These past few weeks my class has been studying the art and architecture of Graphic Novels with Trent DeBerry, our district’s ELA Coordinator.  On this page you will find their final publications after many hours of exploring the meaning of gutters, the story flow, text boxes, panels, character creations, image, moment, frames and much more that grew out of every conversation. We all are so proud of the Graphic Novels that are presented here.

We have different units in reading, right now it’s graphic novels. Mr. Deberry is teaching us graphic novels. I think that I have became a better reader because sense it shorter and it has less words on a page. I re read so I think that I understand the book more. After we read some graphic novels, we started to get into writing them. You could do your graphic novel with a partner or by yourself. I decided to do it with a partner, My partner is Om. The graphic novel was really hard and it took a lot of time and effort. There was a lot of obstacles, like we had to make some parts of the story up along the way. We had to do that because in our draft we made it like 4 pages because we didn’t have that much time and when we have to make it from 5-9 pages. So we needed to make up most of the story along the way. We also had to do some of the pages for homework, but finally we finished it. It was really fun making the graphic novel and I also had a really good time. –By Chase

Reading graphic novels gave me a better understanding of the process of graphic novels like how to draw characters or when to make changes. I also learned how to do more advanced things like making people whisper. Reading graphic novels were fun because it was in a different format and it had pictures which I could imagine in motion.

Writing graphic novels was easier than writing a normal story and broke it up into parts and made me dig deep into my imagination. It made me feel free because you get to draw and make any cool features you want. Writing graphic novels changed my reading because it brought me interest in other topics and made me refer to my topic.

At first, I didn’t really know what topic to pick for my graphic novel, but I thought about all the graphic novels I read and I thought of a good topic. I used my skills from reading graphic novels and used it in writing my graphic novel. I worked on it a lot and came up with a great graphic novel. In addition, I made small postcards and sent my comic to my cousins.-By Om

Graphic novels was a long journey. I think that being able to read graphic novels is a skill because you have to figure out the flow of the story, read the dialogue and pictures at the same time, and taking in all the details. There are many things you need to do to read graphic novels. Writing your own graphic novel is a different story. Knowing my story, or coming up with one was not that hard. I had many ideas and it was actually hard to choose which idea I would use. I picked a soccer story because soccer is my favorite thing to do. I thought this was really fun because you make up your own characters, names, story, pictures, animals, and more! This required a lot of creativity. We really had to think outside of the box.My main character was Lucy, and the mean girl in my story was Paige, which was really funny because those are 2 girls on my soccer team! Coloring in the picture took a while because there was so much detail. We have been having classes about Mr. DeBerry, and he has been helping us write our graphic novels and help us notice more in our graphic novels.I am really proud of my final creation, after drafting, it looks great!

For this past month a teacher named Mr. Deberry has been coming into our class and teaching us about graphic novels. We started out reading graphic novels with our reading partners then we went into writing graphic novels (Go to my last post and you will see it). This is my blog post about my whole experience.

As a reader of graphic novels, I’ve definitely noticed that I have improved in noticing smaller details that help me understand the story more. And I have improved in understanding the format of graphic novels because I used to get confused on where to read next because some of the graphic novels I have read, had weird orders of where the panels are placed. I also changed as a reader because I started looking at graphic novels in a different way, I used to just flip through the pages and just quickly read the text and didn’t think that graphic novels were a “proper” way of reading. But now I take graphic novels seriously and notice more details (like I said before).

I have improved as a graphic novel writer because at first when we started writing our graphic novels I thought that it would be very simple and easy because in my mind it was just like “Draw some pictures, write some text” that was basically my depiction of how writing a graphic novel would be like but now that I have written a graphic novel I have learned that writing a graphic novel isn’t as simple as it seems. You have to show what the characters feeling, you have to add details that can give a clue to the reader what is happening or something that helps develop the setting.

In class, we are doing a graphic novel unit. We got to read graphic novels and make our own. It was really fun, but it was a long process.
The process:
First, I had to have an Idea. Since we only had a few weeks, I didn’t want something that would just keep on going. So I chose a groundhog that lives in the woods near our school for my character. Next I had to make a story and immediately I thought, villain and hero. But sometimes you can be your own hero and that’s what I wanted to do. So, I made a small problem over food. I had a story, now I needed a draft.I spent a lot of time on my draft, probably more than I needed to. But, eventually, I just did stick figures for my draft instead of detailed drawings, and brief pieces of text. Finally, it came to actually making the graphic novel. I had to really focus on this because, I am horrible at drawing. I can’t draw a good stick figure! But after I had feedback I got the hang of it.
My reflection:
I think my writing skills have improved through this project because, with a graphic novel I could’t put in all the details. I had to show emotions and actions through the illustrations. The writing is only dialogue. But, even with the problems, I think this project was fun because it was different. I got a practice at art, and I practiced writing a fictional story that is completely made up. My reading was a little different. It was hard at first switching from one format to another because I was used to the regular novel form. So as you would expect, I kind of got bored. But then, after finding the right type of story and books, I kind of liked it. Yes, there were a few books I didn’t like, but I got through them.

