Teaching With Graphic Novels

Latest Post

Review: Uncle Scrooge #383

Title Information
Title: Uncle Scrooge #383 – “Guardians of the Lost Library”
Author(s): Don Rosa
Publisher: Gemstone Publishing

Curricular Details
Grade Level: 4-6
Subjects: Social Studies, Language, Art
Skills/Strands: Early Civilizations, European Explorers

Synopsis and Curricular Relevance
Uncle Scrooge #383 contains three stories, but the main feature of the book and the most useful for teaching is Uncle Scrooge veteran Don Rosa’s contribution entitled “Guardians of the Lost Library.” The story opens with Huey, Dewey and Louie attending the grand opening of the Junior Woodchucks Museum where they run into Uncle Scrooge who is attempting to purchase a copy of the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. Scrooge hopes to use the information contained within the guidebook to uncover valuable treasures, but he is turned down by the lodge leader as the guidebooks are not to be exploited for profit.

Speaking to his nephews, Scrooge laments that fact that he wouldn’t even need the guidebook if he had the books he truly wanted – those once held in the Library of Alexandria. Overhearing the conversation with his nephews, the lodge master agrees to permit the use of the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook in the pursuit of recovering the lost knowledge of Alexandria.

After a quick stop at the famous money bin, the hunt is on and the ducks’ adventure takes them to historical locales beginning in Egypt and winding through countries including Turkey, Italy and Spain before ending up back in America. While the plot is largely fictional, the story does document numerous historical facts including the development of the printed word from papyrus to printing press and also provides a glimpse into the activities (and the reasons for undertaking them) of some famous European explorers, namely Christopher Columbus and Sir Francis Drake.

Don Rosa’s wildly entertaining story does a wonderful job of putting the Duckburg crew on the path of history and can help students study European explorers and early civilizations. The story clearly emphasizes the fact that Alexandrine society highly valued knowledge and written language and also informs how early written documents were produced using environmental resources like river reeds (papyrus) and animal skins (parchment). While “Guardians of the Lost Library” is hardly comprehensive as a study of early civilizations or European explorers, it can be an entertaining introduction to these units of study.

Activity Ideas
A fun way to relate students’ research and learning on early civilizations or European explorers to the comic book is to have them create their own versions of a Woodchuck Guidebook. This can be done in two ways – firstly, all documents produced by the class can be compiled into one volume so that the guidebook more closely resembles the one used in the comics, or alternatively, each student can create their own mini guidebook.  This activity also integrates art into the social studies curriculum and is a nice way to cover multiple expectations.

For a unit on European explorers, students can create biography pages for inclusion in a class Woodchuck Guidebook, which is probably a better choice of format since each student can be responsible for an individual explorer. Copies of the guidebook can then be made for distributing to each member of the class, almost as if they were Junior Woodchucks themselves.

For early civilizations, each student can create a Woodchuck Guidebook of their own, which will provide evidence of their understanding of characteristics of early civilizations as well as how people in these civilizations met their physical and social needs. It is, of course, up to each teacher to decide which guidebook format best suits their class needs.

It may be useful to come up with a template of the pages you would like students to complete in the Woodchuck Guidebook so that there is consistency in the presentation of the deliverable materials. Providing a template ensures that everyone knows exactly what kind of content is expected.  Using early civilizations as an example unit, the teacher might provide a table of contents along with page outlines for things like:

• Physical features and climate of the region where their selected early civilization developed
• How their civilization used the environment to meet their physical needs
• How their civilization was governed
• Values and beliefs of their civilization

The materials that are required for students to create Woodchuck Guidebooks are as follows:

• Paper
• Art materials
• Access to computers to produce documents (should the teacher wish for computer created books)
• Access to library and research materials