Why Comics Belong in Every Classroom with Shannon Live

Welcome to Reading Inspires by Reading Is Fundamental.

I'm your host, Dr. Erin Bailey.

This podcast celebrates the power of books and the joy of reading.

In each episode, we talk with educators, librarians, families, authors, and literacy champions to explore one big question: What does reading inspire for you?

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Let's get inspired.

Erin Bailey: Welcome, everyone.

This week it is Comic-Con in my home of sunny San Diego, and I'm very excited for our guest today, Shannon Live, who is the founder
of Bat City Comics, a nonprofit that teaches writing through comics, and also teaches teachers how to teach writing through comics.

And Shannon and I actually met at Comic-Con at the screening of a documentary, Shopping for Superman.

We're both in the documentary, and we met afterwards.

I'll make sure I link that below.

And it actually won Best Documentary at Comic-Con last year.

So, exciting stuff to share with you.

Welcome, Shannon.

Shannon Live: Hello.

Thank you for having me, Erin.

I'm so excited to be here

Erin Bailey: Yeah.

So for listeners who may not know you, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey from founding Bat City Comics,
this, this nonprofit, and your background as an educator, and what inspired you to combine your passion for comics and literacy education?

Shannon Live: Yeah, absolutely.

So I grew up in the Title I area of schools.

I was raised in inner city San Antonio, Texas, and I was given the chance to go to magnet schools, and gifted and talented programs, and they gave us so many different opportunities that led us to different paths.

And that was really inspirational, of course, to my journey because I was in a neighborhood where a lot of us didn't have those opportunities.

And so when I was in school I studied English and I studied public relations, and I got my degrees, and I was adamant that I was not going to go, like, just the educator path.

I was like, "I'm not gonna be an educator.

It's not…" I don't- I know everybody was always like, "You should be a teacher," and I'm like, "I'm not gonna be a teacher."

Which is of course, like, the best career path, but I was like, "No," just 'cause that's what my parents said I was gonna do.

So I was adamant I was gonna do something else.

And I went in so many different ways after school.

Like, I went to working at places like Toys "R" Us in marketing, and working at children's theaters.

And somehow I noticed a trend that everything kind of circled back to working with kids in some capacity.

And I eventually, I was working as an education, like, working in the education side and guest service side at a, an aquarium.

And while I was working there- I decided I wanted to go and work as a reading and writing specialist, and I wanted to work with middle schoolers
specifically because that was my- the year that- the years that really impacted my life and changed the direction of where I was gonna go in my future.

And so I ended up going to work for a private tutoring company, and they would send me in to schools that were kind of in that emergency zone and say, "Hey we
don't know what's going on." And so I ended up at a school that had already become a charter school, and they had already changed it to be an all-girls school.

They had created a co-school that was gonna be all boys.

And even after all the different programs that they had put in place, they were still consistently not passing the standardized test.

And they were talking about closing the school.

And they brought us in and they said, "I just- we just want you, Shannon, to sit in the class and figure out what's going on in the English classes where the students are not re- being receptive to the information."

And so I watched the teacher teach the testing material in such an animated way.

She was doing such an incredible job.

She's a f- I honestly wish she had been my teacher growing up.

She was such a good teacher.

But I'm still looking at these kids, and their eyes are glazing over, they're coloring on their papers, they're not paying attention.

And so I just went up to the students table by table and said, "What's going on?

What's the problem?" And they were like, "Miss, we're bored.

We've done this worksheet a thousand times.

We do a fake test in the fall so that we can take the real test in the spring, and so all we do is the same worksheets all year long for every year we've been at this school."

And I said, "That is a problem.

I see how you're bored with that." And so I ended up going to administration and saying, "Look, all of this time I've been a professional
cosplayer, I've been working at Toys "R" Us, I've been, you know, around the book industry and around the nerd culture industry.

What if I took the things that they are sitting there drawing pictures of and talking about with their friends at lunch, and I make the programming out of that?"

And I made two different six-week training programs.

One was for reading, and one was for writing, and they were all geared around pop culture phenomenon that the kids loved.

Like, we had a zombie week where we studied Walking Dead and the s- song- like, scenes from Beetlejuice and song- like, songs like Michael Jackson's Thriller, and we used it for all the different skill sets that they needed to learn, and we saw progress.

And not only did we see progress, but we saw them wanting to come to class.

They were asking for extra time with me just because they thought it was fun.

I'm challenging them to read books like Frankenstein in the sixth grade because we're having arguments over what Frankenstein's real name is, and they're doing it, and they're taking extra tests.

