli – is on art chores,
and as usual his elegant, emotive, perfectly composed clear-line style
knocks every page out of the park. I don’t know why the Big Two aren’t
fighting each other in some kind of Octagon for his services, but their
loss is 2000AD‘s gain. Words can’t describe how good
his art is, so let’s pay a quick visit to his blog, where you’ll find
many posts dedicated to his painstaking process – this one is a nice introduction to the kind of beautiful vistas on display in the strip.
That’s one story, out of five. In addition, in the latest crop of
stories – the first prog of which, 1750, is available digitally from the
2000AD website,
and 1753 is now on sale at the better newsagents, or (cough) at your local
Travelling Man – you have top cop and future film sensation Judge Dredd, at the seasoned hands of creator John Wagner and Henry Flint; stiff upper-lipped paranormal investigator Ampney Crucis, by Ian Edgington and Simon Davis; the unfolding mystery of Angel Zero, by Kek-W and John Burns; and the mind-exploding, reality-warping strangeness and charm of Indigo Prime – yes, it’s back at long last – by John Smith and Edmund Bagwell.
And, sooner or later, I’ll be back in the prog myself. But I’m not just shouting2000AD to the rooftops because I’m in it – I’m promoting it because I love
it, because it does astonishing things that other comics can’t, because
it fosters incredible talents that other publishers won’t, because week
in, week out, after thirty-five years, it’s still the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic.
