Publishers Weekly called it “a superb introduction to Lincoln’s presidency for grade-schoolers.” Its “history is solid,” judged the Indianapolis Star. But the School Library Journal found the book’s take on slavery simplistic and its narrative “pedantic and inane.”
Ginger Turner, the author of Abraham Lincoln: The Civil War President (Gossamer Books, 2004), reacts gamely. “I do enjoy criticism when it offers suggestions for improvement. If it doesn’t, I just have to be glad that I inspired strong feeling.”
In large part, it’s the book’s format that provokes strong feelings. Gossamer says its glossy graphic novels are designed to get kids excited about U.S. history. Many parents and teachers welcome this approach; others recoil at the notion of comic books as teaching tools.
Certainly Turner, ’04, MS ’05, took her task seriously. She was at Stanford in Oxford during her junior year when she spotted the online ad for a “script writer to write about American presidential history.” The Galveston native had written prize-winning plays for the Texas Historical Association. She had won the national Young Playwrights Competition and seen her entry produced off-Broadway. The job seemed a good fit.
An economics major, Turner was no Lincoln expert, but she had something going for her besides storytelling skills and a love of history. Like the Log Cabin President, she had been home-schooled. As a teen, she was resourceful enough to direct her own studies.
Her brief from Gossamer was to produce a 40-plus-page draft in one month. Turner contacted Stanford history professor George Frederickson to recommend research sources and focused on the period from the brink of the Civil War until Lincoln’s assassination. She played around with the comic book form, adding a secondary plotline and a couple of character-revealing flashbacks to Lincoln’s youth. The president’s dog, Fido, provided a whimsical yet historically accurate element.
The graphic novel genre calls for pictures to tell at least half the story, so Turner had to figure out, for example, who was with Frederick Douglass when he faced a sea of top hats and parasols at Philadelphia City Hall on August 9, 1863, and asked, “What does the black man want?” Then she had to give detailed directions to the illustrator, who was based in India.
Gossamer Books, in Belmont, Calif., has put out several other titles in the series, including Turner’s second effort, a just-published Gold Rush story. The company founder, Angel Oberoi, says tutoring students through Project Read prompted her to start publishing. The former marketing executive noticed that students found history texts boring and remembered how the Tintin books had sparked her interest in history as a child.
There’s no arguing about history texts being boring, says Stanford education professor Sam Wineburg, PhD ’89, who collects old editions for fun. They are bland by design, he says, to pass muster with publishers’ overly censorious “bias and sensitivity review boards.” But Wineburg says teaching kids history through comic books feeds the nation’s literacy crisis. “The biggest problem is not bringing history to life, it’s graduating kids who are primarily black and brown who can never have a shot at a place like Stanford because they can’t read,” he asserts. “We need to stop lying to young people, and to tell them the truth: if you can’t read at grade level, you’re preparing for a future serving burritos at Taco Bell.”
Karen Stanley, the children’s librarian at Turner’s hometown Rosenberg Library, bemoans illiteracy, too. But she thinks books like Turner’s can be part of the solution, noting that lots of kids have checked it out.
“Today’s children overall are not readers; it pains me as a children’s librarian to say it,” Stanley observes. “They go to websites; they want that instant answer. [Turner’s book] gives them what they want but hopefully gives them a little bit more, too.” She’s firmly of the school that believes “light” reading is better than none. “Readers read. We read the backs of cereal boxes, we read flyers, so any reading feeds into that process.”
Many teachers’ blogs and websites concur. One chat room correspondent reported finding Turner’s book “useful in teaching children about Civil War, slavery and Lincoln’s presidency” and asked if anyone else had experience using the genre to help kids read and learn. Nearly all 187 related postings endorsed the practice.
Turner says she has received similar feedback from teachers and parents, and would like to do more “writing and entertainment for education and social change.” For now, she’s begun work at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., in the Africa region private sector area. Previously, she joined several Stanford classmates bringing low-cost lighting to India and South Africa.
MARINA KRAKOVSKY, '92, is a freelance writer in San Mateo.