And so they're wanting to have those conversations and be a part of that.

And so from there, I- when I left there, I went to work for Book People In Austin, Texas, which is a large independent bookstore, and I started working with the teens there.

And I was like, wait, so we're … And we're having those conversations.

They're wanting to get prepared for high school.

They're wanting to get prepared for college, and we're using the books to have those conversations.

And then from there I went to work for a comic book store and I was like, wait, why don't comics do like the bookstores do?

Why don't we use comics in the same way that the bookstores do and the way the schools do?

And so I started thinking what if we put it all together, and when we founded Bat City it was my husband and our friend Stan, and we were talking about starting the comic book store
and I was like, "My only request is that it be a nonprofit organization." I want the funding from what we sell in the store to work kind of the way Goodwill stores do to fund the

Like Goodwill does.

I want our funding from our store to fund helping kids with the reading, the writing, and their imagination, and I want that to be our mission.

And so we started sitting down and they were like, "Well, what would we do?" And I built out all the curriculum and I was like, this is how it'd work.

And I can say, you know, eight years of doing that later, I had no idea that within those years we would see as many people.

I mean, in the last three and a half years we've had 5,000 students go through our writing program.

I never would have thought that we'd see that big of a, of an impact coming from it, and yet it's just been

There's so many opportunities because it is something that educators are starting more and more to accept that comics can do those things.

And so it's been really fun to, to build that out and to constantly change programming to fit some other need that a random educator will call and I'm like, "I never thought of that, but I bet we can do that with comics 'cause they can do anything."

Erin Bailey: Oh, it's such an incredible and inspirational story, and I love that, like, what people tend to not understand or not fully utilize is, like, you can teach reading and writing standards through all different kinds of mediums.

Like, you do not have to be wed to the texts that are provided for you by your curriculum or by your school, and it takes creativity, and it takes taking a risk.

But, like, you've proven that it can be done.

So this makes me think of, like, you know, something that I've talked about a lot on the show.

I'm obviously a very… I'm very big into graphic storytelling and, you know, comics is part of that genre.

But some people still think that comics are less than traditional books.

What do- why do you think that graphic novels have been so misunderstood for so long, and what does the research actually tell us about how graphic novels can support reading and writing development?

Shannon Live: Yeah.

I think part of the, the stigma that's come around graphic novels has actually come from when we had the Comics Code Authority and the Senate
trials in the 1950s because up until then we were fine with using them for educational purposes, we were fine with giving them to children.

But that big battle that came in the 1950s where they said that they were corrupting the brains of children,

Because th- that really kind of pushed a lot of that.

We almost had a, a, you know, a satanic panic level of like hatred towards comics come out of that.

And the flip side of McCarthyism essentially with that.

And we saw so much lost in there because then comics became something that you had to stop pushing all the outside stuff.

We couldn't do adaptations of Frankenstein and Dracula

And things like that in comics anymore.

We could only do outrageous superhero adventures because they had to fall in line with this Comics Code Authority really detailed outlining of what could happen.

And so they became more of those cheesier superhero battles and kind of focused more on the superheroes because we could do that and it was, "Oh, it's fantastical," so there's not necessarily a, a situation a- where we are not showcasing
a hero beating a villain because that was a big rule in the Comics Code Authority is a villain always had to lose, and you couldn't have monsters, which is why we lost Dracula and Frankenstein, and it didn't matter if it was an adaptation.

And so we went from having these, these deep stories and these adaptations of books to not being able to put those out at all.

And I think that there was that whole, "Oh, well, they're corrupting children's minds," concept that it started to, you know, m- kind of matric- like matriculate through the thought process and it was like, "Oh, they're for kids and they're bad for them."

And I think that really did more damage than it really even intended to at that point.

And then we still get… And we still hear to this day, "Well, comics are just for children," and it's like no, actually most comics
are not for children . Especially when we're talking single issue floppy comics that are coming out, most of them are not for kids.

But it's also most of them are not about superheroes.

You know, people still think that comics are related to superheroes and that is a genre of a medium, it is not the entire medium and
I think that that- Also comes into it, there's also the whole idea that like, oh, they're looking at pictures, they're not reading.

And that's where the impact of the educational research that's been done in the last couple of decades has really changed that, especially in the last 40 years.

I mean, we saw- we've seen over the last couple years that we know that comics now teach 53.5 rare words per thousand, which is one of the highest levels of learning new words while you're reading that we see.

That's over an adult novel.

If we're talking about what's the value of giving a child an adult novel versus giving a child a comic book, they're already learning more words.

