Wimpy Kid--Wimpy Reading?

I was surprised to read in "Seeing the Screen: Research Into Visual and Digital Writing Practices," by Anne Wysocki in the Handbook of Research on Writing, that visual literacies are historically associated with the working class and are hence looked down upon. Wysocki states, "Writing studies research into the visual aspects of texts is shaped by a continuing belief that the interpretation of words, unadorned and unaccompanied by illustrations, is what produces the steadily rational being we often believe we ought to be" (p. 600). These ideas stem from the fact that 19th century publications for the working class contained more illustrations than those produced for a more educated audience.

This got me to thinking about the reading practices in my own home. It's not unusual to see my husband stretched out on the couch reading a 1000+ page Stephen King novel, like Under the Dome, while I read Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a journal-comic-narrative, on the other side of the room. I keep telling my husband he should give Wimpy Kid a chance, but he's turned off by the simple illustrations which accompany every page.

I personally love the Wimpy Kid series. If you've ever read it, you know the illustrations reinforce the "journal"content, provide additional details not included in the written portion of the book, and also foreshadow predictions of the main character, Greg Heffley. The visuals and text work together--one does not replace the other. A full understanding of the book is not possible without engaging with both the written and visual elements.

So is the Wimpy Kid series wimpy reading? I think that depends on your purpose. As a full-time doctoral student studying education, I find Wimpy Kid augments the theoretical readings I do in The Handbook of Research on Writing and the seven pound (yes, I did weigh it!) Handbook of Research on Teaching. While the handbooks help me think about the decisions I make as a teacher, at the end of the day, I'm looking for texts I can share with adolescent readers, and Wimpy Kid fits that category.

Maybe my husband thinks I'm procrastinating when I spend two hours reading a pseudo-comic book instead of something more scholarly, but I see it as an opportunity to apply theory about teaching while working on some preliminary lesson plans.

New Book--Engaging Audience: Writing in an Age of New Literacies

NCTE just published Engaging Audience: Writing in an Age of New Literacies.

A Multigenre Response to The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

Don't know why
but in my 10 years
of multigenring
I've never read
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
the book that sparked an idea
in Tom Romano

And the multigenre research paper was born.

***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJb6RM1dwOU

***

March 19, 2010

I just finished reading The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) by Michael Ondaatje. Although I really have no interest in Billy the Kid as a historical figure, and never would have read this book based on its title, Bill suggested I read it as a seminal work for my class project. I'm glad I did.

The book is a collection of poems, narratives, pictures, news reports, rememberings and an interview with Billy, who insists on being addressed as Mr. Bonney. By reading all of these genres together, one gets a multi-voiced perspective of the last two years of Billy's life. The book is raw and honest, the imagery striking.

Billy's accounts of murder, drunkness, and fornication are not appropriate for a K-12 audience, but a mature reader can appreciate the graphicness of this book. In one poem, Billy describes a chicken digging its beak in the throat of a dying man and pulling out a vein.

Meanwhile he [Gregory] fell
and the chicken walked away

still tugging at the vein
till is was 12 yards long
as if it held that body like a kite
Gregory's last words being

get away from me yer stupid chicken. (Ondaatje, 1970, p. 15)

This is what Tom Romano calls an "indelible moment."

***

T: So what did you think of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid?

K: I certainly can see how it sparked multigenre. The book is told from multiple genres from
the perspectives of Billy and those who knew him. I see a lot of similarities between this
book and the kind of multigenre papers I wrote in Romano's classes 9-10 years ago. I'm
surprised, though, that Romano didn't think of the Endnote concept until he'd been tinkering
with multigenre a few years. The Endnotes are very similar to what Ondaatje does at the
end of the book.

T: What do you mean?

K: Well, when I first learned multigenre, Romano required a Letter to the Reader as the first
genre in a long multigenre paper. Its purpose was to introduce the paper and tell the reader
any important information the reader may need to understand the paper. A few years later,
Romano started having his students provide Endnotes, or a few sentences of explantion for
each genre, at the end of the paper. The Endnotes are similar to the Acknowledgements and
Credits Ondaatje placed at the end of Billy the Kid. After the book, Ondaatje cited sources,
including books, photographs, written accounts, and comic books, that he used to characterize
Billy. "With these basic sources I have edited, rephrased, and slightly reworked the originals.
But the emotions belong to their authors" (Ondaatje, 1970).

T: Interesting. Did reading the book change the way you conceive of multigenre?

K: A little bit. I've always written multigenre papers where each piece of writing has been a
different kind of genre. I required my students to do the same, the only exception being the
repetend.

T: Repetend?

K: A repetend is a repeated genre, kind of like a chorus in a song. It acts as a transition between
major ideas in a multigenre paper.

T: OK.

K: So anyway, I only repeat a genre if it is part of the repetend. A multigenre paper may be
constructed like this:
Genre 1: Repetend 1--Word collage
Genre 2: poem
Genre 3: narrative
Genre 4: word collage
Genre 5: diary entry
Genre 6: Repetend 2--word collage
Genre 7: dream sequence
Genre 8: top ten list
Genre 9: letter


Ondaatjee's book begins as:
Genre 1: Note
Genre 2: Poem
Genre 3: Narrative
Genre 4: Poem
Genre 5: Narrative
Genre 6: Poem
Genre 7: Poem
Genre 8: Poem
Genre 9: Picture

For me, when I think of multigenre, I think of each piece as a different genre. I have never
written or assigned multigenre papers that only rely on a few genres repeated over and over
again.

T: Why is that?

