Comic books and graphic novels belong in every teacher's toolkit, says cartoonist and educator Gene Luen Yang. Set against the backdrop of his own witty, ...
========== When I was in the fifth grade, I bought an issue
of "DC Comics Presents #57" off of a spinner rack
at my local bookstore, and that comic book changed my life. The combination of words and pictures
did something inside my head that had never been done before, and I immediately fell in love
with the medium of comics. I became a voracious comic book reader, but I never brought them to school. Instinctively, I knew that comic books
didn't belong in the classroom. My parents definitely were not fans, and I was certain that my teachers
wouldn't be either. After all, they never used them to teach, comic books and graphic novels were never
allowed during silent sustained reading, and they were never sold
at our annual book fair. Even so, I kept reading comics, and I even star...