Walking into the Young Adult graphic novel section of the main branch of the public library in my city, I noticed one particular book prominently featured on a stand.  It was Palestine: The Special Edition (Fantagraphics  Books, 2007) by Joe Sacco.  I picked up the book with some interest as our current issue of PaperTigers is all about refugee children.  Palestine is a comic book style rendering of author and artist Joe Sacco’s foray into the Occupied Territories of Palestine during the latter years of the first Intifada in the mid 1990′s.    It is a startling account for its time and place in form and style, particularly for North American readers,  although now — a decade later — it could be said there is more widespread knowledge of  the displacement of Palestinian peoples by the state of Israel.

Palestine was originally a set of 24 to 32 page comic books released every few months from early 1993 to late 1995.   It features a young man who appears like Sacco touring the Occupied Territories, relating his adventures.  After getting his journalism degree in Oregon,  Sacco decided to go to the Occupied Territories because, as he says himself, “I felt compelled to.”   Politically, as an American taxpayer, he felt irked by the thought of his money going to the state of Israel to “perpetuate the occupation” and as a journalist, he felt the state of reportage about the Palestinian people woefully inadequate.  So in the winter of 1991-1992, armed with a camera and notebook, he headed off to the Occupied Territories to begin his quest for journalistic verity — that is, of his own unique making in a form he himself calls “comics journalism.”

Children feature in the various strips.  In a section called “The Boys,” a 15 year old youth named Firas who is a worker for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is interviewed.   He is a dedicated stone-thrower like so many Palestinian youth.  When asked about school, he responds, “In the morning, if I go in the streets and see the soldiers, I’ll fight them.  I won’t go to school.”  In another strip, one particularly bright and curious girl of 10 turns the tables on Sacco when she plies him with a barrage of questions like “What does the water taste like in your country?  Do you have the soldiers and the Jews and Fateh and the Popular Front in your country?  Can a man have two wives?”  The girl’s interrogation ends when the grandmother tells her that if she wants, she could marry Sacco in two years when she becomes a woman, to which the girl replies “Why not?”

Many Palestinians are third generation refugees.  Paradoxically, they are the homeless in their own homeland.  Sacco’s rendering of their situation is a deeply moving and compelling account of their world, and is well worth the read.

Graphic novels are all the rage these days, especially for young adult readers, but what about a graphic anthology of poetry?  That’s what Poetry Comics: An Animated Anthology by Dave Morice purports to be.  I found this book in the young adult graphic novel section of the downtown branch of my local library.  It contains such classic English poems as Wordsworth’s “I Wandered as a Lonely Cloud” and Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” as well as other more modern classics, so to speak, like an excerpt from Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and a poem by Langston Hughes. The erstwhile comics that go with the poems vary greatly in style and quality.  There’s a rather surreal rendering of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” that I found bizarre.  However, the sequence envisioning Walt Whitman as a poetic superhero whipping off his jacket to expose his W-emblazoned costume à la Superman seemed exceedingly apt.

Using comics and cartoons to visually interpret these canonical English poems seems to me to be an exercise in creative engagement with work that has been dulled with overuse in the language arts classroom.  I applaud Morice’s efforts in bringing to these poems some fresh insights via the visual medium.  Morice ends his book with an appendix explaining how comics are created with step-by-step instructions.   What a great assignment to give to a bored high school English class!  Don’t doodle while the instructor drones on about Shakespeare, doodle the poem instead and see what comes out.  The kind of interactive engagement that drawing the poem takes will make the poem memorable to the student for the rest of his or her life.

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Laura Salas – head on over!

Seeing Emily by Joyce Lee Wong is an unusual young adult book because it is written entirely in verse.  Following the life of Emily Wu, a sixteen year old Chinese American living in Richmond, Virginia, the book is set out in poetic episodes of first person narrative.  It begins in the Chinese restaurant of Emily’s parents where she helps out part-time.  The first section titled “Golden Palace” begins with a poem called “Flirting.”  It is clear from this opening that Emily is embarking on a journey of adolescent awakening.  However, it is not just a sexual awakening that Emily experiences but also one to her identity as an Asian American woman.  Typically, feelings of shame — towards her parents’ eating habits, for example — mingle with her protective affection for them.  Similarly, her feelings of ambivalence towards a talented Chinese school mate, Alex Huang, are in direct opposition to the near adulation of  her first boyfriend, Nick, who, she realizes later, cannot see beyond her Asian features to the girl inside.

Emily is also an artist.  Throughout the book, Emily works first on drawings, and then on a mural project for her school.  She chooses a tiger to paint for the mural and uses it as a metaphor for things going on in her personal life:

As I started another tiger sketch
I thought of Nick
and felt the stirrings of heat within,
the quickening of my heartbeat
rhythmic and insistent
as the pounding of drums
echoing through the foliage of
the tiger’s jungle home.

The gift of perceiving reality through metaphor is the poet’s and that is why poetry is a suitable medium for Wong’s characterization of Emily.  The poetic narrative works here to good effect in a way that would appeal to a young adult reader.

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Sylvia Vardell at Poetry for Children.