Beginning with the assertion that educators can effectively use comics and graphic novels to develop readers' critical literacy and empathy, DeHart explores the use of graphic novels across grade levels in a wide range of topics and themes. Taking When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed as a recurring focal text, DeHart argues that critical conversations can be opened up through well-chosen graphic novels.

Graphic novels are not only a viable option to improve student retention of literature, but also the cornerstone of several potential lesson plans.

Exploring Comics and Graphic Novels in the Classroom highlights voices from a number of disciplines in education, showcasing research and practice using both popular and lesser-known examples of comics across time in terms of publishing history and across geographic contexts. It explores comics from multiple viewpoints to share the efficacy of these texts in descriptive, narrative, and empirical ways.

Author Tim Smyth offers a wide variety of lessons and ideas for using comics to teach close reading, working with textual evidence, literature adaptations, symbolism and culture, sequencing, essay writing, and more. He also models how to use comics to tackle tough topics and enhance social-emotional learning.

Imagine a classroom where students put away their smart phones and enthusiastically participate in learning activities that unleash creativity and refine critical thinking. Students today live and learn in a transmedia environment that demands multi-modal writing skills and multiple literacies. This collection brings together 17 new essays on using comics and graphic novels to provide both a learning framework and hands-on strategies that transform students' learning experiences through literary forms they respond to.

Use graphic novels to teach visual and verbal literacy While our kids today are communicating outside the classroom in abbreviated text bursts with visual icons, teachers are required to teach them to critically listen, think, and read and write complex texts. Graphic novels are a uniquely poised vehicle we can use to bridge this dissonance between student communication skills and preferences with mandated educational goals.

This collection highlights the diverse ways comics and graphic novels are used in English and literature classrooms, whether to develop critical thinking or writing skills, paired with a more traditional text, or as literature in their own right.

See especially Chapter 18 "Comics and Graphic Novels" pp. 256-274.