I got these great messages this week from a high school friend whose daughter is really struggling with the NAME-DATE-PLACE style of history education:

“I think my daughter needs to have an extended conversation with you regarding social studies and social studies education. She has complained lately that the way it is taught is boring. I told her that I actually find history more fascinating now and that the key to history being interesting is in large part good storytelling and being able to weave in interesting tidbits. She hates the read it, recite it type of teaching. Yet, I think she likes history some because she comes home with questions like “How do they keep track of history?” “Does someone write it down?” “If some of it is passed down orally, couldn’t it get messed up or inaccurate?” So I know she is pondering things. I told her to get on your Chester site as I know you had talked up social studies education on there. She has like the things they have done that have been simulations - i.e. forming their own colonies, etc. but has been in a social studies funk lately. . .

We just conversed over breakfast this morning again about how history is recorded and whether it is accurate. [My husband] talked about the physical evidence that substantiates what is reported so that you know it is not made up but we did talk about how anything reported, including today’s news, can be subject to the reporter’s point of view. I also explained how when I practiced law, our opening statements were to be only facts. Yet, the two sides could report the same facts and color them in such a way as to be more favorable to their side. It is interesting how she is so obsessed with accuracy in history suddenly. On the way home from play practice I suggested maybe she should do historical theater as a way to enliven how history is presented.”

What a fantastic discussion! My quick reactions:

1. This is the kind of talks parents need to be having with their kids about their schooling, no matter the subject. Half of the job is to LISTEN to your kid — but then look how my friend answered using her own professional experience. That’s great. Don’t leave education just to your kids’ teachers.

2. NAME-DATE-PLACE IS BORING! It’s the way history was taught in 1950 and 1850. Why are we still stuck in that?! Certain things must be known — the War of 1812 didn’t happen in 1912, after all — but the most important question in history education is WHY. When you answer WHY something happened, the names and dates will fall into the story.

3. We should use as many disciplines as possible to teach history. Historical theater is a great idea. So is making historical episodes using a digital videocamera. Reenacting of biographies is popular in Virginia classrooms. Turn historical stories into rap songs. WHATEVER — anything but flashcards!! When I see all the possibilities of consumer technology I feel a bit sheepish — Chester Comix seem downright stuffy, being a holdout of the printed word on paper!

4. So that’s why I put in lots of DETAILS. My friend’s daughter seems right in line with most other kids I’ve met — they want to know how the sailors on the ships to Jamestown went to the bathroom. They like the extra stuff I put into Chester Comix. I’ve had a few teachers complain that there’s a lot of material in there that they don’t have to teach — info about Clara Barton’s childhood is not on the standardized test, for example, but I believe that understanding her childhood does a lot to explain WHY she went onto the Civil War battlefields to help the wounded. Which IS on the test. Details humanize these people of history and make it easier to remember the big Name, Date and Place that the tests demand.

What do YOU think??

My business model is to help students, teachers and parents, but I also want to use my time and business proceeds to help my community at large. In a good sign for the business, I’m getting more and more of those requests (Chester’s brand expands every time someone asks me to donate books for a charity auction!).

Last week I had a great time at a calendar signing for Beyond Boobs, a new nonprofit to help young women deal with breast cancer. (This photo includes some of the wonderful cancer survivors featured in the calendar — the two founders of the charity, Rene Bowditch and Mary Beth Gibson, are on the left). I also gave them a check based on the sales my great friend, Wendy Owens, (to the right of me) got for me by running my booth at the Virginia school librarians conference earlier this month. Please visit the Beyond Boobs web site and buy a beautiful calendar!

www.beyondboobsinc.org/

There’s no off-season for an author: In the last week of July — between taking Cub Scouts to a baseball game, shuttling my kids to work at Colonial Williamsburg and doing a Chester Comix contract extension with the Daily Press — I got three chances to re-energize with readers. Nothing brings me awake again like talking to parents and drawing with students.

My week started with a Sunday night book signing at the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center. I rushed there from the Richmond Braves game that I had led the Cubbies to — I was still wearing my olive green Scout leader pants behind the table full o’ comix. It may seem a weird time to go to work, but Sunday afternoons at the Visitor Center I can visit with many families coming out of the Historic Area excited about history after a full weekend in the 18th Century. A two-hour signing there usually flies by.

On Tuesday I went to Fort Belvoir in Northern Virginia for an appearance at a library summer reading program. We met in a neighborhood clubhouse because the crowd was too big for the tiny 1950s library building on base. I’ve been at this long enough that now some of the kids in the audience have read my books before I get there - which must happen to other authors all the time but has been a rare situation for me in the past decade. I gave my standard one-hour chalk talk (which is still fun for me because there’s a lot of interaction with the kids as I draw on an overhead projector) and then spent an hour signing books and chatting with kids one-on-one. Thanks to the librarian, Richard Freeman, everyone at the Ft. Belvoir chalk talk got their own comic to take home.

And sometimes art is hard work!!! The photo above is from a mini-residency I did Thursday at Charles City County for a summer school program. In my longer appearances I give the students several templates to work with: some panels to make a story or a pencilled male or female figure to design their own character. Here we’re trying to get the hair just right on a female superhero.

This is the best part — seeing what bold ideas come out of the students. I volunteered for 10 years in the art classes at Matthew Whaley Elementary while my sons went there, and this creative time in Charles City felt a lot like that. I love teaching!!!! (One important point I always make: you CAN talk and draw at the same time. I encourage it. I never understood why the teachers kept saying the kids had to be quiet as they created - how do they think brainstorming works, anyway??)

