The Walking Dead Graphic Novels

I just read all of the Walking Dead Graphic Novels by Robert Kirkman. I love this series and can't wait to get my hands on the most recent novel book six. I have always loved zombies and this was a very delightful read for me. I have never read graphic novels about zombies although as a child I did enjoy comic books. I read MAD Magazine, Spawn, Xmen and how can you forget the Archie. As a child I did not have much of a attention span to read full books but comics I could read easily and I believe it was due to the visual art. The art also interested me and I would study each storyboard carefully.

Graphic novels are just bigger comic books in my opinion and they are so fun to read. I like the way graphic novels add picture like storyboards to the words and allow for visuals while you are reading. The only downfall I see for that same benefit is the loss of your own visual creativity and personal interpretation to the same events you read about. That is definitely one aspect I always enjoyed about reading; you could read something and in your minds eye see a picture of what you read was happening. It's like creating your own  movie. Graphic novels bring the movie to the book. So that takes the creativity out of it and just shows you the way it is to be seen.

Those who love Zombie movies will enjoy The Walking Dead book series by Robert Kirkman. It has all the typical zombie scenarios but also gives you new situations and interesting characters to follow. I found myself emotional over the deaths of some characters while wishing some were bitten and turned to zombies right away. I found myself reading inbetween calls at work and couldn't wait to get the the next book. I would say for literacy, graphic novels are a definite helper for those who struggle with reading. Because there are pictures in the novel some of the extended reading your would have had to do to gain insight into descriptions of characters and locations, are now removed. This process is shortened because all of those details are shown in that picture. This allows for the only reading to be narrowed down to the conversations and thought processes of the characters in the novel. It is like watching a movie in a foreign language that you are reading the subtitles on, in my opinion it is the same process but in different form. Now you see live images opposed to still shots but you are still reading the words and seeing the visuals. I would recommend reading a graphic novel to anyone who like me had struggled to read long novels. I found after reading comics it made reading longer books easier for me to do and I actually enjoy it now.

-Cassa Arnold

Shadow Tag, Allende's It

Our assigned reading for this week was ShadowTag by Louise Erdrich. We also just finished Allende’s The sum of Our Days and with this novel still fresh on my mind I could not help but see some similarities between the two main characters: Sum’s Allende and Shadow’s Irene.

It seems like both characters use literature in various forms: writing, reading, knowledge, to escape and cope with their own realities. For them language is a source of strength and power. Allende writes to keep Paula alive while Irene writes to keep herself alive and also to free her from her husband. I think language was one of the biggest things that sustained both characters.

Both are very introverted characters who seem burdened by emotional troubles. In both books it seems like the children are the innocent victims of these troubles as well. Although both Irene and Allende obviously cared greatly for the children, both at times seemed very self involved. At some points in both novels I would get extremely irritated with these two characters wanting to say to both of them ‘just snap out of it!’ However, I enjoyed the voyage of self-exploration that we as readers were allowed to accompany them on feeling mixtures of extreme sympathy and exasperation as both stories progressed.

I think a big difference between the two characters is that Allende had found outlets for herself isolation. She had developed a colorful group of close nit friends and family, but Irene had no one other than the children until she discovered her connection to Louise. I am convinced more than ever after reading Shadow Tag that Allende was sustained by her clan-like connection to her friends and family. Irene only has this through her children and as yet in the story they are too young to be good outlets for their mother.

For a discussion question, since I myself found this interesting, did anyone else notice how the language of Irene when she wrote in her red book was very different from that in her blue book? To what purpose would such a technique serve? I think personally that it created a kind of bipolar characterization of Irene which made her even more complex. Blue book Irene was completely free from Gil’s clutches, but Red book Irene was still very much entrapped, like a portrait locked in a frame. Are there other similarities between Allende and Irene?

-Elizabeth Farley 

Do Audiobooks help literacy?

I have never been much for reading in my life. However I never really gave reading a chance. I am the type of reader that the piece of literature has to really grab me in the beginning or I can never complete reading the piece. I would read a few paragraphs then the next thing I know I am waking up. Dang, did I just fall asleep? For many years I felt I just hated to read. I couldn't do it. I had to read a book for a class and it was so dull reading the first chapter took be two weeks. One day one of my friends brought me the audiobook so I could listen to it since I kept falling asleep. I listened to the audiobook and wondered to myself. Is listening the book the same as reading it? I felt quilty like I just cheated on a test. Can listening help me to read words I would normally not know what is was? Am I getting the same benefit as I would if I read the book? Would my interpretation be different while hearing it as it would be reading it? A million questions ran through my mind so I decided to read up on it.