I have an ex- very extensive vocabulary.

I read 150 comics a week.

There are at least one to two comics every week where I have to look up what a word means or Google translate because it's in another language, and now I'm learning what words are in other languages.

That's been extremely helpful to, to expand that vocabulary.

But beyond vocabulary we've had the educational philosophies that weren't done for comics that somehow incredibly apply to comics, like the dual coding theory, which was a huge part in the education world.

We've used that in a lot of curriculum development over the years, and that concept of taking verbal and visual and putting them together and expanding your education through that we
know that the dual coding theory tells us that we can retain, understand, and communicate information longer when we provide verbal and visual because that's where our brains are wired.

And comics are actually that exact thing.

They're the combination of verbal and visual.

But that theory goes even further and says when you put that in sequential method it's even stronger in its effectiveness, and comics are verbal and visual in sequential method.

We're bringing that all together, and that theory really c- can help us understand that there's so much there.

But even more so than that, and that was done in the '70s, that research, but in the '80s we learned that our brains have the filter.

You know, we saw the cr- we saw Crash and develop the effective filter hypothesis that was like when we learn language, we learn through
a filter, and the c- the more that filter closes, the more we don't understand, we don't retain that information, we don't process it.

Well, if we look at what closes that filter in his theory, it's that fear.

It's the fear of not understanding.

It's the fear of being called on in class and not knowing the answer.

It's the anxiety of the dyslexia and the reading, the other reading issues that somebody may have.

It is the biggest thing though in his theory was boredom, that when we are bored, we don't absorb the information, and that takes it back to look at those kids in the class.

"We're bored, Miss." And what do they wanna read and what do they wanna take part in?

What do they w- if you could put an entire lesson on a cellphone, you could probably get a lot of kids to be engaged if it was something that was an app that could learn, like, they could learn through.

And I mean, look at how many people use Duolingo to learn lang- you know?

And it's, it is that.

It's we make it fun.

We gamify it.

We put something in there that they love to see, and I think that as we, we kind of move away from that world of comics are rotting
children's brains or comics are n- not as advanced in reading, we're gonna start to see more and more people realize that but they are.

They are … Not only are they advanced in that reading skill, they're hitting all those common core requirements.

They're giving us the things that we need to know like the structure, the language, the knowledge.

They're giving us inference and evidence.

They're giving us prediction.

In fact, they give us a ton of prediction because every third page in a comic is a cliffhanger.

So there's constantly ways that we can do that, and I think as we, we start to open up the idea to that world, we're gonna see more people realize that there is a path through there.

Erin Bailey: Yeah.

I mean, I love that stat about-- I've always said that comics have higher level vocabulary, but you said it so perfectly.

And I think, like, using pictures has gotten a bad reputation because people were overly using pictures to help children decode words, like sound out the words, and re- overly relying on pictures.

But actually, for vocabulary and inferencing, pictures are super helpful.

And to your point, like, it is finding the balancing act of the text, the words, and the images, and it's something our brains are, you know, constantly working through, as you said, with the dual coding theory.

And to your point too of that lowering the affective filter, like even though engaging with a graphic novel might have higher vocabulary and actually requires your brain to work
harder than reading a text, like you go in thinking like, "I'm going to enjoy this," that affective filter is lower, and therefore your brain can perform more difficult tasks.

It's like actually really incredible the science behind it.

Shannon Live: It's so fascinating 'cause I don't think people really even register that if you can get past that block of oh, my filter is completely closed.

I mean, and as adults, like, think of what you want to do.

You know?

How often do you want to read the email that came in versus how often do you wanna read the, like, our favorite smutty novel, you know?

Like, we're not gonna sit there and read the textbooks that we have to read even sometimes versus the… You know, we are always like, "Oh, I have to balance it out with
something fun." And for every hard book that I don't wanna read that ta- feels tedious, I have to, I get to read one exciting thing or I get to watch three YouTube videos.

It's like we're rewarding ourselves with the fun thing we wanna do too, so how can we put that into the way we educate the children?

Erin Bailey: Yeah.

So what advice do you have then for parents or even teachers who say, "Well, my child only wants to read comics or graphic novels"?

Like, instead of trying to steer their children towards more traditional chapter books, do you have any advice for how they can embrace, like, their child's reading interests and helping them grow as readers?

Shannon Live: Yeah, absolutely.

The first thing I say anytime somebody says, o- oh, well my child just wants to read graphic novels," I'm always like, "Hold on.

Stop.

The sentence ended at my child just wants to read."

Erin Bailey: Yes.

Shannon Live: your child wants to read.

