LearningTip #45:   Cartoons Motivate and Support Children's Reading and Writing

By Guy Gilchrist, Syndicated Cartoonist and Children's Book Author
and
Joyce Melton Pagés, Ed.D.

Editor's Note:  Guy Gilchrist is the author (or co-author with his brother) of the Nancy comic strip, the Muppets comic strip, and several other popular comic strips.   In addition, he has written over forty children's books.  In honor of National Cartoonist's Day, Guy Gilchrist has written an article to help children learn how writers get their ideas.  Teachers and parents may want to share parts of Mr. Gilchrist's article with children.  I have written the introduction to Mr. Gilchrist's article.  I also wrote the section which follows his article about helping children find ideas to write about.  -JMP

Introduction

Children enjoy cartoons.   Cartoons can help children develop as readers and writers in a number of ways.  In the first place, many children who lack confidence in reading and writing can read cartoons with ease.  The cartoons are less overwhelming and more entertaining for less proficient readers.  In addition, the pictures provide a context for supporting the child's reading of the cartoon.   Finally, discovering a favorite cartoon can turn reluctant readers into children who search the newspaper eagerly for their favorite comic strip.

Cartoons can be used in a number of ways to support children's writing.  First, drawing can be a excellent stimulous to spur children's writing.  If they are allowed to draw first, many children are willing to write. Second, children who do not like to write may be willing to compose stories if they can use a cartoon format to write their story.  In addition, this format can be used as a planning strategy for children writing a story.  Further, writing several comic strips about the same character can help children learn how to develop characters.  Choosing the character's name, writing the character into a variety of situations, and thinking about how that specific character would react to various situations helps children do what writers do.  Finally, writing cartoons can help children find the meaning or humor in everyday situations which they experience.

Cartoons can also be used to strengthen children's reading in fun ways.  Having a child put together separated cells of a comic strip requires him/her to use information in the pictures and dialogue to reconstruct the comic strip.  Further, recording story events in a comic strip format while reading a story can help children mentally organize and comprehend the story events.  In addition, planning the frames, drawing the characters, writing the dialogue, and sequencing the story events can provide a fun way for children to "retell" a story that they've read.

Finally, conducting an author study on a cartoonist/author like Guy Gilchrist can help children understand what writers do.  Mr. Gilchrist delights children with his wonderful cartoons, poetry, and books.  Reading his poetry, enjoying his cartoons, understanding some of his writing strategies (below), analyzing how he turns routine activities into humorous scenarios, and exploring his web site can provide children gain insight into how writers explore life through reading and writing.  

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Where One Syndicated Cartoonist and Children's Book Author Gets His Ideas
By Guy Gilchrist, Syndicated Cartoonist and Children's Book Author

When you get paid to fill up blank white pieces of paper with words and pictures 365 days a year, you get used to these four TRUTHS......................

1.  Some ideas, jokes, poems, and stories come easier than others.

2.  There are going to be days when you're brilliant, but even more when you just pray you can fake your way through it that day.

3.  Just when your drawing and/or writing has become masterfully free and easy, you are one with the universe and all perfect consciousness, so that your work is so incredible that it is dripping with genius....the phone will ring and that will be the end of that.

AND....4.  If it's a reporter on the other end of the phone (and you let him live!) and they interview you...they will eventually ask...."Where do you get your ideas from?"

I have a sign on my wall that simply says "Thank you, God....for letting me do what I love for a living.  All the glory is Yours."  I think James Taylor agrees with me, too.  I once heard James Taylor say he waited for his songs to fall out of the sky. 

I believe that ideas DO fall out of the sky...but I don't think I necessarily have to be THE ONE to catch them.  Sometimes, I do...but most of the time these treasures are caught by others....not as poems, or songs but as simply random thoughts to be put into action, or conversation.  Think of it...there YOU are....blissfully living your life, paying me no mind at all, when I overhear or observe you doing and saying that beautiful, perfect little piece of everyday wonderfulness I needed for tomorrow's column.  Happens every day.   I listen.  I watch.  Kids are the best...'cause they JUST DO!  Just SAY!   Kids don't have conversations, they make absolute statements to the world!  I just write it all down.  Then I draw a picture and try to color it in with laughter and truth.  Sometimes it even works.

I've been blessed.  Forty some-odd books I'll have done by year's end...and four separate comic strips in newspapers all over the world.   How did I get so lucky?  Now, you know why I have that little sign on my wall.

I think the key to good writing for kids is to write something that is true.  Without preaching.  Something funny or real to them....regardless of which generation (even your own!) that you have to rip!

