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A podcast from the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University about play and pop culture. Professors Haeny Yoon and Nathan Holbert talk with educators, parents and kids about how they play in their work and their lives, and why play and pop culture matter.
The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speaker to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, staff or Trustees either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.
Nathan Holbert:
Welcome to Pop and Play, the podcast all about play and pop culture and how it shapes our lives. I'm Nathan Holbert and with me as always is Haeny, if it's not about murder, I'm not going to read it, Yoon.
Haeny Yoon:
That is so accurate. Holy cow.
Nathan Holbert:
I know you well.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay. Hi, I'm Haeny Yoon and today Nathan has finally peer pressured me to talk about reading and literacy and he didn't want to just hear me pop off off the air, but now it's on the air. So we're going to talk about the debate about what it means to read. Is audiobooks reading? Is graphic novels reading? Is reading a kiddy book reading? Like what's reading?
Nathan Holbert:
We're going to get into it and finally we're going to drive some clicks. We're finally diving into controversy. Our recent episode where we criticized ICE and the federal government was not controversial enough, that was child's play. Today we get straight into the reading wars. It's about to go down.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh yes. Danger, danger. Will Robinson, danger.
Nathan Holbert:
I mean, part of the reason you didn't want to do this for a while, and it's not like we really had too much peer pressure, but was that this is a pretty sensitive kind of topic. There are a lot of very strong opinions about reading and what counts as reading and how you should teach reading and which kinds of things should be the right materials for reading. How do you feel about us wading into that?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I mean, I'm excited to get into it. I mean, I want to add a caveat that we are not the soul arbiters of reading, but I think we have a lot of-
Nathan Holbert:
You might not be, but I am the soul arbiter.
Haeny Yoon:
We have a lot of opinions about it. And I think we have a lot of experience because we've been reading for a long time.
Nathan Holbert:
You've been reading about murder for a long, long time.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. Well, we have experiential knowledge.
Nathan Holbert:
That's right. So well, let's dive right in and let's... I would prefer we dive into the deep end first.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay.
Nathan Holbert:
And then maybe we can kind of wade our way back because what the people want to know... They're clicking on this because they want to know whether it's okay for kids specifically to be reading audiobooks or listening to audiobooks or reading graphic novels or picture books, or if they need to be reading chapter books right away. What is allowed to be read?
Haeny Yoon:
Before I answer that, I'm going to turn it back on you and be like, what has prompted you to ask such a question?
Nathan Holbert:
Man, you were very insightful. Well, I have children and I have had to teach them to read, not just me. They learned at school with their excellent teachers as well. And this has been a conversation in our house in various forms over a number of years. So I recall, oh, maybe middle school or so, my son who's now in high school started listening to books instead of reading them. And he's like, "It's great because I can do other things while I'm listening and I can kind of multitask." And I was always like, "I don't know, man. I don't feel like you're probably paying as much attention in this case when you're listening to the books. And so I'd probably prefer you to read the books." We have little arguments about that. And certainly at various points, like when he had to answer questions, he would struggle, but for the most part he kind of got the books.
And then the other side of this is that my daughter loves graphic novels and will consume graphic novels quite quickly and understands them and can tell you about them and stuff, but she doesn't really like to read longer books that are not graphic novels. And so this is a thing that drives my wife crazy and they're constantly bickering about this. And so in my house-
Haeny Yoon:
She's more like a novel, print kind of person, right?
Nathan Holbert:
My wife can just read, Hannah can just read tons and tons and tons of books very quickly. And she wants Maisie to fall in love with reading in the same way that she's fallen in love with reading. So this has been a tension in my own home. So this episode might get me canceled, so be careful what you say.
Haeny Yoon:
Well, you know what, Nathan? I feel like you gave three perfectly good examples of three different kinds of readers who enjoy three different kinds of genres. And so I think about how in school it's so ironic that we almost beat children over the head about genres, right? Whether it's reading, whether it's writing, a lot of times our classrooms are organized by like, "This is the genre of funny books. This is the genre of narratives. This is the genre of memoirs. This is whatever." When we get into high school, "This is the genre of whatever." And that's kind of how bookstores are organized too, right? The world is organized into genres. And so I feel like if we almost think about audiobooks, graphic novels as a different kind of genre that isn't only about the content of it, but the way that it's approached, then I think you have just described three very different kind of readers who enjoy three very different kinds of genres and all of it has affordances and limitations, right?
