Ideas for Creating Cartoon Stories
- This project would work well in an arts and literacy program.
- Or it could be a project option for those in the literacy group with an interest
in art or those with weaker literacy skills.
- Determine if several people in the group are interested in a cartooning project.
- If someone in your community has cartooning skills, invite them to your
literacy group to talk about and demonstrate cartooning.
- People who are stronger writers can work as a team with a cartoonist.
- Each group chooses a recorded story to listen to. One or two members of the
team write up the story; the others create cartoons that go along with the story.
- The team works together to create text that goes with each frame of the
cartoon. In this way, the cartoonists receive support from the writers to read
the text and make sure the cartoons match it. Start with a rough copy.
- Notice traditional vocabulary you heard in the story and try to use it in the text
you write.
- The facilitator teaches mini-lessons on the writing process, syllabic
keyboarding, grammar and any other topics as they come up.
- When the group is ready to do the final draft, the writers can type the text on
the computer and create frames for the cartoons to be drawn in. Or they can
scan the cartoons and create a booklet that can be printed in multiple copies.
Your group can either produce the booklet on the computer or do it by hand.
- Create a cover page, pages acknowledging the storyteller, writer and
cartoonist, a table of contents, a dedication page if you want, and insert page
numbers.
- Create a kit that includes a copy of the recorded story and the cartoon booklet.
This kit can be used for listening and reading material for your literacy group
and future literacy groups.
Gideon Qitsualik, on comic books:
I think it would be a quicker way to learn the language if we write our language in
comic book form, but in Inuktitut. If we put Inuktitut in comic books, children will
use it. They will pick up Inuktitut much more quickly.1