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bbckprpl 's review for:
March: Book One
by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin
Read for CBR6
What’s hard for kids to recognize – hell, what’s hard for people to recognize – is that we’re living through history right this minute. That, someday, there’s going to be a kid, bored of his mind, doodling in the margins of his brain tablet (or whatever space technology kids are learning on in the future), barely listening to his teacher drone on and on about ‘the geopolitical ramifications of US drone strikes in 2014′ or – in deference to today’s book – ‘Let’s compare and contrast these pictures from the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s with some of the images that came out of Ferguson Missouri in 2014″. There will be a kid rolling their eyes at that, some day.
The key to getting kids interested in learning about history is helping them make this connection –> that history is not just a bunch of random dates and bloodless facts, complied in the most boring way possible. That history is in fact the LIVED LIVES of hundreds of thousands of individual people, who somehow made it so that we could be where we are today. History is heartbeats and hindsight and horror; it’s mirages and mistakes and miracles. It’s a thousand stories told a thousand different ways, and the one story you should have heard but didn’t.
And it’s vital. Viciously important.
The way we teach history (in general), as a memorization of dates and men and battles is as grave an injustice as the stories we don’t tell. Which is why I get so excited when some of those stories are told, particularly if they’re told in a way that can engage the kids who most need to hear them. That’s definitely the case with John Lewis’ autobiographical graphic novel, MARCH (BOOK 1). Written with the help of co-author Andrew Aydin, and illustrated by Nate Powell, MARCH (BOOK 1) is part of a planned trilogy which traces the current Congressman & long-time Civil Rights Leader’s childhood and early years in ministry, including his calling to the non-violence movement.
It includes the inspiration he was able to find in fellow minister Martin Luther King Jr’s speeches, and tells of how the two first met, but it also talks about how he used to preach to the chickens on his parents’ farm, and how he got too attached to them and had to avoid big Sunday dinners.
It’s not just the story of a leader, is what I’m trying to get at; it’s the story of a life. Lewis shares his genuine emotions – talks about his real fear when a collegues’s home is bombed; his trepidation at his first meeting with King Jr; his determination to attend school, even though his parents needed him to stay home and help them farm. He shares the big and small pieces that make up his life, and does it in such a way that is entertaining and informative and exactly what kids need to be reading Right. Now.
Two of the most powerful segments – to me – were his discussions of the sessions the non-violence committee used to hold, before the sit-ins, to practice reacting with non-violence in the face of name-calling, hatred, screaming, dehumanization and real cruelty. In these sessions, friends would have to switch off, pretending to be both the aggressors and the victims, and sometimes, it was too harsh for some members, and they knew they wouldn’t be able to sit through the actual sit-ins while reacting peacefully. It was piece of history I’d never heard before, something I hadn’t thought of – these college and high school kids practicing cruelty, practicing racism by hurtling invectives at their own friends, in order to make sure they’d be able to hold up under the real thing. It hurts my heart to think about it now, even as I see the sense in their strategy. The other panel that grabbed my attention was Lewis’ response to a speech by Thurgood Marshall, during which he insinuated that protestors had made their point and should stand down. Lewis’ reaction to that speech was telling: “Thurgood Marshall was a good man, but listening to him speak convinced me, more than ever, that our REVOLT was as much against the traditional black leadership structure as it was against segregation and discrimination.” Another powerful statement by a brilliant young man.
The illustrations are striking, almost harsh – certainly the subject matter (racist remarks and cops with fire hoses and billy clubs, for example) lend themselves to a certain sparsity, and I think Powell’s crisp black and white drawings bring that into focus. I think the graphic novel was the perfect medium for this story – the blend of Lewis’ voice with the excellent illustrations tells his story in a way that I don’t think a regular novel would have been able to accomplish. There’s something to this combination of words and pictures that lends the story a real power… It is not coincidental, (to me, anyways), that MARCH (BOOK 1) is basically John Lewis’ origin story. Like any true hero, perhaps only a comic book could truly capture his story.
(MARCH (BOOK 2) is set for release in January 2015.)
(Yes, I did complete my Cannonball, but I promised myself I’d write a review every day for September, plus I’m not going to stop reading just because I finally got around to writing about some of them.)