It doesn't matter, I don't care if it's the back of cereal boxes.

If your child goes to the grocery store and wants to read the back of every cereal box and you have to stand there while they do it, your child wants to read.

That's the key.

That's the thing we need to know.

Congratulations, you have a reader.

Doesn't matter how they got there.

The advice though that I would give beyond that is to think about, think of your graphic novels for kids in the same way you do as your chapter books.

You know?

You go from picture books to early readers to chapter books to longer books.

We have that in comics too.

You know, we have picture books, which of course you can just start with picture books either way, but then from there we have those early reader comics, and then we have the things like Dog Man, Max Meow, Investigators that are…

The Last Kids on Earth, which is literally a graphic novel adaptation of a chapter book.

And we have those.

And so you can take that same mentality and stair step it up for them as they do increase their reading skills and follow that same path.

And the good thing is that our major publishers like Penguin Random House and Harper and all of those who have those kid imprints,
Scholastic, they'll tell you what age range and what reading level is really good for those inside the book and/or on the back of the book.

And so you can say like, "Oh, this is definitely something that is the next level for my child's reading level." But if you really want to make sure they're getting something out of it beyond just, oh they
really loved the poop jokes in Captain Underpants, some of the things that you can do to see that is you can give them the option of saying, "Hey, you just read this, you know, you read this graphic novel.

You read Dog Man." I want you to write three sentences about the story of Dog Man.

I want you to summarize it in three sentences.

You don't get to draw the pictures this time.

I want you to summarize it in three pictures.

I want you to write down what you loved about it.

I want you to come tell me what you loved about that.

I want you to point out those, those key elements.

Like, make your own book report form that's for graphic novels.

Instead of treating it like it's extra reading, treat it like it's the actual core reading.

What would you ask your child to do if you're an educator or a parent after they've read a chapter book?

You wanna have that conversation with them, and you want to see that they retain that information.

Well, those plot points still exist in a graphic novel, so have them summarize it.

In our reading program, one of the things we do each month is we have a, we have what we call Story Splunkers, which is kids get to deep dive into a story.

Everybody gets the same single issue of a comic.

We read the comic aloud, and everybody either gets to play a character, we take turns reading a whole page if there's not that many characters in the story as there are kids.

And once we're done reading the sto- as we're reading the story I guess I should say, we have on our dry erase board we write down any word that somebody trips over "Oh, I don't know what that word is," or, "Oh, like, I'm struggling a little bit."

We- And then we all talk about it.

We pause for a second, we all talk about what we think it means in context of the story and in general, and we put it on the board though so we know to come back for it for vocabulary at the end again.

And then when we're done, we do different activities.

And so our most popular activity at Story Spelunkers is we will do a three-sentence summary of the story that we just read, and whether that's summarizing the key points or summarizing by chronological storytelling, you have your option.

But then you pass your summary to the person next to you, and they draw a four-panel comic based off of your summary.

So then you see, "Did I get enough of the key elements of it?" And they can only draw what you wrote down.

So when they make their comic has to go off your summary, so then we can see where we missed pieces of the story along the way.

And it's really fun 'cause the kids love that 'cause they get to write something down, they get to read something, they get to draw a comic, and they get to kind of also become peer evaluators of each other's work all in that one process.

And so as a teacher, that's an easy process to use that in your classroom, but as a parent it's also an easy way to say, "Hey," like,
"show me what you learned out of the book you just read," and have that conversation because, again, those elements are in that story.

And if you are giving your kid a book that they're passionate about, they're going to have a lot to say.

We do a, a kid reporter program where they get to film videos after they read a, a graphic novel that we give them, and every single kid's video is 10 to
15 minutes long because I have to cut it out 'cause they wanna tell you every single detail of the graphic novel they read 'cause they love it so much.

And so it's like You wanna see that same kind of stepping up their reading knowledge and skill development, have the conversation with them as if it was a chapter book.

Treat it like it's the same thing.

Instead of saying, "You can read these for fun," say, "You're gonna read these, but then you're still gonna come tell me about it," and ask those same questions

Erin Bailey: Yeah, I think that's the- I mean, that's great.

Like, we can s- to, back to the point, like you can still teach the same standards, like understanding character's point of view or summarizing through, through comics.

And I mean, point of view is an interesting one too because you have thought bubbles, right?

And which characters get thought bubbles and which ones don't.

That's kind of also like an author's approach that they're taking with the work.

Somewhat related 'cause as you were saying you read it out loud,… So I've seen different graphic novel authors, artists read aloud their work and everyone has a little bit different approach.