I can totally... I am an audiobook person and so when Emerson doesn't catch everything, I think you are totally right because there's so many times I listen to an audiobook and I'm like, "What just happened in the last 30 minutes?" Because totally spaced out and thought about Love is Blind or something.
Nathan Holbert:
Which you can do in like a print book as well, right?
Haeny Yoon:
In a print book, yes.
Nathan Holbert:
"What did I just read?"
Haeny Yoon:
It happens the same way in a print book, your attention and then same with like the visual graphic novel aspect, there's like something that you gain from reading each kind and then something that gets lost from reading each kind. And it depends on where your brain and your attention kind of go to in that particular moment, right? It's like an encounter.
Nathan Holbert:
So you're saying the answer is not one or the other.
Haeny Yoon:
Uh-huh.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, well that was a short episode.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, we're done. We're done. Yeah. I think it's all... But I think we got into this because we hear the question a lot about is listening to a book reading.
Nathan Holbert:
Is it reading? Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Is it reading?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
What do you think about that?
Nathan Holbert:
I mean, I'm firmly in the yes, it's reading camp. I really appreciate how you kind of pointed out that there's different affordances, there's different kind of features of each of these different types of modes of engaging with the text, but certainly I think listening to an audiobook counts as reading to me. If you were to push me really hard on this of like, okay, then is watching a documentary or a movie reading? Then it starts to feel a little different. I do feel bad whenever you ask somebody like, "Oh, have you read book A?" And they're like-
Haeny Yoon:
"I listened to it."
Nathan Holbert:
"Well, I listened to it." I'm like, "You don't have to tell me that. You could just say yes."
Haeny Yoon:
Which I'm guilty of doing. I say that all the time. I contradict my own self.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, I definitely count that as reading.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that... Okay, so I'm going to read this quote that I prepared ahead of time. Yes, we prepared this podcast. There's a quote that I love from the late and great Bell Hooks and she talks about writing because she's a writer and she loves writing and she loves the art of it. And one of the things that she says is, "Writing is my passion. It is a way to experience the ecstatic, seduced by the magic of written and spoken words in childhood. I am still transported, carried away by writing and reading, performing the words to both hear and feel them. I want to be certain I'm grappling with language in a manner where my words live and breathe, where they surface from a passionate place inside me." I think that's so beautiful because I think sometimes we think about reading as a technical sort of skill thing versus something that transports people and that is embodied.
I think sometimes we forget in school that it's not just about the technical part, which is also important. I'm not trying to get canceled here and say you shouldn't do that because that's what leads you to this magical experience of reading, but that reading is also an experienced act and I would say that experience is actually greater than just learning those skills.
Nathan Holbert:
So let's get into that a little bit more, because that is sort of a simmering tension underneath this question about whether or not reading needs to be books or whether it needs to be audiobooks or whether graphic novels count. It's this, I mentioned the reading wars and the introduction, right? That's part of what's going on here, it feels like to me. There's this tension between focusing on literacy as the purpose or at least a key outcome of reading versus a skill, a set of, like you said, sort of technical moves that one makes to decode letters into words and into sentences and all that stuff. So can you help us understand, not the history and not the full scope, but like help us understand that distinction about what's going on here?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I think it's like different purposes to reading. And so I think... Okay, so I'm going to give an example of me, not as a child, but me now. And so part of our job is reading, and reading a lot. And I realize that my intention for reading when I'm reading to write this paper or when I'm reading for class... Sorry, no. When I'm reading for class, I'm reading very deeply and engaging so ecstatically.
Nathan Holbert:
That was a close one.
Haeny Yoon:
Message to my students. No, I'm just joking. But I do feel like there is a very utilitarian functional purpose to reading when you're reading like that. When I'm reading an academic text or when I'm reading something to write a good lit review or something, I'm definitely looking for something. I'm looking for a certain quote, I'm looking for a way that they might have done their methods, I'm looking for an implication. So I'm not necessarily trying to get transported or carried away by this reading. Even though some academic texts have done that to me-
Nathan Holbert:
Sometimes it works, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
But that potential to do that gets decreased a lot because I am looking functionally for that. And I see that as a purpose. I see that as a useful purpose because I've been taught to figure out how to do this and to read with that intention. But then there's also some things that I read for pleasure, and that intention, like I'm not looking for quotes, I'm not looking to see like, "What is the verb now usage intent that's happening in this sentence?" I'm not looking for those things. I'm looking for that ecstatic experience that Bell Hooks talks about. So the purpose for why I'm reading that text is going to be different.
