Michael Bitz, Manga High: Literacy, Identity, and Coming of Age in an Urban High School

Excerpt

In Manga high: literacy, identity, and coming of age in an urban high school, author Michael Bitz shares data from a 4-year qualitative study of the original site of the comic book project, an afterschool endeavor founded by Bitz that has been engaging students across the country in composing comic book art since starting in New York City in 2001. In detailing the strong personal connections that many of the students at Martin Luther King Jr. High School felt to the project, Bitz delivers the most compelling argument to date for the incorporation of sequential art narrative into various aspects of schooling. Francois Mouly, an editor at The New Yorker and co-editor (along with husband Art Spiegleman, of Maus fame) of TOON Books, provides a serviceable forward that goes into some detail about how young people engage with comics and describes the work stemming from the comic book project as a “sort of Holy Grail that many an educator pursues” (2009, p. xii). In Mouly’s words reside the tension of this text, though: while many teachers continue to ask for quantitative data that illustrates how comics affect literacy learning––and perhaps teachers do so unreasonably, considering how little published quantitative data there is for virtually any specific text that teachers often use in their classrooms––will educators be compelled enough to read this work packed with persuasive qualitative evidence? …