Like they might use a different tone of voice for a speech bubble versus a, a thought bubble, e- et cetera.

Do you have any tips for educators or even parents who wanna read aloud a graphic novel and like how to really bring it to life?

Shannon Live: Yeah.

I mean, it does obviously help to do voices just with any time, but it's not required.

But there is, like you said, there's a tonal difference to them thinking or them- them speaking.

It's not also, it wouldn't be a problem to say, "Oh you know, he thought these things," and then l- would like fill in like you would if you were reading it a- out of a book.

But also it's fun with the kids when we do it to, to say like, oh, if they're thinking, when you read the thinking out loud.

You know, show us that you're thinking.

Erin Bailey: Oh, okay.

Like a, a hand gesture or something.

Yeah

Mm-hmm

Yeah, it's a great lesson in author's craft and author's purpose with it.

So the mission, I mean, you're one of the founders of Bat Cities, and the mission is centered around reading, writing, imagination, and community.

So far, what have you learned from working directly with children and their families about what kinds of books and what kinds of stories help them become lifelong readers?

Shannon Live: Yeah.

The thing that I see all the time is that the book that helps a child become a lifelong reader, it's the one that they choose themselves.

Erin Bailey: Yes

Shannon Live: The, the discovery process is the thing that ties them to it.

A kid wants to sit there and actually go through it, and in our store, all of our kids sections shelves are…

You know, they're less than two feet tall so that the kids can sit on the floor and they can actually sort through it, and we have everything sorted by age and reading level so that if I'm a parent, I can… I know that I have a, a five-year-old
or under, I can put them in front of these shelves, and any book they pull out is going to be the right book, could potentially be the right book for them, for their reading level, for their age, the themes, all of that kind of stuff.

And we have it sorted around that, and it's so amazing to see kids find that ownership of the book that they pick out.

And I think just watching thousands of kids come through the door a year and pick books it's that.

It's, "I want to get this book." And then asking them why.

I love when we ask them or their, you know, comic shop adult with them asks them why that one, and they already have a reason, and they're excited about it.

And it's that question, like, "Why do you want this book?" goes so far to also develop that reading love, 'cause it's like, "Well, I want it because it's got this and this," and they're already excited, and it kind of, like, pumps them up.

And it's like, "Okay, let's get that one then. Like, that's perfect." But I think honestly, at the end of the day, the book that does the most to create somebody into loving reading is the one that they find on the shelf themselves, for sure.

Erin Bailey: couldn't agree more.

I mean, for those who have listened to many episodes of Reading Inspires, hopefully you're seeing the theme is, like, choice is key.

And this I have to share this magical moment, 'cause it just popped in my head.

I used to work with a wonderful teacher, Mr. Dixon.

Shout out if you're listening, Mr.

Dixon.

You rock.

And he was a history enthusiast and comic enthusiast, and so every year he would do a comic book week at our school with a mixed age group of children, and every day they would learn about writing reading and writing comics.

And on the final day, they created their own comic con and did a big showcase.

But on one of the days, and I went on this field trip, we took a, the group of students, we walked to the Metro, got on the Metro with the students, which was terrifying for me.

This was in DC.

And we went to a comic book shop, and he let each child pick out a comic book from the $2 section and he bought every child a comic book.

And that, and, like, to your point, they each got to take it home, own it.

Like, that was their choice.

That was something special to them.

And it was just like, what an incredible week of school for these children, you know?

Shannon Live: It's so good.

I love to see that moment.

It's just… Like, even if we… Like, we had an event yesterday that we were at an, an, a martial arts studio, and we were teaching the kids how to make comics.

And we took five different books, and it was like, even though we curated with five books we took for them to choose from, they still got
to come up and have that moment where they went through them and they made the choice of which of those five books was the one they wanted.

And there was kids who were like, "Oh, I don't want a comic.

It's okay." And then they got up there and they were like, "Wait, I can get Sonic comics?

Like, I didn't know Sonic had comics." And then now suddenly they wanted one, and then they were the one sitting there reading it
while… You know, it's always the kid who says they don't want it that sits there and reads first and then is so excited about it.

But it's just so, it's so great to see them get that moment where they get to actually discover themselves in a book and discover that they like books

Erin Bailey: Yes, exactly.

I have talked to many people about this, that like, it- everyone's a reader, you just haven't found the right right book if you don't consider yourself a reader.

So another side of choice is voice, student voice.

You have a TED Talk, which I will link below.

It's phenomenal.

But you describe your voice as a superpower.

So how does helping children discover their own voice through reading, writing, storytelling, build their confidence both inside and outside of the classroom?