What’s hard for kids to recognize – hell, what’s hard for people to recognize – is that we’re living through history right this minute. That, someday, there’s going to be a kid, bored of his mind, doodling in the margins of his brain tablet (or whatever space technology kids are learning on in the future), barely listening to his teacher drone on and on about ‘the geopolitical ramifications of US drone strikes in 2014′ or – in deference to today’s book – ‘Let’s compare and contrast these pictures from the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s with some of the images that came out of Ferguson Missouri in 2014″. There will be a kid rolling their eyes at that, some day.
The key to getting kids interested in learning about history is helping them make this connection –> that history is not just a bunch of random dates and bloodless facts, complied in the most boring way possible. That history is in fact the LIVED LIVES of hundreds of thousands of individual people, who somehow made it so that we could be where we are today. History is heartbeats and hindsight and horror; it’s mirages and mistakes and miracles. It’s a thousand stories told a thousand different ways, and the one story you should have heard but didn’t.
And it’s vital. Viciously important.
The way we teach history (in general), as a memorization of dates and men and battles is as grave an injustice as the stories we don’t tell. Which is why I get so excited when some of those stories are told, particularly if they’re told in a way that can engage the kids who most need to hear them. That’s definitely the case with John Lewis’ autobiographical graphic novel, MARCH (BOOK 1). Written with the help of co-author Andrew Aydin, and illustrated by Nate Powell, MARCH (BOOK 1) is part of a planned trilogy which traces the current Congressman & long-time Civil Rights Leader’s childhood and early years in ministry, including his calling to the non-violence movement.
It includes the inspiration he was able to find in fellow minister Martin Luther King Jr’s speeches, and tells of how the two first met, but it also talks about how he used to preach to the chickens on his parents’ farm, and how he got too attached to them and had to avoid big Sunday dinners.
It’s not just the story of a leader, is what I’m trying to get at; it’s the story of a life. Lewis shares his genuine emotions – talks about his real fear when a collegues’s home is bombed; his trepidation at his first meeting with King Jr; his determination to attend school, even though his parents needed him to stay home and help them farm. He shares the big and small pieces that make up his life, and does it in such a way that is entertaining and informative and exactly what kids need to be reading Right. Now.
Two of the most powerful segments – to me – were his discussions of the sessions the non-violence committee used to hold, before the sit-ins, to practice reacting with non-violence in the face of name-calling, hatred, screaming, dehumanization and real cruelty. In these sessions, friends would have to switch off, pretending to be both the aggressors and the victims, and sometimes, it was too harsh for some members, and they knew they wouldn’t be able to sit through the actual sit-ins while reacting peacefully. It was piece of history I’d never heard before, something I hadn’t thought of – these college and high school kids practicing cruelty, practicing racism by hurtling invectives at their own friends, in order to make sure they’d be able to hold up under the real thing. It hurts my heart to think about it now, even as I see the sense in their strategy. The other panel that grabbed my attention was Lewis’ response to a speech by Thurgood Marshall, during which he insinuated that protestors had made their point and should stand down. Lewis’ reaction to that speech was telling: “Thurgood Marshall was a good man, but listening to him speak convinced me, more than ever, that our REVOLT was as much against the traditional black leadership structure as it was against segregation and discrimination.” Another powerful statement by a brilliant young man.
The illustrations are striking, almost harsh – certainly the subject matter (racist remarks and cops with fire hoses and billy clubs, for example) lend themselves to a certain sparsity, and I think Powell’s crisp black and white drawings bring that into focus. I think the graphic novel was the perfect medium for this story – the blend of Lewis’ voice with the excellent illustrations tells his story in a way that I don’t think a regular novel would have been able to accomplish. There’s something to this combination of words and pictures that lends the story a real power… It is not coincidental, (to me, anyways), that MARCH (BOOK 1) is basically John Lewis’ origin story. Like any true hero, perhaps only a comic book could truly capture his story.
(MARCH (BOOK 2) is set for release in January 2015.)
(Yes, I did complete my Cannonball, but I promised myself I’d write a review every day for September, plus I’m not going to stop reading just because I finally got around to writing about some of them.)