 What I found was that some experts believe that the use of reading your literature aloud to be one of the most important factors in proficicient reading skills. They believe that hearing the stories read aloud is one of  the right steps to becoming a better reader. I found this interesting because you don' t see the words when you hear it read to you opposed to if you read it yourself, however if you have an understanding of the alphabet it would make since then that hearing the words would make these words easier to identify. My cousin Jennifer read to her daughter frequently as a child. Jourdan was one of the first in her class to read. She also excelled in many other subjects compared to the other students in her class. My children did not get read to as often. My youngest son and daughter struggled with reading for a while until we started going to the library and getting books and reading them together. It appears to me that when you read to the children there is more going on at that moment then just hearing a story. My children lit up when we did these activities. They were so happy and really felt as though this was our time together a moment for mother and children. Our bond always seemed to be stronger during these times. When I took the time to read with the kids and help them to see the words. In some cases I would have them read to me and we would sound out words together. They were always so excited to go back to school and show their teachers what they learned or read about. At this time you realize how important it is to help the teachers by helping the children at home. With this little bit of time this can help a teacher save much needed time to help the child excel in otehr subjects.

I also found in my studies that some experts believe that reading to the children allows a greater chance of that child fostering phonemic awareness processes by introducing  the sounds of written language along with allowing access to the structure of liturature. This also allows the child to appropriate intonation  and helps to provide a model for fluent reading. One Physician states that reading allowed also helsp develop vocabulary growth and language expansion; when this is present ti increases the development of receptive and expressive language capabilies. —G. Reid Lyon, <I>The Keys to Literacy: Overview of Reading and Literacy
Research<I>

When I first read thought of this topic I did not believe you could gain good literacy by hearing the words and not reading them. After doing a little research I understood literacy to be more than just reading words and understanding them. I no longer feel guilty for listening to an audiobook instead of reading the book if it puts me to sleep. On that note I found that some books started off slow but while listening to them I could actually get through the novel and later found I could read along with the audiobook and gain more insight to what I just read.

most my information came from http://www.randomhouse.com/highschool/RHI/
 - Cassa Arnold

Language and Sustainability

     This will just be a quick entry. I just had a somewhat unique and interesting experience and it caused me to write a quick stream of consciousness poem. Now that I am in this class (Eng 370), I have thought more about the reasons that I do things like this. I believe it has to do with one of the class themes (Sustainability). Writing sustains me. When things happen, I write about them. When I was in school and I had to deal with different emotions and the learning process, I wrote poems. When I was in the Army and out of the country, I put down a litte prose as well as poetry. After I got hurt, I didn't write for a bit. That is what makes me think that writing is so important to my (and maybe others') healing process.

     Once I had gotten over the intial stages of that injury, I tried to write. Nothing would come out of it. Once the real issues involved in how I would have to change my life a bit became apparent, I could write again. At my previous job (before I got economy'd), I would write microfiction when I was stressed or maybe express a funny concept as a chart. I did a chart to see what was better, Superman or gold. I also wrote some fake Daily Planet articles (I love Superman) and did a microfiction Superman crossover. I love sharing these with my friends but copyright kept me from putting it on-line for others. Now that I look back, it is clear that writing sustains me.

     Our blog team's theme is 'language and literacy' and that is integral to this theme. It did not occur to me at first that the themes of our class are so vital a part of sustainability. A lot of my private interests involve increasing my writing ability. When I read, study grammar (I know that it's nerdy.), listen to public speakers or music, and even study other topics, I am working to improve my vocabulary and other skills so that I can write more effectively and over broader subject matter. Language and literacy sustains me just as surely as my body sustains my soul. Here is a little poem to prove it. It is about something that happened to me this morning.

I should have had a pickle

Distraction and traction, that was the action

1 truck, 2 trucks, White truck, blue bike

Stop, Turn, Stop, Slide – Superman

Burn

Leg and hand, Face is safe

Adrenaline

Talky talk, nicey nice

Hercules, Bike up right

Everyone - Fun, not fun

Everyone

Aid, lies, paid, buys, call

Waiting…Waiting, done

Nice!

                               -Japheth