Visual literacies, comics and Mark Twain : An Interview with Dylan Calder of Pop Up Projects

I’m lucky enough to be attending an event tomorrow which focuses on something very dear to my heart – visual storytelling. As you’ll know from my picture book reviews in particular, visual literacy is an important and powerful thing that is, so often, misunderstood or denied its critical relevance. Pop Up Lab, the brainchild of Pop Up Projects, is looking to address that in a day devoted to the topic, with contributions from some really exciting people working in the area. 

Pop Up Projects was founded by Dylan Calder, and I’m very excited to say that I have an interview with him to share with you today. I asked him a few questions about his organisation, visual storytelling and the role that comics currently – and should – play in the classroom. 

Did You Ever Stop To Think : What prompted the organisation being formed and why focus on children’s books in particular?

Dylan: We are driven by a desire to see children from all walks of life access and enjoy literature – not just as something to be studied and deconstructed in school examinations – and, fundamentally, to encounter author role models – people who write and illustrate for a living. Children’s authors, in the main, have this extraordinary ability to show children what’s possible, what you can achieve, what you can strive to be through the writing, drawing and making of stories. We’re not here to sell books to families who already read widely; we’re here to bring literature to life in ordinary, mundane, diverse, deprived and isolated places. We want to tap into that audience of readers who are yearning for great literature but due to curriculums, budgets, closed libraries, family economies, and teachers who don’t know what’s relevant and contemporary, aren’t accessing it.

Why have you chosen to focus on visual literacy now, and what you see this as covering? How would you define visual literacy to the interested onlooker?

Visual literacy is the most inclusive form of reading and writing you can do. It’s simultaneously complex and accessible, and children of all abilities and needs can read and tell visual stories. Visual stories are – in my words – narratives told in sequential images, although individual images can in themselves contain single narratives.

How do you think comics currently function in a classroom? What role do they play? And, in an ideal world, what role should they play?

I don’t think they even feature. I think teachers who have a pre-existing passion for them would use them; probably most would go down the superhero route – which is great as it’s the route many kids take into reading enjoyment. But comics can be truly complex things – wonderful in the expanse of their narratives, often breaking out of the frames to challenge and disrupt form. They’re the perfect things with which to study sequential narratives, pace and cliff–hangers, and – most importantly of all – that writers’ rule of ‘show not tell’. Comics are collaborations too (writer, illustrator, colourist, letterer, editor, art director) – and they have restrictions (format, dimensions, number of pages, colour schemes) – which help structure the stories. Comics have a lot to teach about writing– and, let’s not forget, comics are written; they’re not in any way some lower form of literature. I’m not at all into literary hierarchies, but if I were then I’d put comics – great comics – right at the top. And by comics I also mean graphic novels, graphic reportage, graphic memoir – all those ‘higher–brow’ ways of saying ‘serious comics’. Comics are where diversity is happening more. Check out the multicultural cast of characters in something like The Wicked and The Damned (and it’s the rule, not the exception, in many comics publishers) and tap into the world of comics memoirs to learn all about growing up in Iran, Kashmir, Palestine.

Is there one tip you’d give people who want to help children develop their visual literacies?

Give them illustration at every age. Don’t tell them they’re too old for anything. Encourage them to draw; to mimic illustrators and their styles; to draw as much as write stories. Look for the complexity in illustrated books and comics. Explore comics with children, explore comics yourself; there’s a lot of seriously incredible stuff out there.

And finally what’s your favourite children’s book?

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn – it’s not considered a children’s book anymore but was so radical and beyond it’s time; the first novel in the dialect of a poor illiterate kid; and the story of an abused boy forming an incredible, beautiful bond with an abused man would be radical event today. I’ve read it six times.

Images courtesy of Pop Up Projects. Thank you!