Friday Focus: Gene Luen Yang

Happy Friday and the end of our seventh week of virtual learning. This was a bit of a tough week for us all. On Monday, Governor Murphy announced that school buildings would remain closed for the rest of the school year. Schooling will continue to our designated final day of the 2019/ 2020 school year - just virtually. School isn't closed, the building is.

Our author for this week's Friday Focus is Gene Luen Yang.

Image: Macmillan

Image: Twitter @geneluenyang

Mr. Yang is a graphic novelist and former high school computer science teacher. Although he wrote and illustrated several graphic novels before winning a Printz Award for American Born Chinese, that was the book that introduced me to him. In 2016, he became the fifth National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. His platform for his two-year term was "Reading without Walls." You may have notice a small standee and poster in the library with his challenge to: 1. Read a book about a character that doesn't look like you. 2. Read a book about a topic you know little about and, 3. Read a book in a format you don't usually read. That same year, he was also named a MacArthur Fellow. Here's a link to him being interviewed on the MacArthur Fellows website.

Of course, he has his own website. Here's a link to an interesting TEDX talk he gave on the value of comics in education. He's also on Twitter and Instagram @geneluenyang at both platforms. 

Mini Book Talks

Image: Macmillan

American Born Chinese was published in 2006 and was the first graphic novel to be named a National Book Award Finalist. The decision caused much discussion and disagreement over the "literary merits" of a graphic novel. The following January, it was the first graphic novel to win the Printz Award. It also won the Eisner Award and was a NYT best seller as well as a Bank Street Best Children's Book. 

It tells three interconnected stories - Jin, a boy who moves from Chinatown to an almost all white suburb and experiences racism as well as a painful crush on a blond white girl; Danny, a popular boy who has to endure a visit from his embarrassing cousin, Chin-Kee, who seems to embody every Chinese stereotype imaginable and the Monkey King, a retelling of the Chinese fable.

The art is simple and clean where the storyline is complex and requires attention (and perhaps rereading). 

Image: Macmillan

Secret Coders, Book one of six in the Secret Coders series centers on two students, Hopper and Eni, who attend an elite, yet mysterious school where students are thrown into situations and need to figure things out for themselves. The authors cleverly embed fundamentals of coding into their fast-paced mystery. 

Image: Macmillan

Dragon Hoops is part-autobiography and part-history of basketball. Mr. Yang taught for seventeen years at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Northern California. Gene Yang, a self-professed nerd had no interest in basketball, rarely set foot in the athletics building on campus and rarely crossed paths with Lou Richie, the storied coach of Dragon basketball. He himself is an O'Dowd alum and went to state with his much beloved coach and mentor. But as much as the Dragons dominated California basketball, the team never clinched a title. Gene Yang was looking for a story idea for his next graphic novel when he heard a rumor that the 2014 team had a great chance at going all the way. He began shadowing Richie and his team and grew to appreciate the game, its history and the players. Dragon Hoops is hefty, weighing in at over 400 pages. They do fly by thanks to great storytelling and superb art. A longer review of Dragon Hoops will be featured in next week's Fact Friday post. 

Releasing next week! Click on the link to DC Comics to view a trailer.

Image: DC Comics

Superman Smashes the Klan is a graphic novel adaptation of a 1940s radio show in which a Chinese family is threatened by the Ku Klux Klan and Superman not only comes to the rescue but, as an outsider, relates to the family as well.