As a new unit in writing and reading, a teacher named Mr. DeBerry has been coming in and teaching us about graphic novels. At first, we were just reading graphic novels but eventually, we began to write our own. As we were reading the graphic novels, we made noticings about how each page and chapter was structured.The reading was very different compared to reading other genres of books. I like reading graphic novels so I was very excited to start this unit. The reading went by much faster and you had to pay very close attention to every page. At times I got very confused about who was who because the names were rarely mentioned in graphic novels. The story had many details you needed to find in the pictures. I learned so much from reading graphic novels and all of this knowledge helped me write my own graphic novel.Writing a graphic novel is also very different from writing a novel. I thought it would be a lot easier than it was. You have to plan out your story and then do a draft. Then you have to draw each picture carefully with a lot of detail. Then you have to color everything in. I am not very good at drawing so this took a long time. I am sure I will try again to make an even better graphic novel!

This year in class we studied Graphic Novels, and we also made some of our own Graphic Novels. A teacher named Mr. DeBerry came in every week and taught us all about Graphic Novels. We started off with reading Graphic Novels with our partners and acknowledging all of the details of a Graphic Novel. After reading a few Graphic Novels and taking notes on them, we got to start making our own. We started off with an idea, just like every author does. That idea turned into a story and after we had our story, we got to make a draft. Once our draft was done, we started making the more improved version. When I was writing the story, I came up with more things as I went along. Also, I didn’t include some things that were on my draft. While writing it, I felt like I didn’t even need a lot of dialogue and writing because there were so many drawings that basically made up the story. At the end, I came up with a name for my story, Skyler Rosenberg and The Big Hit. Also, during the process of this, I noticed a few things about myself as a reader. When I read a Graphic Novel, I read it a lot faster than a novel and also I really had to pay attention to the pictures to understand what is happening in the book. What I also noticed about myself as a writer is that I didn’t put as much thought into the writing as I would have if I wrote a Novel. After reading Graphic Novels, and making one too, I learned so much about writing in general.

Over the month our class spent on reading and writing graphic novels I learned that I had become a different kind of writer and reader. I learned about myself as a writer realizing I had gotten into more details in my story telling and letting the reader to understand what is going on in this story.

I learned about myself as a reader realizing I had been able to focus more on the book and not wander off and I was able to understand and use my imagination as I go through reading the panels. In the end I became a better reader and writer from this graphic novel experience.

These past weeks, my class has been learning about graphic novels. From gutters to illustrations to complicated writing, we have created our own. I have faced many challenges and went through a long journey. For example one of my biggest challenges was finding a good story-line and making the story sound good in the graphic novel form-mat. I kept changing my story because I felt it was either to hard to express or it just wasn’t a good story.

Reading Graphic Novels changed my view on them because I realized that the story expresses a lot more than people would think because the story seems so short when reading. It has the same amount of action, feelings, and emotions than a novel. I realized also that graphic novels are pretty tricky to read because you have to consider the gutters, thinking bubbles, speech bubbles, captions and more.
Writing Graphic Novels is A LOT harder than it looks. Same as the reading, while writing I need to consider, gutter, thinking bubbles, captions and speech bubbles. I thought that it was going to be super easy but the drawings take FOREVER and in my experience, it’s hard to think up how your story is going to go.

Lately in school we have been working on writing graphic novels. We first started the unit by reading graphic novels and studying structures they used. That helped me a lot when we had to start writing novels. My story is about a kid who plays basketball who makes to the semifinals and the other teams coach is the son of the ref. Mario the main character needs to prove the the other team is cheating. I started by writing out my story in words with no pictures as if it was a regular novel. This helped me think out my story because I know i’m not the best drawer. Going into the process I thought it wouldn’t be to hard because there aren’t many words and just pictures but graphic novels are a lot harder than you would think. The next step in the process was drafting our final project. I thought drafting a graphic novel was different from drafting a normal novel because for a graphic novel I didn’t know if in the pictures I wanted to put full detail or just sketch it. I decided to put full detail into my draft so it would look like a final product. I then started my final product. The think I thought was most different between novel and graphic novel is cutting down on words. In a regular story you can put as many words as you want while in a graphic novel you need to cut down on the words. Overall I didn’t love graphic novels but it was still really interesting to work on.