Shannon Live: Absolutely.

I mean, I definitely… The easy side for that is how does it build it in the classroom?

Because if a student feels like they have a voice and they feel empowered to use that voice, of course it's gonna put them more active and engaged in their classroom.

They're gonna, they're gonna be able to find the way to say those things.

I, in my TED Talk I reference a student that I had when I was a reading and writing specialist who didn't answer a single question on her standardized test.

And she went through that program, and we found that voice for her.

She found what she wanted to do.

She found where she wanted to find it from.

And at the end of the year she came up to me and she's like, "Miss, I answered every question on my test." Not, "Miss, I think I did great."
Not, "Miss, I did this." It was just, "I answered all of the questions." And I was like, "I don't even care what happens beyond this.

The fact that you answered the questions was what we were going for, and you're proud of the fact that you did.

You sought me out.

You didn't come to my classroom.

You found me on campus, and you had to tell me immediately after testing was over that you did that because you're proud of trying." And that changed the course of, you know, the traj- trajectory for her in that moment.

And finding that voice inside the classroom is so powerful because you do start to own your education more.

You start to own your reactions to education more.

You start to get more excited about it.

But also, the harder side is, like, how does it impact the voice outside of the, the s- the school system, you know?

'Cause we're, we are trying to help them find themselves for education, but finding that voice, how does it impact them beyond?

And it's important.

I mean, look at where we are right now in our world.

Knowing what your voice can be used for is so powerful, and we've seen the impact of people using their voice and how much change it can cause over the history of not even our country, but the entire world.

It's always the person who speaks up for themselves and others who can make that big imp- inf- impact on the world.

And the kids who feel like they don't have- anything to say and don't, because they can't find their voice and they haven't seen it in a book.

They haven't seen it in the things that they're learning.

They don't know necessarily how to use it beyond, but as we help them find their voice in reading, and we get more diverse representation in reading, and now I can see myself and I know that I can go beyond where what everybody around me has said.

You know, that was a big thing is so many kids say, "I've never seen myself in a book until now.

I never knew I could be a superhero.

I never knew that I could be a part of the civil rights movement," which I mean, I know Representative John Lewis, he did his book, his story of his time in the civil rights movement through the story March, and he wanted it to be a graphic novel.

Well, what we don't talk about a lot for that is that Representative John Lewis will tell y- would have told you one of the things that got him involved was the Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery story That was a zine.

That was an, like a zine that they put out.

They made 250,000 copies.

They printed them out.

They handed them out different places.

It was a comic book essentially that they put out to talk about what Martin Luther King Jr. was doing, and that was one of the things that inspired him to see how
big the movement was and how he could be a part of it, which is part of why he wanted March to be a graphic novel, because he wanted to inspire that next generation.

And I've seen so many kids who have been inspired through that to use their voice.

We just did… There is a a museum here in town that is about the the Angola community, which is a community of enslaved people who escaped from Georgia and came into Florida when it was occupied by Spain.

And so they were given their freedom for being outside of the US.

Spanish, that was a big part of it, was Spanish Florida was offering freedom.

British Florida, like fighting in the British Army offered them freedom.

So there's all these different ways that they could remain free by being here.

And in that, that culture, they actually settled right where Bat City is now.

And when they settled there, they were here.

Andrew Jackson eventually comes and re-enslaved a lot of the people, and about 300 of them escaped to the Bahamas.

It wasn't until the nine- the late 1990s that a woman actually came here, saw a sign in a park that said that this might have been the home of the Angola community, that she realized, like, this is where our family was from.

The people in the Bahamas in Red Bay didn't… They knew they came from Florida, but they didn't know where in Florida.

And she was looking for that, and she happened to just be in town and saw a sign.

And it wasn't until 2020 that they did an archeological dig to make that, to actually find evidence that, yes, this is where it was.

And so up until then, that people group had been completely, like the group of people had been completely lost to where their family had come from and how they ended up in the Bahamas.

And so they just started putting these stories together, and they came to us and they said, "Could you tell a story about history through comics?"

And I gave them Representative John Lewis' book, and they were like, "This is what we wanna do.

Like, we wanna get the next generation to understand where they came from and for this group of people to not be lost to history." And so we actually wrote this comic
series with them and worked with student artists to draw this comic, and this comic's been coming out in single issues through the museum and through us this year.

But we had a festival, and they brought kids to the festival and when the first issue came out, and I was giving the issue to the kids and then like the day before we did a signing,
and the kids got that, and they came back the next day and they said, "Not only have I never seen somebody that looked like me in a comic book before, but this is literally my story."