And I think that's the same thing with children when I think about like how literacy gets carried out in schools, is that sometimes we only teach children to think about reading as the former and not the latter, that you're looking at a text because you're trying to see where the exclamation points are. You're looking at a text because you're constantly looking for the word the, that, and and because those are like keywords or something.
Nathan Holbert:
I didn't know that. There's a lot of those in there.
Haeny Yoon:
Sight words. Sight words, right. Like the, it's not T he, it's the.
Nathan Holbert:
This is news to me.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Okay, good.
Haeny Yoon:
Or we're looking at the phonetic structure of a word, and so we're stopping at points where we are seeing like pot and we'll go "Pot." And so I feel like that is a purpose to reading. It is not the purpose and it is not the only purpose and that's not going to get you to a point where you're going to become a reader like Bell Hooks, right?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
So you're going to become a reader like Academic Haeny that's looking for things that she can use.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. I mean, that's really a helpful way to kind of distinguish these two worlds. And I would say that one thing that I think is also true is that sometimes that kind of learning to read like Haeny, that sort of technical or that sort of like skill based expertise development sometimes happens with the first kind of being transported. Like when you read Bell Hooks, to refer to that again, you start to notice the ways in which they use language, the ways in which they build an argument. Even when you're reading fiction, you'll notice how you get transported in those like particularly interesting moves that the author can make to do that. I know when I read academic articles, and I tell my students this all the time, that, try to notice the structure that your favorite authors are able to do, to really pull you in, to really make that argument.
That stuff kind of happens sort of on its own when you're engaged in reading, but also then as you gain that expertise in that quote/unquote "skill," then those two worlds start to kind of merge together, I feel like.
Haeny Yoon:
Nathan, are you suggesting that it's entangled?
Nathan Holbert:
Both and?
Haeny Yoon:
The functional and the aesthetic experience of reading is entangled? What?
Nathan Holbert:
Okay, slight sidebar here, but I had this professor in college who was a religion professor and he used to say both and is the holy conjunction and that-
Haeny Yoon:
Holy conjunction?
Nathan Holbert:
He'd call it the holy conjunction. And I think about that all the time. So often the answer is "both and," that that is the way to kind of bring things together to have these new kind of epiphanies. Sorry. So yes, of course.
Haeny Yoon:
I think that's totally true, right? And so I think that's why even positioning something as reading wars already connotes that there isn't a both and that there's a verses.
Nathan Holbert:
Either or, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Which I think is a wrong way to think about this current moment in the reading debates.
Nathan Holbert:
Right. And that's this current moment that's been going on for how many decades now?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, exactly. The reiteration of it in this current moment in the form of science of reading, yes.
Nathan Holbert:
It's exhausting. It's exhausting. And every time you read an article or an essay that's explaining why children are actually broken because they did this and they should have done that, you should just say, "Hang on, both and is the holy conjunction."
Haeny Yoon:
I mean, can you imagine if I was reading like a instruction manual on how to make a drawer and be like, "I'm looking for my aesthetic experience." There is like a purpose and a way you're supposed to read that to accomplish a certain goal, and I think sometimes we don't think about what the end goal of what we're trying to accomplish by doing this is.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. So what would you say... How would you think about encouraging... You teach this stuff, how do you think about encouraging children with the different kinds of texts? So for example, and this is now to an audience of one, my wife.
Haeny Yoon:
I don't want to get canceled. Don't let me get canceled by your wife, please.
Nathan Holbert:
She's great. You're not going to be canceled. But, Maisie, many kids her age and her sort of COVID generation-
Haeny Yoon:
This is your daughter.
Nathan Holbert:
My daughter, Maisie, who's a former guest, Maisie, struggles with spelling sometimes. And one thing we've told her is like, "Oh, if you read more, one thing that kind of happens is you start to develop an awareness of how words are spelled, just kind of through that repetition, through that noticing." So things like that. So how should we think about like spelling? How should we think about when Emerson was doing audiobooks, thinking about being aware of what's happening in a story despite the fact that you can't see it on a page? How should we think about those skills stuff and the ways in which we engage in reading practices, but also not neglecting like loving reading?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
That's so important too.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah. Oh, man.