I try hard not to TELL THEM anything.  I try to listen to what THEY TELL ME.  I write it down, add a few animals and monsters from my pen...and give it back to them.  Once a person of any age knows you deal in truth...they'll laugh with you, cry with you, emotionally connect with you.  There!   Now you have a reader for as long as you can keep it up!

I do both children's books, and newspaper comic features...and have never seen a "dividing line" there between them.  I love them both...and both seem to complement each other within me.   There seems to be a reason I do this that makes doing each easier by doing them both.

When I was very young, we had a barn on our property that had a wonderful, dangerous looking high loft that was just an adventure magnet for me!  Hidden in the loft on one of my adventures I found a tall pile of old Sunday comic sections!  Funnies from 1911 through the 1940s!!!  Wow!!  In there, amongst the GUMPS, Tillie the Toiler, NANCY, POGO, Little Nemo in Slumberland, were children's book artists and writers!  TARZAN and all the adventure strips!  The oldest papers had Palmer Cox's BROWNIES, Jimmy Swinnerton, Harrison Cady, Johnny Gruelle and on and on to the forties and DR. SEUSS!

So, while I have been filling the funnies with THE MUPPETS and NANCY, I have filled the book shelves with MUDPIE, TINY DINOS, AND NIGHT LIGHTS AND PILLOW FIGHTS.

I'm really excited about Night Lights and Pillow Fights in the funnies!  Last year, I began a comic feature based on my Night Lights books of illustrated poems, and it appears in 46 newspapers and magazines so far!   Besides an illustrated Night Lights poem the full color column includes a Mudpie family cartoon (based on the character from 8 of my books), a drawing lesson, and interactive games.  At last, I'm creating a feature that combines my love of writing poems and stories for children and comic strips! 

Where do I get my ideas?  From you, your children, your students, your congregation, my kids, my memories, and from the bottom of my heart...and maybe...just maybe...I catch one every now and then that falls from the sky.

Books by Guy Gilchrist 

Autographed copies of these books are available from Gilchrist Studios.  These books are also available from Amazon.com below:

Night Lights and Pillow Fights:  A Trip to Storyland

Night Lights and Pillow Fights Two:  The Box Set

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Helping Children Find Writing Ideas
by Joyce Melton Pagés

Writer's block.  Everyone has experienced it.  Prolific, imaginative writers such as Guy Gilchrist have much to share with young writers.  It is important for developing writers to understand that prefessional writers also wrestle with writer's block.  Some strategies for helping children find topics to write about include:

1. Encourage children to keep their eyes open for writing ideas.  They can "spot" an idea anywhere!
   
2. Share Guy Gilchrist's explanation of how he gets his ideas.  Visit the web sites of Guy Gilchrist and other authors.  Read what they say about ideas, writing processes, etc. 
   
3. Have children keep a Writer's Notebook or folder.  Have them maintain an idea page in the notebook; they can record possible writing topics or ideas on this page as they think of them.   They can then refer to this page when they are experiencing writer's block.
   
4. Brainstorm writing topics.  Post them on a topic poster or write them in a Class Writing Ideas Book for later reference.
   
5. Give children a reason to watch for ideas.  Having children choose their own topics while writing in a daily journal keeps them watching and listening for ideas.  If they write a journal entry every day, these entries can be used at a later time to generate a longer selection.
   
6. Provide children with an opportunity to experience other children's writing.  Using an Author's Chair from which children read their stories creates a rich, sharing environment for children.  They can get ideas from classmates and children in other classes.  Writing to penpals and keypals can also help children get ideas.
   
7. Provide children with an opportunity to get response from others.  They can get feedback on their ideas, stories, and other writing selections by reading them to classmates, friends, and others. 
   
8. When children are writing, encourage them to get their ideas down.  Interruptions and distractions can cause the writer to lose his/her thought.  If they jot the idea down quickly, they can always come back and correct the spelling, change the wording, elaborate, etc. later.
   
9. Children can get ideas from the stories of others.

• Read to children.  Provide them with opportunities to experience many topics, themes, genres, authors, stories, and styles.
• Provide children with opportunities to experience puppet shows, plays, storytellers, Reader's Theatre,etc. 
• Encourage children to read.  They can get ideas from stories, children's magazines, web sites which publish children's writing, etc.

Conclusion

Often the hardest part of writing is coming up with the idea.  In an environment of writing support, children can benefit a great deal for the experiences of authors like Guy Gilchrist.  This can go a long way toward getting children to do what writers do!

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