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  • Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: Making Comics: Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond
  • April Spisak
Abel, Jessica; Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: Making Comics: Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond; written and illus. by Jessica AbelMatt Madden; and with photographs. First Second/Roaring Brook, 2008; 282p Paper ed. ISBN 978-1-59643-131-7 $29.95 R Gr. 9 up

Comics are increasingly appreciated as complex, sophisticated blends of illustration and text, and this volume is a timely in-depth examination of the format. This exhaustively comprehensive guide features fifteen individual lessons that take readers from concept to finished product. A landscape-formatted paperback chock-full of diagrammatic examples, the book looks every bit the sophisticated how-to, and [End Page 62] the tone is encouraging, highlighting comic strips that have rudimentary artwork or simple concepts and encouraging readers to explore everything from formal, paneled comics to wildly imaginative freeform interpretations. The authors offer guidelines on how the book can be used by individuals, by groups, and by classes; regardless of whether one goes it solo or uses the volume with a course, the accessible and highly detailed lessons on everything from penciling to structuring a story to selecting a title will engage and inform readers. The first fourteen chapters include background information, activities, sidebars with related but not directly relevant information, a homework assignment, and an extra credit activity, with the final chapter being a challenge to create a full comic in one day. Extensive end matter presents almost as much information as the guide itself: appendices offer hints about necessary supplies, book reports that can be done on comics, and the making of minicomics, and a thorough bibliography suggests both graphic novels or comics that emphasize points in the lessons as well as drawing handbooks. Serious readers seeking information will be drawn by the witty, informal tone and casual narrative voice as much as by the impeccably designed and accessible lessons.

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