Graphic Canon

          I really like the idea of a graphic canon, and since I do well with visuals when learning, this book helped me understand the stories better. A lot of them, I had already read, but it was nice to see what illustrations would bring the story to life. Some of the stories were confusing such as “The Hill” by William Faulkner. The illustrations helped me a little to deciphering what the anecdote was about, however, I still was confused. My favorite story was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, illustrated by Dame Darcy. The story stuck to the traditions of Alice, however, the illustrations were more dark and gloomy which I really liked. I feel the Graphic Canons would be appropriate for middle school. I can see having these books in my room and high-schoolers can look at them, but I don’t think I would ever conduct a lesson involving the books if I was to teach high-schoolers. Middle-schoolers, however, these books are on their level. I can think of many lessons that I would teach using these books. A lesson that came to mind would be for the student to make their own comic book of their favorite story, and then to present it to the class. This would apply to kinesthetic, visual, and auditory learners. I also like how before the story there is a summary about the author and story. For people who haven’t read the story, or know nothing about the author, this was helpful to me. For example, I didn’t know the story of Alice was told by a “graduate student and lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church College at the University of Oxford”, and went boating with the daughters of the dean of the church. The middle daughter, Alice, told Dodgson to tell them a story and so he did. This story, however, came to be published and now is one of the top read children’s books and multiple movies were developed.