1. { Graphic Literature Reading Graphic Novels

2. American Born Chinese By: Gene Luen Yang Book Talk

3. What does it mean to be Chinese? Does it mean having a name your teacher can’t pronounce? Does it mean you’re smarter than everyone else in class? Does it mean you’re naturally skilled in martial arts? Does it mean you have a personal connection to the Chinese fable of the Monkey King? All of these things are possibilities explored in American Born Chinese, a graphic novel that tells three different stories about what it means to be Chinese, what it means to be American, and learning to accept your true identity.

4.  Award-Winning Graphic Novel  It includes three different stories that somehow intertwine:  1. The Monkey King  2. A boy named Jin Wang, whose story starts out after his family moved.  3. A boy named Danny who is introduced to a new and unknown side of his family

5.  Deals with difficult topics such as:  Racism  Cultural differences  Other stereotypes  Discovering identities  Folklore (Folk Tales)  Different concepts of heroes  And more!

6. Just like there are different ways to tell stories in a novel (different narrations, points of view, etc), American Born Chinese is told in different ways, from different characters, and from different perspectives. Not only do the words tell a story, but so do the images and other visual features

7. How do you read a Graphic Novel?

8.  Panels: the boxes or spaces where the scenes are  Speech bubbles: dialog  Thought bubbles: character thoughts  Captions: the narration First, it may help to know some specific terms:

10. There are methods for reading graphic novels. Both reading the panels and the text in the panels follows the same path: Left to Right Top to Bottom

16. How does this method translate to other texts? Let’s find out. Go pick a text from the cart!