Freshly minted New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Hennessey visited David Cutler’s Government and United States History classes yesterday, addressing an array of topics around graphic novels, the publication industry, and how words and pictures together can make history more accessible and learning more enjoyable.
Hennessey is now on a countrywide book tour, promoting his newest smash hit, The Comic Book Story of Beer: The World’s Favorite Beverage from 7000 BC to Today’s Craft Brewing Revolution. He sold out of copies at this month’s world famous New York City Comic Con, and bookstores are trying to keep up with demand.
In Government, students recently read the author’s first work, The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation. In United States History, Cutler is also teaching about the founding of the republic. Visitors, including students in International Relations and the Creative Arts Program, asked about the creative process behind Hennessey’s work.
Cutler met Hennessey two years ago at the San Diego Comic Con, the largest such gathering in the world. At the event, both presented on behalf of Reading With Pictures, a nonprofit organization dedicated to “getting comics into schools and schools into comics.” In an article for The Atlantic last fall, The New Teacher’s Aides: Superman and Iron Man, Cutler also wrote about Reading With Pictures and Hennessey.
On Collaborating
On graphic adaptations as scholarly sources
On graphic novels conveying a specific message
On using words and pictures together
On when picture books leave the classroom
