BubbleUp Take5: Graphic novels, graphic elections, and more!

​I've been mulling over the importance of teaching graphic novels and our current, crazy Presidential election. I'm dreaming of a world in which our students can continue the art of play beyond the early grades. I'm pondering the life-saving powers of books and libraries, and humming Dylan songs.

1. Librarians have long known the value of graphic novels as a tool to reach more readers. Jennifer Gonzalez's post Graphic Novels in the Classroom is a round table discussion among four teachers on ways to bring them into instruction. As our school and our district focus on literacy, I love finding resources that put literacy out there beyond just text-based reading and writing.

2. In How Do Teachers Run PG Classrooms During an R Rated Campaign Huffington Post reporter Rebecca Klein addresses the challenges of teaching Government and Civics during the current election cycle.

3. In an article for The Atlantic entitled What if High School Were More Like Kindergarten, writer and teacher Ashley Lamb-Sinclair visits a Kindergarten class in Finland with an emphasis on flexible seating, creativity, and play and considers how she can bring some of those features into her high school English classroom.

​(I discovered this piece via Eric Sheninger's blog post: The Need for More Play in Schools.)

4. A lovely post from Brainpickings tells the story of Storm Reyes, a Native American woman who grew up in very difficult circumstances and was saved by the arrival of a bookmobile in her town: How Libraries Save Lives.

This especially resonated with me after hearing YA author Shaun David Hutchinson speak at the School Library Journal Leadership Summit last weekend in Washington, DC. He too talked about how books held him together as he faced his own mental health issues. He shared how he wished he had access to books as a teen with gay characters so he would have felt present in them and that his books now are the ones that teenage Shaun needed. He told us that he writes books to show teens that WE see them and emphasized how crucial it is that libraries have books in which every single kid -- can find themselves. Every one. Because libraries save lives.

5. Finally, this last piece gave homage to the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, Bob Dylan. The Washington Post Answer Sheet reporter Valerie Strauss interviews two Boston University professors who teach a course on Dylan's music and lyrics: Teaching Dylan: ‘His work as a whole is as staggering as that of Homer or Shakespeare.’ The article even includes a syllabus for the course -- sign me up!

What has been making you wonder this week?

​Gretchen

---

You might also like:

• BubbleUp Take5: Books to Give this Season (December 13, 2016)
• You think you know what librarians do? Sorry, but chances are...you're wrong. (October 22, 2016)