Reading +
Illustration:
Classic Books in a
Hot, New Style: Manga Comics
Today's Snack:
Manga is a Japanese comic-book format. So have some rice cakes with your
favorite toppings, and some hot green tea!
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Supplies:
http://manga.gamestotal.com/en/readx/Vagabond/11/298/
Plain typing paper | thin, medium
and thick black and gray markers
Any book or story that you would
like to illustration, manga-style
After you learn what manga is all about, you can
illustrate and write your own manga version of a story on plain typing paper.
Who knows? Maybe you can send it in to a publisher and see your name in print
for real someday!
Everybody's familiar with the comic books about Superman
and Archie. But now an Asian-style "graphic novel" is taking center
stage.
Manga are comic books -- sequential narratives told
mostly with art, but with a little text and dialogue, in geometric boxes, or
panels, that tell a story from beginning to end.
Manga is big business, worldwide, and is a popular
and unexpected new way of bringing classic stories to kids' attention. The
tales of even the most admired writer in world history, Shakespeare, have been
created manga-style, and are being sold as a picture-heavy alternative to
study-note books that many students use to supplement their English class
instruction.
Manga's roots go 'way back to narrative picture
scrolls from the 12th Century found in Kyoto, Japan.
Manga's fans say the books are not
intended to be "schoolwork," but are "edutainment" - a combination of education
and entertainment. They say manga books are light, interesting, and a more
up-to-date way of getting the gist of a great piece of literature without
spending the hours and hours of plowing through its difficult vocabulary and
complex storylines.
The word count is minuscule in a
manga comic book, compared to a real Shakespearean play, and so critics say
that manga readers are denied any semblance of a literature experience, the
plots are disjointed, it's hard to tell one character from another, you don't
understand the subtle nuances, the famous one-liners and literary allusions are
missing, and so on.
Manga fans point out that manga is intended to be
light fare, not heavy-duty, with whimsical characters, cartoon-like sound
effects and other playful elements which are missing from the new classic
adaptations.
In true manga, also, the text reads from right to
left, though the typical English left-to-right format is used in the mangas
published for the American and European markets.
