What’s Better Than a Graphic Novel?

by Attila Girl | February 7, 2009 1:06 pm

A graphic memoir, of course.

But the subject would have to be suitably stirring to warrant the treatment usually accorded superheroes. You’d want a real-life hero: someone like William Ayers.

William Ayers?

Of course.

Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly writes:

Teachers College Press, a scholarly, professional and trade publisher focused on the theory and practice of teacher education, has reached agreement on a two-book deal with William Ayers, the University of Illinois at Chicago professor, lauded educational theorist and former leader of the radical 1960s Weather Underground. And, yes, Ayers is indeed the same figure dragooned into the 2008 presidential race in a controversial attempt to use his background in radical politics and a minor acquaintance with Barack Obama to undermine Obama’s presidential run.

I usually classify it as a “minor acquaintance” when one couple baby-sits another’s kids. I mean, I don’t have children myself, but if I did I’d certainly make sure that any potential baby-sitters had at least attempted to bomb the Pentagon. That is parental due-diligence.

In spring 2010, TCP will publish a graphic novel adaptation of To Teach: The Journey, a much-praised memoir of Ayers’s life as a teacher, tentatively to be called To Teach: The Graphic Memoir with art by Xeric Award-winner Ryan Alexander-Tanner. More than a simple memoir, To Teach is also a peer-reviewed work of scholarship on Ayers’s teaching precepts as well as a vivid recollection of his adventures in the classroom. At the same time, TCP will publish a new and revised third edition of the original prose To Teach: The Journey. One of TCP’s all-time bestselling titles, To Teach was originally published in 1993 and has sold more than 75,000 copies over three printings, the last one released in 2001.

“For an academic/scholarly press, that’s a major bestseller,” noted TCP acquisitions editor Meg Lemke, who “co-acquired” the book with TCP director Carol Saltz, who will edit the new prose edition. Lemke will oversee the production of the graphic edition.

Despite the media hoopla over his radical past, Ayers is a serious and much respected Chicago-based educational activist and theorist who has been with TCP for years and published at least five books at the house. Ayers is also the series editor of TCP’s Teaching Social Justice series of titles. (Fugitive Days, Ayers’s memoir of his past as a radical political activist is published by Beacon Press.). The idea to produce a graphic novel version of Ayers’s classic education title came after TCP contacted him about an updated edition of To Teach, which was lasted revised in 2001. “It was a collaborative idea among Carol, myself and Bill,” Lemke said.

Next up: Teachers College Press will be presenting a life of John Wilkes Booth, who did not bomb the Pentagon—but at least managed to bag its Commander-in-Chief.

(Cross-posted at Little Miss Attila.)

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