This is literally my family.

This is, like, my great-great-grandma.

They were standing where they stood, and I didn't know that until I read this book.

And so they not only found empowerment through seeing something that looked like them, but they also found that was, like, their own story and their own culture in this
book, and they were like, "I can't wait to go and show everybody that, like, I'm in a book, that my family's in a book, that these kids who look just like me are my family."

And they were so excited to continue learning, and they got really invested, and they were asking for more books that showed cultures like theirs in it.

And they're av- ignoring the festival to sit there and read, because they wanna read more stories about people like them.

And that changes that.

Again, it changes that trajectory.

Now they- they're so passionate about something, and they're so passionate about history specifically because they can see themselves in it, and they can learn that story, and they're
like, "I wanna make comics now. I wanna tell stories now. I wanna share this information with more people." And it just, it's so empowering because it's not just in a classroom.

It's not just for their school studies.

It was for their lives, and they found that empowerment, and they took it beyond just, "I wanna get a good grade by doing this project." They were like, I wanna tell people about my family now." And it was incredible to see

Erin Bailey: That is so powerful.

I mean, you said it perfectly.

It's not just about their schoolwork, it's for their lives.

And I think, you know, we don't talk about enough the historical connections that comics can bring for us, especially the way that you illustrated so beautifully now

Shannon Live: Yeah.

It was it's so fascinating, and again, I think that comes from we forget that comics are beyond just superheroes.

But even in the superheroes, there's, you know, Tim Smythe, who's a great educator, he uses them in his history class to talk about the different
time periods and the comparison and, because they are also little time capsules to what was happening, and they put those events in there.

Like, oh, this comic happened in the 1980s.

Well then there's a cold war going on, and the … Yeah.

And understand that.

You know?

There's issues where the Joker becomes in charge of like the other, like other governments and other militias and things like that in Batman, and it's like, whoa, wait.

I know this war.

I know this, like this, this thing that they're talking about.

I studied that in history class.

Didn't even realize it was in this comic when I read the comic, and now I'm like put- you put the pieces together.

And so it's fascinating to see how even in the ones where you don't think about those, those concepts, they're still there because the writers are still impacted about what's happening in the world around them

Erin Bailey: Yeah.

Okay, that would be a really fun class, like the historical impacts over time on comics and plot and character development.

I love it.

I don't know if our listeners caught onto this the way I did, but I think earlier you mentioned that you read, like, 150 comics a week.

Shannon Live: Thank you.

Erin Bailey: Okay, so you don't need to go through all of them, but we'd love to hear what are you reading right now, what are some comics or graphic novels that you think every family and educator should have on their shelves?

Shannon Live: Yeah.

Well, the ones that I'm reading for the most part each week are usually geared towards adults.

I do a show each week on the non-Marvel DC books that's called Wind Down Your Weekend, where I sip a glass of wine and talk about all the non-Marvel DC books that came out.

I re- and I book talk 'em.

I don't tell you like, "Oh, you know, you're gonna hate this book if you hate this," or anything like that.

I'm like, "This is what the book's about, this is what the series is about." And I've been doing that show with the wine for six years, I've been doing the show for 10 years.

And so it can be anywhere from 40 books to 140 books on that show, so it goes really fast.

Kid book-wise, and things that I think are really impactful, like floppy issue-wise, which is those single issues right now there is a line of comics that is all Disney based.

And so they're, the kids are coming in.

I have a little girl who's five years old, and every week she comes in, just like every other comic book fan on a Wednesday morning, to pick up her books, and she always grabs one of those Disney books.

And then she gets a single issue and she gets a graphic novel, and she's always gotta tell you why she got that book, what happened in the book she read the week before.

And she sits there on the floor and she sorts through them for as long as she can till her grandma makes her leave, and she, till she picks the one that wants.

And I think the fact that we're seeing those fan favorites in comic form is, it's to, like in that single issue comic form right now, is really key that I think kids can get into comics that way for sure.

And there is, there was a, a Stitch mini-series, which of course every kid, you know, loves Stitch right now.

And that book, honestly, truthfully, like the blocks of text were like this big.

They were explaining the science behind experiments, Stitch is going on these wild adventures.

And even reading it in our Story Spelunkers group, like some of the kids were like, "That's a lot on my page.

Can I have a…" And so talking about, like, that chapter book kind of step point, like that stitch, the compilation, the trade paperback of all
of those issues is gonna be a great one for having a kid sit there and take on a little bit denser of a story for a character that they like.

