On Friday, May 29th, I had an appearance at Sabold Elementary School (a school that I went to back in the day when I was a little one) and I spoke to teacher Kathryn Robertson's class about what I do for my illustrious living. Kathryn is also the sponsor and in charge of one of their many after-school programs...one of which is called The Comic Book Club. It's made up of 3rd and 4th grade students who all have a common love of comics, photography, art and short stories. I saw a photo of The Comic Book Club in The Springfield Press a few weeks ago and contacted the school to see if they would like to have me come in and speak to the kids since I draw a lot of the material that all kids seem to love. I'm always on the look out to promote myself so I thought this was a match made in heaven. The members of the Club sat in with her regular class and I told them all about my work.I did a slide show presentation for them showcasing my work that I had done, and then I showed them examples of model sheets, what original artwork looks like, what sketches look like, and other animation and licensing treats that most people never get to see. Once again, Courage The Cowardly Dog was well known and well loved by the class so I did a sketch of him to show the class how's he's drawn. I also did some simple cartoon drawings so they could all draw along with me. My comics version of Alfie was also a hit with the kids! The school was excited to have me come in and a great time was had by all!
The Comic Book Club also received a large and generous donation of free comic books from comic publisher DC Comics (dccomics.com) and Captain Blue Hen Comics (CaptainBlueHen.com) in Newark, Delaware!
2 comments:
I am volunteering at my sons school in downtown Durham, NC. It is a public charter school with limited funds and we are trying to develop a graphic novel/comic library and curriculum to use in the class or in an after school program.
Do you know of anyone who could provide insight into this and also if it is ok to ask comic businesses for donation to such a cause?
I saw this post and would love to contact the teacher for ideas. Also would love to know your ideas as well. We are just now creating a document of our plans.
I don't know of any curriculum that can be used for it. Most of the programs I know are run and made from the ground up and made to run according to the kind of students that are in the class or school. Every school would be different in how it runs.
I was able to get donations of books from DC Comics (since I do work for them) and Captain Blue Hen Comics (whom I do appearances at) so that was easier to get donations.
You basically have to find the kids in the school who actually are interested in comics and actually read them. Most of the comics prodcued today are NOT for them and the main companies don't make comics for them to read like they used to.
DC's 'Johnny DC' line was/is decent.
Archie Comics are always good but mostly girls seem to read them.
Marvel Comics has their Marvel Adventures line of books, which would be perfect but they can't sell them so now out of 6 total titles they are now down to only two that are still running. They had to cancel the Iron Man comic due to poor sales and that was with the hit movie of it playing at the same time. What does that tell you?
It's a sad state in the comics world of late so trying to get kids to pick up and read comics on an everyday basis is next to impossible unless the parent provides them and shares the experience with their kids, which they can't do since mostly all the comics produced today are written for 30-40 year olds.
For young ones, I would suggest Andy Runton's Owly comic. He also has a school lesson plan that runs with it. Other than that I'm at a loss. The comics that I donated to the kids at my appearance will most likely be the only ones they ever get unless I went back next year with another couple boxes. Kids today aren't interested in the cliffhanger ending and aren't interested in pursuing the next issue to see what happens. If you give it to them, then fine, but they aren't going to run out and seek it out on their own.
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