Yes!! A Graphic Novel with Substance!!!

In an attempt to spend some Scholastic money that has been fundraised through school sponsored Book Fairs, I wanted to purchase a high interest/low reading ability collection of books.  At a recent district Teacher Librarian meeting I was introduced to the RavenTales series and immediately a few students sprang to mind that keep checking out the Bones series by Jeff Smith.

Raven Tales is a series of books edited by David Bouchard (who I already loved with his book, The Elders are Watching).  Of course, this may have to do with my small infatuation with Roy Henry Vicker's artwork, but that's another story.....)The series is adapted from the movie series of the same name.  Every book is a short(ish) graphic novel that is based off of traditional Haida stories by Chris Kientz.   There are 26 books in the entire series.

Upon the books waiting to be processed (as with any brand new book), I approached our school’s AMAZING Aboriginal Educator Celine if she would like to create a bulletin board in the Library to get students excited about the new series.   So she and a few aboriginal students created this AWESOME display that really got the general student population interested.

When the books FINALLY became processed (it took months), I could not keep a single book in the Library for weeks.  Students were trading them (because they are so short) during class silent reading time.  The response has been fantastic.  Most of the students had previously been exposed to the stories since the Library also has the movie series and therefore Celine has shown many of them, however, it only seemed to provoke the student’s interest to also read the books.

My favourite part of the series has to the artwork.  Each has computer animated illustrations that speak volumes to traditional Haida artwork.  The characters are developed without obvious descriptions about their personality as told with traditional storytelling.  For example, in the book How the Raven Stole the Sun, the character Raven is portrayed as a trickster without any actual mention of it.  This allows the students to exercise their reading skills of inference and character building instead of ‘spelling it all out’ as I have noticed with many low leveled books.  The low readers are gravitating towards them because they are a shorter novel book that appeals to their demographic.

I am sorry my picture taking ability is terrible, I promise to work on it......

In conclusion, I am very pleased with the RavenTales series and look forward to more additions to my high interest/low leveled reader collection.  If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them!