Nathan Holbert:
How should I fix my kids, is what I'm asking.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, my God, this is a whole semester class that you're trying to make me do in like five minutes.
Nathan Holbert:
I am. I am. It's not fair.
Haeny Yoon:
I think though... Okay, so maybe I'll get canceled for this. Who knows? Not just in your family, but in the larger ether perhaps.
Nathan Holbert:
Not just Hannah?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I think the best way to crush someone's spirit in reading is to drill them with a lot of skills. For instance, you don't know how to spell, you're going to have to spell 50 words a week, or you don't know how to read words phonetically, so we're going to hit you with phonics for like 12 hours.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah. Every day all day.
Haeny Yoon:
Which I've seen in kindergarten classrooms, that happening for like two hours and I'm like, "Oh, my God, I would just hate..." That is like the one thing that you can do to someone to crush their spirit. And I think about the same thing with me and writing, I've talked about this in the podcast before. I actually realized that I like writing. I just don't like writing in a very technical way and I think that's what I've been doing for so long that it's kind of like, I just put writing over here as something I don't want to do. And I think that's like the easiest way to do that.
I do think though that it's also a disservice to young people who are struggling with that, not to provide them with the tools and resources to get better at that. So it's like this delicate balance of thinking about the technical and thinking about the aesthetic experience and getting to a point where people are not jaded by that fact is such an art, and that's why there's like an art to teaching because it's not something... It's like this feeling. It goes back to the first thing about the embodiment of acts like reading and writing and teaching and learning, that there is not just like a one, I don't know, one way to get there, I think.
Nathan Holbert:
One experience of reading. Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah. So I think all of them are probably necessary, but I think the first thing is the joy and pleasure that people will get out of the experience. I think that is probably the first thing that gets us to want to do anything or get better at anything is that. Once we don't have that, it's like you just shut down and you're done.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we are on the same page 100% here. And that's true of anything, not just reading.
Haeny Yoon:
It's totally true of anything. I think about how many things I stopped doing because I got disengaged right at the beginning.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Yeah. Finding something you can love about it. So if we're trying to encourage kids to engage with reading, if I'm trying to encourage Maisie to not read graphic novels, but to open up her possibilities of what kinds of things she might engage with or be excited by, any tips? Any suggestions for how we can think about values of the text?
Haeny Yoon:
Now I'm going back to being canceled at your house. Is it so bad that she's reading a lot of graphic novels, you think?
Nathan Holbert:
Not at all.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Except for they're expensive and she reads them too fast.
Haeny Yoon:
But I have a lot of graphic novels at my house that she can borrow if she wants.
Nathan Holbert:
She's coming up to your floor.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I mean, I think about... Okay, so Linda Berry, she talks about how there's something that happens when ideas take physical shape. And it's kind of a long road that she kind of goes through, but I've heard a lot of artists talk about that, how like there's an idea and when it takes physical shape, it has like new meaning and different ways of engaging with something, right? And there is a book called How to Read Now, which is a collection of essays by Elaine Castillo where she talks about the approaching reading as an art, almost like we're looking at artwork, we have an approach that we're going to that and if we look at a book and we think about it as art, whether it's written words, because they could be very artistic, or whether it's a graphic novel and there's art to it. I feel like reading a graphic novel is actually a lot of complicated hard work.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, yeah, totally.
Haeny Yoon:
Because you have to pay attention, not just to words, but you have to pay attention to the format, you have to pay attention to the visual, you have to pay attention to how they kind of work together. Because now you're not imagining something in your mind, you have to see how an author sort of imagines this and then try to see what the nuances are between that. I think that is actually a lot of hard work.
Nathan Holbert:
I agree. I often find when I'm reading a graphic novel that I'm reading it and I'm moving pretty quick and I'm like, "I need to slow down. I need to like notice the pictures a little more. I need to actually see the composition of the panels." I actually feel like I'm doing it wrong by just reading the words and all that.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. And I think it goes back to your original question. When should kids start reading chapter books? When should they stop reading picture books? I feel like the reason why we teach young children to read with picture books is because the visual is part of reading, that there is a semiotic experience of reading, right? That's the words, that's the position of text, that's the visual, that's like... So much of it gets laid out, like how it opens and closes, like the end papers, like things like that.
