Taking comics into the classroom - is this the future?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday February 26, 2014

Can anything be done to save the book? We see great bookstores close down like Borders and Angus & Robertson, there are less books to be seen on trams and trains, as the constant fiddling with mobiles and tablets is more about digital games and Facebook than the reading of a book.

How are we going to get kids reading books again, or is it already a lost cause? That ability to read words off a page and run the movie through our heads is a wonderful skill we can't let them lose. Especially when it comes to the "difficult" books - the classics. So much of our cultural identity is built on them.

Now don't throw up your hands in horror, but maybe the answer is to bring comic books into the school. I know, it seems to belie everything I've just said but give it a minute. When I was a schoolboy, if I were caught with a comic in the class I'd face detention or even (in those barbaric days gone by) the cane.

Yet in defiance of the law I'd sneak one into my schoolbag. And often as not it was a Classics Illustrated. They were thrilling colourful comic books. But through them I got to meet Macbeth for the first time, Oliver Twist, The Time Machine, The Man in the Iron Mask.

Later I went on to read the books but my first encounter was as an 11 year old reading comics with the same exciting graphics as Batman and Superman. And I don't think it corrupted my taste for the classics.

Someone who agrees is publisher Hugh Dolan. His background as a former RAAF intelligence officer, shows in the way he has craftily produced three exciting war comics for the kids - concealing the fact that they are carefully researched historical text books covering key moments of Australian history. Gallipoli: The Landing; Kokoda: The Bloody Track; and The Fall of Singapore.

These are not just gung-ho war comics, though the battles are in there. They also set out factual background material, footnoted for history teachers under the National Curriculum.

Dolan is signposting the way for what could become a new wave of encouraging kids to read books. Watch a three-year-old manipulating Bananas in Pyjamas on their iPad and you'll see how deeply visual a child's learning is. No wonder they are now called digital natives.

So steering these natives onto books needs clever planning. And the comic is a half-way step connecting the sound that a word represents, with the picture that they see. The story needs to advance quickly while the brightly coloured pictures connect in the imagination.

Although very few new Classics Illustrated have been produced since the series ended in the 70s, some 160 titles are still available if you search the internet. A British site called Classic Comic Store has been digitising and re-colouring the magazines and is building up an educational range. Plus there are many of the originals for sale on eBay, at widely varying prices.

Even successful writers will speak in favour of the medium. Here's what Ian Rankin had to say:"My son Jack didn't like English at high school so I bought him a lot of comic versions of classic books such as Jekyll And Hyde, Kidnapped and Macbeth - now he wants to go to see the Shakespeare play. It's a great way to get people to read. The problem is that there just aren't enough comics out there any more."

Perhaps he can put his Rebus character into comic form. He'd fit in, next to Jekyl and Hyde.