In class we have been working on graphic novels. Everybody made their own graphic novel. I made a graphic novel called “All by Myself” about a girl and she takes care of her siblings because her parents don’t take care of her siblings or her. Writing graphic novels has taught me a new way of writing. I thought that writing a graphic would be easier then writing a normal story, but actually it’s not I think its a little harder because you have to draw a picture that matches the scene and it has to be detailed so that’s why I think graphic novels are a little harder. Making my graphic novel was fun and it taught me a new way of writing. Graphic novels were really fun to make and writing graphic novels has taught me a lot.

In class we have been reading and writing graphic novels. We started by a reading teacher named Mr.Deberry coming in every week and talking to us about graphic novels. Then reading them with our book clubs and taking notes. We did that for quite some time. Then our teacher said that we were going to be writing one. After that, ideas just kept on flowing through my head. Then I came up with the idea I came up with. I started drawing and coming up with the story as I went along. This was not working. I am not a very good drawer so this was so hard for me. I decided that I was going to write the story first and then the drawings. The process was long and hard. I went through many pieces of paper and broke many tips of pencils. But I am supper happy and proud of what it turned out to be hope you enjoy.

In school, only our class, is doing a class on graphic novels with a teacher, Mr. DeBerry. He comes into our classroom about once every week and he teaches us about graphic novels. For example, he shows us the order of how to read them, he shows us how to understand it and we have little talks about the graphic novels that we are reading with our partner.

In this unit, when Mr. DeBerry comes comes in, we have reading partners for graphic novels. My graphic novel partner is my best friend Jessica. When we read graphic novels we think of the story and like I said have little talks with our partner. When we write our own graphic novel we can choose to write a real story that happened in our lives or we can write something made up. The process that we have to write in is Somebody – Wanted – But – So – Then. My story is somebody (me), wanted (a best friend), but (the best friend that I made was mean and moved away), so I made new best friends, then we do everything together and get ready for 6th grade together! We got to pick to write our graphic novel on panels or paper and I chose paper. The title I made for my graphic novel is The Friend That Went Wrong. So far we have been revising and editing our graphic novel. Some are still finishing up drawing and making their cover and blurb. I am done with everything! (The drawing, the cover and the blurb!)

Reading graphic novels makes me think deeper, using my imagination when there were gutters. Some challenges for me were the gutters and looking deeper. I dealt with the challenges by re-reading the parts and looking into every part of the picture. I changed by writing less and drawing more. It was hard to change words into the picture for me because I was used to describing with words. I also had to put more thought into the story because normally when I am brainstorming I think of it as words and in graphic novels I have to put it in both words and picture. For my story Earth has been destroyed and there are two spacecraft that travel to the nearest exoplanet “Proxima Centauri b” and have to survive on it. One person gets lost in the story but everyone else is fine. The people build a civilization on the exoplanet and live there. I chose my story because my passion project was Exoplanets and I am interested into them. Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars other than our Sun. In my passion project my research led me to realize that the sun was going to make Earth uninhabitable in 1-2 billion years and I made my graphic novels setting far in the future 1-2 billion years.

Two days ago, we finished our Graphic Novel reading unit with Mr. Deberry. I published my own official graphic novel called Into the Mist. It is about a monster that lives in the woods. mine was by far the scariest thing in the class. I thought back to the project and I realized that writing a graphic novel is so much harder than I expected. Since my graphic novel was so realistic, mine took around 2x longer than everyone else’s. Maybe not as long as Alex though, since he looked like a tv show. When I drew, I thought it was a little annoying because if you drew the main character amazing in one panel and you messed up and drew the main character bad in the second panel then it is going to look really horrible unless you draw the main character perfectly in every single panel, which is going to take a long time for me. If you only give someone a week to draw a graphic novel I think they’re going to get a little stressed out. I wanted my novel to be scary because everyone else was doing those happy topics. I wanted to pack a punch into mine so it would be a bit interesting. I don’t want the teacher to pretend it was good. After that, it would be stuffed into my overflowing art projects shelf at home and then I would find a few years later and say, “oh. . ., it was the graphic novel I wrote a few years ago. Yeah, it really was terrible”.