Nathan Holbert:
Real little kids.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes, yes. And I think about how when they get older, we're sort of like, "No, forget all of those other things related to reading. Now reading is only about the words on a page." And the world is not like that. If you want to understand things in the world, you have to actually understand all the semiotic compositions that happen in it.
Nathan Holbert:
Absolutely.
Haeny Yoon:
Right? And so I feel like, why do we tell children to stop reading picture books after a certain point because now chapter books for some reason our mind has more worth?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. I mean, obviously I agree with that. I think to play the devil's advocate here, I do think there is a tension that a young person often feels where it's like, "This book feels hard to me, this book feels easier to me. I want to stay where it feels easy. I don't want to feel like I'm struggling to get through a couple pages. It feels like I'm taking forever to turn a page and gosh, this book looks so big and it's going to take me a million years." And that can create anxiety, that can create worry and that can create a feeling of discomfort. And then like all of us, it feels better just to sort of stay in the safe comfort place. And so then we have this situation where you or me or a teacher has an opportunity, but also a challenge of like, how do I encourage this kid to like push themselves a tad more, to feel that slight amount of discomfort for a really potentially good payoff, really exciting payoff?
So it's certainly not... And this is very much where I am. It's not an either or. It's not, again, holy conjunction, you shouldn't read graphic novels after this age, you should only be reading chapter books, but helping young people manage that transition,
Haeny Yoon:
I mean, I need help managing that transition, honestly. I was thinking about how that is a real thing and why can't we just sit with that tension and be not comfortable with it, but be uncomfortable with it and think about how to support children in tackling really tough texts. And so, I mean, the example I have is I went to a book talk with Jeff Chang, who I think is such a brilliant author, and he said he's been working on this book about Bruce Lee for a long time. I forgot the... It's like that phrase that Bruce Lee always says, water, something... I don't know. Anyway.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, like flow like water?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, something like that. So that's the title of the book. He was doing a book talk. I was so excited to go to the book talk and I was like, "Oh my God, I can't wait to read his book." So the book talk comes with a book signing and his book and I get there and I kid you not, the book was the size of like the Holy Bible.
Nathan Holbert:
A rice paper.
Haeny Yoon:
And so then I opened it and I'm like, "Oh my God, I cannot read this without taking off my classes because it's so tiny." And I love this guy. I love his writing. I am interested in this topic. I'm here for Asian American history, but I'm like, "No, I cannot read this." It's just, I couldn't even tackle one page of it. I think I read 20 pages actually because I forced myself to read something because I bought this book. But I realize even as an adult, it's hard for me to do that. It's hard for me to tackle these things, and so I think that's why another mistake of like thinking of reading as like, "Just do it, sit down and do it," is I do feel like there's like this embodied behavioral routines and rituals that we kind of have to go through to think about how to tackle reading, right?
Nathan Holbert:
Absolutely.
Haeny Yoon:
And maybe that's also part of what we need to be thinking about.
Nathan Holbert:
Be thinking and encouraging and teaching. Yeah. I mean for me, I read when I go to bed and so that's part of the ritual, but then also like for work, it's like I need to sort of like really prepare my space to like focus on just reading.
Haeny Yoon:
You need to clean the table.
Nathan Holbert:
Whatever can avoid the work.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. That's really great. I mean, I think that's helpful. In the end, you didn't give us the perfect answer, that you have to do this or that or that.
Haeny Yoon:
And did I not though? Did I give the perfect answer? I think so. I'm just kidding.
Nathan Holbert:
I think we gave the perfect answer, that it's all.
Haeny Yoon:
The answer is no answer. More questions.
Nathan Holbert:
Like a good academic.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes.
Nathan Holbert:
Well, okay. So let's do a quick What's Popping here for you and I can maybe answer some too, but about your favorite of each of these different kinds of texts. Do you have a favorite audiobook? Do you have a favorite graphic novel?