K: I like forcing myself and my students to think of different ways of communicating the
same information. I love multigenre because it gets you away from the expected school
genres--narrative, essay, poem. I guess I shy away from Ondaatjean multigenre because it
seems too much like what we already do in school. Multigenre gives students a chance to
experiment with genres we don't always explicitly teach. It's more 'out of the box.'

T: Will you continue to write and and assign multigenre papers the way you always have, or are
you rethinking that structure based on your reading of Ondaatje?

K: I still want more variety of genres, but after reading Billy the Kid, I'm more open to the idea
of repeating more than the repetend genre or switching between a smaller number of
genres. Ondaatje does it well, but I'm afraid if I told most students they could do this, I'd
end of with multigenre papers that looked more like a book of poetry than multigenre as I
know it.

T: Is that wrong?

K: No, but like all new ideas, I'm going to have to take some time mulling it over. I'm not sold
on the idea of a multigenre paper using 2-3 genres back-and-forth, but I'm more open to
genre repetition than I was a day ago.

T: Fair enough.

Multigenre Writing 1

The first time I heard of Tom Romano's multigenre paper was my sophomore year of college. Students were discussing their favorite papers they had ever written, and many of my classmates cited their "multigenre paper from Dr. Romano's class" as their favorite. I didn't know what they were talking about at the time, but when I took my first class from Romano the following year, I was sure to pay attention.

I've been infected with the multigenre bug for 10 years now, and I can tell you, multigenre is not only rewarding to write, it's also rewarding to read. When I assigned multigenre research papers to my college students, I actually looked forward to the day I would take 100 papers home to read. Now who does that with a traditional research paper? Students enjoy the experience too. I knew the assignment was a winner when two of my community college students stopped by my office to find out when I would be finished with their papers. They weren't concerned about the grade--they wanted to share their final drafts with their peer group before everyone left campus for the summer!

A few years ago, I gave a presentation about multigenre at NCTE. One of my co-presenters was Nancy Mack from Wright State University. Nancy was interested in editing a book about multigenre writng at the college level, but when she contacted some publishers, she was told there wasn't a market in higher education for books about multigenre writing.

There are many ways to approach multigenre writing, but I suspect some in higher education resist it because they've seen papers that were too cute. Perhaps they see construction paper sticking out of the sides of a paper and decide it couldn't possibly hold the academic rigor of their research papers.

For my semester paper, I've decided to examine multigenre research papers. Surprisingly, a fair number of the articles I've run across are written by college professors, which negates the book publishers' arguments that there isn't an interest in multigenre at this level. Some of the language to describe multigenre, though, may be part of the problem. In "Learning About Self and Others Through Multigenre Research Projects," Dickson, DeGraff, and Foard (2002) state, "This is not a success story of the uses of multigenre as an alternative to the traditional research paper" (p. 82). When phrased this way, readers new to the multigenre concept may mistakenly believe that multigenre is a way to avoid the research paper rather than present research through multiple lenses.

It's been a few years, so perhaps there is a readiness for multigenre writing at the college/university level. I know education programs have embraced the concept, but what about English, science, history, and art classes? I'll let you know what I discover.

My Local Literacies

Ever since I finished Barton and Hamilton's (1998) Local Literacies, I can't stop thinking about all of the ways literacy impacts my daily life. I don't know how I would function if I couldn't read and write. It doesn't seem like I can go 10 minutes without reading or writing something!

As I read the case studies of people's literacy practices, I found many similarities to my own life. Like Shirley, I have a lousy memory and because of this [rely] on written records" (p. 98). I write shopping lists before going to the grocery store as June does, and I have "kept diaries at various points" (p. 136) like Cliff.

On Thursday, I thought it would be interesting to jot down my literacy activities in a single day. I started the morning with good intentions and detailed notes, but as the day wore on, I got so engrossed in my literacy activities that I wrote less. Here's what I captured:

• Reading began before I got out of bed. I read, replied to, and deleted the 53 e-mails which had accumulated on my BlackBerry since 10 p.m. Wednesday night.
• As I surfed through TV channels, I read the screen--prices on the home shopping network, the upcoming schedule on the TV guide channel, credits on TV shows.
• I spent 1/2 hour on the elliptical machine, first reading a magazine, then reading my MP3 player as I scrolled through the play list.
• I took a shower and read the shampoo and conditioner bottles to distinguish between the two.
• I spent about an hour reading a textbook for class, writing notes in the margins while I read.
• During lunch, I watched the noon news on TV, which required reading all of those scroll lines at the bottom of the screen. I also scanned the Giant Eagle ad and wrote a shopping list, coordinating my trip to coupons, which had to be read for expiration dates.
• I spent the early afternoon reading and matching ranking sheets for my graduate assistantship. This activity was followed by writing e-mails to inform students and employers they had "matched" with one another.
• I read my calendar to make sure I was doing everything that needed to be done.
• I wrote a To-Do list for Friday.
• By 4:00 p.m., I had read/written 30 more e-mails (in addition to the 53 which began my day).
• I pulled receipts out of my purse and wrote them in the check register, which was then reconciled against my bank statement, which I read online.
• My husband and I went to H&R block to do our taxes. More reading. I also had to sign my name multiple times.
• After the taxes, Mike and I went out to dinner, where we read a menu. Along the way, we read many road signs and bill boards.
• When we got home, I sorted and read the mail. I scanned the newspaper headlines and decided there wasn't anything I wanted to spend time reading. Perhaps, like Shirley, I felt the newspaper was "old" since I had watched the TV news earlier.
• I went back to e-mail and ranking forms. Wrote a spreadsheet of matches.

After writing and reading this list, I think I know why I'm so tired! The bulk of my day was consumed with reading and writing e-mails. It's the main way I do work for my assistantship. I also may (who am I kidding? I do) have an addiction to my BlackBerry.