Remy Lai's "Ghost Book" and "Read at Your Own Risk" teachers' review

Brief description and distinctive features

Telling a story with images is an ancient art. Just think of First Nations rock paintings, Egyptian murals and Greek pottery. Comic strips came along in the late 19th century and brought image and text together with dialogue bubbles, visual onomatopoeic text and narrative blocks and panels. Such texts were often considered childish but as time passed authors and illustrators often raised the level of literacy and conceptual understanding required to read/view their texts. Consider Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1986) which is a complex memoir about his father’s experiences in the Holocaust and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000), an astonishing graphic non-fiction text about growing up in Iran during a revolution. Both would be suitable senior texts. The term “graphic novel” is increasingly used to describe these more complex forms. The name can cause some confusion. Many so-called ‘graphic novels’ are non-fiction e.g. Steve Jobs: insanely great by Jessie Hartland is a graphic biography of the inventor of the Apple computer and iPhone. Whether fictional or non-fiction, it's clear that the term ‘graphic novels’ has stuck and they are increasingly popular with young readers and adolescents. For teachers they can often be a way to hook the unengaged or reluctant reader and provide positive associations for readers with books while providing visual clues and inferences. At Stage 4 they can be a swift and rewarding read, and they are a great way to get students involved and motivated to engage with more demanding texts.

Ways to use Remy Lai's books in the classroom

An introduction to genre and the conventions of the paranormal/ghost genre vs horror or fantasy 

Genre is defined in the NSW 7-10 English Syllabus (2022) as 

“categories into which texts are grouped based on similarities in premise, structure and function. The ‘genre’ of a text describes larger recurring patterns of subject matter and textual structures observable between texts, such as typical plots, characters and setting. ‘Genre’ can also describe categories of form and structure in texts.”

Common genres are crime, fantasy, sci-fi, adventure, paranormal and horror or gothic and the western. 

Ghost Book and Read at Your Own Risk would be good texts to investigate and interrogate the textual elements/conventions of the paranormal genre. WinsBooks, an American book seller, has a blog which contained an entertaining distinction between paranormal and horror genres. Students might enjoy and benefit from discussing and expanding the distinctions between horror, paranormal and fantasy genres. 

Task: In groups ask students to reflect on any ghost books they have read or films they have seen and draw up a list of common elements that seem to occur often in these types of texts.   Each group shares the names of texts they have mentioned and the characteristics they see as common with the class so a wider list can be made. These elements/conventions from WinsBooks blog could be a starting point: 

Horror

• A story written to frighten or unnerve and provoke fear in the reader 
• Promotes an atmosphere and mood of dread or uneasiness
• A confronting ending 

Paranormal (a subsection of fantasy) 

• Includes an entity or event that is powered by something unexplained
• A mysterious and eerie atmosphere 
• Ghosts, ghosts and more ghosts
• Life after death 
• Events and phenomena unexplained by science.   

As part of the exploration of Ghost Book and Read at Your Own Risk form small groups and allocate a specific textual element of the ghost genre to each group. Students are to explore the graphic novels to find examples of this textual element. Build a class table which captures how Remy Lai has incorporated the paranormal genre into her compelling novels. 

Wide reading challenge 

Encourage students to read more widely in paranormal genre by having a book box of titles in the classroom. Challenge students to read another ghost book by choosing from the book box and provide time for students to read in class. Possible texts could include:

• A Ghost in My Suitcase adapted by Vanessa Bates for the stage from the novel by Gabrielle Wang 
• Coraline by Neil Gaiman  
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman  
• Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (for older readers) 

Characterisation

Ghost Book has the strong and important friendship between July and William at its centre. The strength of their friendship is central to the narrative structure of the novel. Kindness, humour and sacrifice are vital ingredients.  

Task: In a chart plot the friendship’s highs and lows and discuss how the author represents this friendship in words and images.  

Contrast July and William’s friendship with that of Hannah, Mabel, Brian and Lisa in Read at Your Own Risk and in groups discuss why the friendships in the two books are so different. Hint: Who is telling the story in each graphic novel?  

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English 7-10 syllabus

Text requirements: Ghost Book and Read at Your Own Risk are multimodal texts by an Australian author.  They includes a range of cultural, social and gender perspectives.

Concepts could include Characterisation and Genre

Relevant NSW English 7-10 Syllabus content

Reading Viewing and listening to texts | EN4-RVL-01

Reading, viewing and listening for meaning

• Explore the main ideas and thematic concerns posed by a text for meaning
• Engage with the ways texts contain layers of meaning, or multiple meanings
• Identify and understand that relevant prior knowledge and personal experience enables and enhances understanding when reading, viewing or listening to texts
• Explain personal responses to characters, situations and issues in texts, recognising the role of written, oral or visual language in influencing these personal responses
• Explain how the use of language forms and features in texts might create multiple meanings
• Using a range of texts, describe how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors convey connections between Culture and identity
• Understand how language use evolves over time and in different places and cultures, and is influenced by technological and social developments

Reading for challenge, interest and enjoyment    

• Read texts selected to challenge thinking, develop interest and promote enjoyment, to prompt a personal response
• Read a variety of texts that present a range of perspectives and experiences, including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and respond in a range of ways, including sustained written responses where appropriate
• Read texts of interest for sustained periods of time and respond to this reading in a variety of ways
• Use strategies to enhance interest and overcome challenges experienced when reading
• Communicate purposefully with peers in response to texts
• Understand the ways reading helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and to the world

Reflecting 

• Reflect on how reading, viewing and listening to texts has informed learning
• Reflect on how an understanding of texts can be enhanced through re-reading and close study
• Discuss and reflect on the value of reading for personal growth and cultural awareness
• Use reading strategies, and consider their effectiveness, when reflecting on the successes and challenges of extended reading
• Reflect on how reading promotes a broad and balanced understanding of the world and enables students to explore universal issues
• Reflect on own experiences of reading by sharing what was enjoyed, discussing challenges to strengthen an understanding of the value of reading

Understanding and responding to texts A | EN4-URA-01

Characterisation

• Analyse how engaging characters are constructed in texts through a range of language features and structures, and use these features and structures in own texts
• Describe how characters in texts, including stereotypes, archetypes, flat and rounded, static and dynamic characters represent values and attitudes, and experiment with these in own texts
• Understand how the interactions of characters, such as protagonists and antagonists, might be perceived to represent aspects of human relationships, and experiment with interactions when composing texts

Genre 

• Understand how a genre addresses its purpose through patterns of textual elements, such as structure, choice of language, character archetypes and settings, and apply these patterns in own texts
• Analyse how texts can participate in larger, established patterns of narrative, purpose, theme and tone by exhibiting and challenging conventions, and experiment with conventions in own texts
• Explore particular genres to identify ways they may be adapted to different modes and media, or refreshed by combining with other genres, and experiment with these in own texts

(English K-10 Syllabus 2022 © NSW Education Standards Authority for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2023)

Connecting (ghostly) texts