Haeny Yoon:
I mean, everybody knows, or if you've listened to this pod long enough-
Nathan Holbert:
Which is everybody.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes, everybody. Everybody who listens knows that I like murder and mayhem, and that's basically the audiobook that I will listen to. So right now I am currently reading a book called I Don't Wish You Well by Jumata Emill. He's a young adult author. He writes a lot about books in Louisiana. I think that might be where he grew up. He tackles issues of race and class and belonging in the Deep South, but then he's like, "I just wanted to write books about murder, mayhem and true crime." And so that's basically goes along with what I wanted to do. So that is currently on my... That is what I'm listening to at this exact moment. And then like the last book I actually encountered by reading, like looking at it-
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Page book?
Haeny Yoon:
... was Thi Bui's The Best We Can Do, I think that's the title of the book. It's a graphic novel. It put me in tears.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, wow.
Haeny Yoon:
I was crying. And it's a memoir about her life in this Vietnamese family and refugees and coming to terms with the relationship that she has with her mother. It kind of reminded me of my own complex, tense filled relationship with my own. So it was great. And she said it took her like 10 years to write it.
Nathan Holbert:
Wow.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. How about you?
Nathan Holbert:
So the first thing that came to mind for audiobooks is this book series. It's a young adult book series called, well, the first book is called Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer and it's about a character named Jackie Faber, who's a streetwise street urchin in England who finds herself on a ship and all the adventures that she gets up to. And the audiobooks-
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, like a pirate-ish kind of thing. Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Well, first like with the Navy and then, yeah. And so the audiobooks are so good and the person who reads them just does this incredible voice that, to my mind it's like, I can't imagine reading this book. I can only imagine hearing this book. And apparently there's many books in this series and apparently the voice actor who does the audiobook became a co-author in the book series as it went on.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, that's cool.
Nathan Holbert:
So it really did become so intertwined. So that's Bloody Jack is the first one by LA Meyer.
Haeny Yoon:
I mean, what you just said though is a great example of audiobooks kind of demonstrating for us the full experience of reading. That's oral, the embodied part of it, the way that it gets acted out, all of that is part of reading.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Anyway, go ahead.
Nathan Holbert:
Absolutely. That's a good one. And then for graphic novels, I mean, I tend to... I actually looked this up before. I feel like we've actually confronted this question.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, we have.
Nathan Holbert:
The difference between a comic book and a graphic novel. And as best I can tell, the answer is that graphic novels are longer and they're bound differently, which allows you to tell stories that aren't necessarily small and serial, unless you tell a larger story. Otherwise, they're pretty similar. And oftentimes the graphic novels that I read are actually individual comics that have been compiled into a-
Haeny Yoon:
Like an anthology-ish?
Nathan Holbert:
Sure. Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
And so the one I want to recommend is something called Mr. Miracle by Tom King and the artist is Mitch Gerards. And the idea here is this is like an old DC comic book hero that is kind of dumb. It's kind of an uninteresting character at least in its old run. And Tom King said, "What if this character was actually interesting? What would its story be?" So it's keeping the same backstory, but then actually wrestling with it a little more.
Haeny Yoon:
A rewrite.
Nathan Holbert:
And a key kind of theme here is this character has a child and he's afraid. It's very adult, very interesting, very psychological story. So Mr. Miracle is really great. And I also want to give a quick shout out to friend of the pod, John Jennings, who John Jennings and Damien Duffy have done a number of graphic novel adaptations of Octavia Butler works. And so one of theirs is Kindred. They've done some of the Parable of the Sower and those as well. And those are really, really good too. And the art really kind of brings that shocking world into a new experience. Yeah. So there you go.
Haeny Yoon:
We solved it.
Nathan Holbert:
We solved it. It's not about one or the other.
Haeny Yoon:
Both and.
Nathan Holbert:
Create space for all of them.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes.
Nathan Holbert:
Find ways to love reading and find ways to encourage kids to love reading. And part of the answer that I'm hearing from Haeny, which actually I thought was a shockingly good answer from you-
Haeny Yoon:
Thank you.
Nathan Holbert:
... was to wrestle with how it's hard and that's actually part of it.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
That's great.
Haeny Yoon:
Yep.
Nathan Holbert:
Cool. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us.
Haeny Yoon:
Thank you.
Nathan Holbert:
As always, if you enjoy the episode, if you enjoy the show, leave a comment, share it with a friend and let us know how you're using it. Hopefully you're finding a purpose in it.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. See you next time.
Nathan Holbert:
Great. Bye.
Haeny Yoon:
Bye.