Tabachnick, Stephen E., ed. 2009. Teaching Graphic Novel. New York: Modern Language Association. $40.00 he. $25.00 sc. viii + 353 pp.Stephen E. Tabachnick's edited collection Teaching Graphic Novel makes a significant contribution pedagogy and comes at an important moment of need for teachers and scholars who want study such texts and incorporate them into their classes. Though graphic novels such as Art Spiegelman's Maus, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen have achieved both popular and critical acclaim recent years, their customary positioning outside traditional literary canon - form if not necessarily function or genre - can render them suspect as legitimate content literature (or other) courses.It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that Tabachnick begins this collection with a carefully argued rationale for using graphic novels classroom, recounting their origins as a literary form and comparing them best examples of contemporary literature and high art. In good sequential art, he asserts, the lyricism of poetic word choice is combined with lyricism of striking visual images create a stunning, hypnotic form of poetry (4). For those readers who have, perhaps, a more prosaic view of world, Tabachnick quotes N. Katherine Hayles, claiming that we are also now in midst of a cognitive shift [brought on by new technologies] and . . . reading today has become a hybrid textual-visual experience (4). Graphic novels, he suggests, are well-suited this new paradigm for reading and uniquely poised take advantage of it.Teaching Graphic Novel is a collection of thirty-four essays arranged five sections that discuss and reflect upon multiple aspects of graphic novel form. The essays Part I, Thematic and Aesthetic Issues, focus on structural components of visual narrative, drawing heavily on Scott McCloud's formalist schema Understanding Comics (1993) and Will Eisner's dissection of medium Comics & Sequential Art (1985). Contributors this section provide readers with a helpful vocabulary for analyzing and critiquing graphic novels - layout, pacing, closure, paneling, transitions, etc - but they also (as chapters by Tucker and Rabkin) reflect upon analytical approaches and methodological tools that are best suited exploring hybrid visual and textual space occupied by graphic narratives. However, despite focus on tools, definitions, and structure this section, none of the. contributors are seduced by appealing simpHcity of a reductive formalism. Charles Hatfield's Defining Comics Classroom, for instance, takes pains critique McCloud's analytical framework, identifying several points of tension and fracture that become apparent when applying it authentic texts.The Social Issues addressed Part II, though few number, are common topoi for many graphic novels and equaUy common topics of discussion classrooms: race (Chaney), gender (ThaUieimer), culture (Horn), Holocaust (Barr), and 9/11 (Carter). A strong cultural studies approach infuses each of these essays, though authors aU engage their topics from a diverse set of critical perspectives. These readings offer smart, deft analyses of contemporary graphic novels, interrogating them not just as reflections of cultures which they are embedded but, as Horn asserts, as powerful weapons of change that can often enable students to revise their racial or cultural assumptions simultaneously and also sequentially (97).The longest section book is Part III, with twelve chapters devoted Individual Creators and pedagogical questions that arise when using their works as primary texts. There is a Httle something for everyone here, ranging from mainstream and alternative commix creators such as Frank MiUer, Alan Moore, Robert Crumb, Chris Ware, and Lynda Barry, more obscure graphic novefists like Ben Katchor and Marissa Marchetto. …