Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2017-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fig. 11.1. Harper’s “user manual”: a self-portrait with accompanying phrases and images that Harper attributes to her identity.

Like Junior, Harper illustrates her struggles at her former school, Normalton Junior High, with her first comic and prose vignette titled, “5 Reasons [Normalton] Saved My Education” (figure 11.2). The comic mimics the language and structure of the first prose vignette, referencing the five reasons that her first school experience was so alienating. Using True Diary as a mentor text, Harper structures the panels of first comic similarly to Alexie’s “Are You Poor?” (128), with six panels, titling and numbering each sequentially. Harper’s first panel displays the title of her comic, and the second, “Dropping Out,” depicts Harper lying in bed, declaring, “I’m so bored I’m gonna go crazy!” A line connects the bed and computer to the narrative box. “This was my life when I didn’t go to school,” she explains from her bed. The second panel features Normalton as the Normalton Junior High Prison with students who are trapped behind barred windows. Here, Harper’s character says, “Teachers and students were [too] high class for me.” The third panel transitions to inside the school, showing a hallway crowded with students. A word balloon emanates from the bottom of the panel, signaling her inability to move: “Can’t get to my classes.” Harper does not depict herself in the hallway, but out of the frame. The crowd of students in the corridor almost seems to crush Harper, piling on top of her, pushing her out of the panel. After a fourth panel, showing an empty cafeteria with a note about how the food smells like pickles and dirt, the final panel depicts Harper and her classmates, divided by a harsh, bold line. Her classmates are smiling and moving around within the top portion. A caption reads, “The whole school.” Meanwhile, Harper stands alone in a vacant space frowning. To ensure that her readers recognize this figure as Harper, the word “Me” is above her. Harper’s comic not only communicates her distress while at Normalton, but also her need to find a school where she feels welcomed, one that will improve her quality of life just as Junior does.

In four panels, the second comic highlights the benefits of moving in with her aunt (figure 11.3). The comic opens with Harper standing at a road that leads to her aunt’s house, luminous rays extruding from the building. The next panel takes us inside the house as Harper and her cousin, Terrin, wake for school in the morning. The third panel shifts to a bull’s head, representing her zodiac sign Taurus (a personal characteristic with which she strongly identifies). It hovers over a bulleted list, “determined, hardheaded, blunt, outgoing,” that feeds into the image of a diploma with similar illuminating lines as the aunt’s house. The last panel highlights Harper’s goals: a diploma, college, and a graduation hat all float above her with lines attached to an image of her head.

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