But I think books that every, like, educator and parent should have on the shelf there's an un- godly amount of fans of the Dog Man universe.

And a reason why, I think if you… You could put a Dog Man book in the hands of a child because it doesn't have as many of the fart and poop jokes that Captain Underpants has.

It actually has these emotional stories.

He's putting… The titles are actually references to classic literature novels, so it's great when kids are like, "Oh, I really like 20,000 Fleas Under the Sea." And I'm like, "Do you know where that title comes from?

Do you wanna talk about, like, how the pirate story and, like, the adventure of being stuck on an island, like, fits into play with that Dog Man book?"

And we can do those cross-comparisons.

But they also just want to read it.

They want to read it.

They wanna be obsessed with it.

They'll tell you about what happens in every issue.

They draw their own stories.

I think Dav Pilkey is going to single-handedly build the next generation of comic creators because every kid that reads a Dog Man book want- becomes a, a Dog Man comic creator, and then they create their own comics from there.

And I think it's so important that if you have those, like, middle grade readers that you have Dog Man.

Like elementary, middle school, anywhere in there, like have a Dog Man book on your shelf.

As a comic educator, I think a book that everybody should have on their shelf if you wanna teach comics and if you are working with those a little bit, like, older middle grade kids is The Cartoonist Club.

Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud did a book together, and it is a graphic novel, and it takes Raina's coming-of-age stories like we see in drama and stuff
like that, and Scott how comics are made educational materials, and it blends them together as these kids actually create a club to learn how to make comics.

And you get all those, those coming-of-age feelings.

You get all those moments in there, but you also learn the history of zines.

You learn how comics are made.

You learn all the different people that go into making a comic.

And so it's such a great tool to use in a classroom in a way that kids are still gonna find it fun.

So if you're gonna try to teach comics in the classroom, it's a great tool because they're gonna get involved and you're probably gonna see kids who wanna start their own comic club after that.

And so great book for that.

And then of course, if I think if you're working with middle school and high school kids, you should absolutely have March on your shelves.

It's again, showcases that history.

It is empowering.

It's also just a beautifully done graphic novel.

And I think it showcases that history doesn't have to belong to textbook format and it can n- and have that.

And we see so many history books these days coming through comics.

We're also seeing so many adaptations.

I think our store has 16 different versions of The Odyssey in graphic novel form on the shelf right now because that's like everybody's putting, including Godzilla telling you the story of The Odyssey.

Like everybody is getting in the, the retellings of The Odyssey right now, and it's great.

We're seeing parents come in and they're like, "Hey, if you wanna watch the movie, you have to read the book." Like, and it's like, "You didn't wanna read the book?

Here you go.

Here's the graphic novel." And you know, they're doing it in manga.

They're doing it in comic format.

They're doing it in single issue format.

They're … It's absolutely fin- there are ways to showcase that through comics and again, put 'em on your shelves and watch the kids fall in love with a whole new medium and the concept of reading

Erin Bailey: Yeah.

I mean, I will say from doing books for ownership events, which is what Reading is Fundamental do, whenever we have graphic novels, they just like, they fly off the tables.

They are gone.

Um, So thank you.

I- that, great recommendations.

So we are reaching the end.

I always end by asking, what does reading inspire for you?

Shannon Live: Reading for me inspires just honestly a, a level of hope.

For me as a child I was a m- middle child.

And so I spent a lot of time with my books.

And you know, getting to spend that time and feel like there's always something else, there's a whole nother world available to you at any time, it, there is a opportunity to learn something new.

There's an opportunity to use that knowledge to take you to a million places.

And there's an ability to impact change, and to really make a difference.

And for me, I know that when I read a book, I'm learning about somebody else's experience in the world, and it makes me a better person to read.

And I think that the more that we all fall in love with reading, the more we're all gonna fall in love with the world and with the people around us.

And there's just this hope that is embedded in reading through that

Erin Bailey: I love that, Shannon.

Thank you so much.

So reading inspires hope.

You said it so beautifully.

The more that we fall in love with reading, the more that we'll fall in love with the world around us.

I love it.

Thank you so much, Shannon.

This has been a pleasure.

If you're listening, whether it's the week of Comic-Con or you're listening to this episode at another time, thank you.

If something in this episode resonated with you, inspired you, please share it with somebody you love.

Thank you

Shannon Live: Thank you

Thank you for listening to Reading Inspires by Reading Is Fundamental.

I hope today's conversation sparked new ideas, meaningful connections, and a renewed love of reading.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with a fellow literacy champion, and join us next time as we continue exploring what reading inspires