How do you hold the attention of 500 elementary students on a rainy day? Show them how a few penlines makes anyone into a superdude! I draw three versions of myself in my Author’s Purpose talks, to show how a powerful imagination can reshape reality (and there is no greater reshaping to be done than to make me into a superhero!).

I had a great time at Kempsville Elementary in Virginia Beach last week. After the opening session in the cafeteria I did break-out sessions with two classes at a time, and we drew up a storm. A brainstorm - there were drawings about Ben Franklin’s kite hypothesis, Thomas Jefferson’s narrow miss of a hangman’s noose and Abe Lincoln’s old magic hat. We even explained why the Powhatan Indians built longhouses out of the reeds and sticks on the ground around them — because no one had invented “Longhouse Depot” for Saturday errands yet.

Elementary students love feeling the power of their own creativity. So did I - so I never gave it up!

Earlier this month I spent a day at Mantua Elementary in Fairfax County - a wonderful neighborhood school in a wooded, older and quieter section of bustling Northern Virginia. My presentation needs are simple because I travel with my own overhead projector, but Mantua’s library was tricked out! There was a digital projector for me, several computer stations and even a scanner (the tech I use all the time to get my hand-drawings into a digital form). It was tantalizing (I’ve used whiteboards at schools and shown my PowerPoint to civics groups) but I stuck with my old overhead because it allows me to work the magic of drawing and still face my audience.

The funniest tech interaction was between me and the signers who came to two of my four sessions. The school has several hearing-impaired students, one who needed me to wear a mike so he could hear. It all went well - I asked the hearing-impaired students some questions directly as I did my Phil Donahue routine in and around the audience. But the poor signers had to figure out what to do with my active style. I literally walked circles around one signer. The other one decided to trail me when I went to the back of the audience for one questioner, and she and I got back and forth just fine.

And the snowfall that day gaveth and tooketh tech away: school wasn’t cancelled, but I spent too long talking to teachers after my presentations and got stuck behind the afternoon bus line. A PT Cruiser’s car wheels won’t get me around big buses in the snow! So I just stayed in the library - where some of my earlier audience members discovered me and gathered around my Mac laptop to see me coloring one of my new cartoons. That was a fun day!!

I’ve spoken to school groups for more than a decade. Each visit energizes me as much as it does the students and teachers I meet. Last week I was up in Fairfax County, Virginia, for a whole day at Mantua Elementary and had a great time talking to students about rough drafting, language, symbolism and my Author’s Purpose in creating Chester’s adventures — and I think I even held the students’ attention from the snow falling outside!

Now I’m going to work with WorldStrides to connect to school groups VISITING Virginia! I worked for this great Charlottesville-based company last spring as an on-site coordinator, steering school groups to their destinations in the Historic Triangle and making sure their hotel stays were pleasant. Now I’m offering an evening program for WorldStrides client groups called “Hysterical History” for school groups looking for something to do after the museums close.

We’ll brainstorm ideas as I cartoon about the historical stories they’ve witnessed that day. We’ll talk about what the early American experience says to our lives now. We’ll talk about Why things happened. And we’ll draw a big nose on George Washington. It’ll be fun! I have five school groups scheduled for the spring already, so if you’re coming to Virginia with WorldStrides, ask about my “Hysterical History” program. You can find out more about this school travel company at www.worldstrides.com.

Last week’s Festival of Cartoon Art at Ohio State was inspiring! I love the fact that one minute we’re discussing the meaning of language in the graphic novel format, the next minute we’re hearing old poker stories about “Steve Canyon” artist Milton Caniff, and the next we’re listening to a Wagner opera as a music video to a comic based on one of his pieces. WOW! Here are more highlights:

* I met Mike Peters, Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist and creator of the “Mother Goose and Grimm” comic strip. It was like meeting Robin Williams. The guy never stops talking, reacting, connecting. My Author’s Purpose visits are like his — on about 1/5 Peters speed.

* I chatted with Arnold Roth, who did the layouts for the Schoolhouse Rock episode “The Three Ring Circus” (about the three branches of our government. He is a funny, kind man - his sketch of himself in my sketchbook says, “Everything I know I learned from Bentley Boyd.” Ha!

* Seeing the Caniff originals in a campus gallery was wonderful. His Sunday comic episodes from the 30’s were as wide as my arm span. HUGE ART! I love getting close to see how he put the story together. Young readers who love adventure would do well to read Caniff’s “Terry and the Pirates” collections. He is credited for bringing movie-like images to the comix.

* One of the biggest inspirations was my friend Nick Anderson, who is doing amazing digital things for the Houston Chronicle. His political cartoons are in color every day and they’ve given him a staff to produce animated satire on their Web site. He has very funny music video parodies at www.chron.com/nickanderson. Check it out!

Welcome to the new Chester Comix website!

It will be much more interactive than the previous version, with photos, fun stuff, new teachers guide material and a weekly blog posting from me about the latest in history and graphic novels. It’s an exciting time for this unique American art form, and I’ll share each new step of the way with you! For example, I’m looking forward to being at the Ohio State University’s Festival of Cartoon Art in October for a three-day discussion of graphic novels and nonfiction storytelling. Ohio State has one of the biggest collections of cartoon originals in the United States and hosts an academic conference every three years. I last went in 2001, just weeks after 9/11. It was a powerful session for reaffirming American values and an American art form.I’ll let you all know what happens at this one! In the meantime, keep checking back here for the latest updates on my work and the way comix can boost literacy and test scores — I’ll soon have charts showing how my books meet each state’s social studies standards!

Have fun reading!

Bentley