As part of Festival-To-Go, the schools in the Rochester City School District had access to virtual author visits from local authors and illustrators. In library class, we learned tips for coming up with story ideas from authors Kate Karyus Quinn and Demitria Lunetta. The students were particularly interested because Kate and Demitria told about how they got the idea for their co-written graphic novel, Anti/Hero.

Next, the students worked alone or with 1 or 2 partners to create their own comic books using Book Creator. 

Students used this planning sheet to guide their work.

In order to provide students with an authentic audience, we emailed Kate Karyus Quinn and provided links to 6 of the books that the students had created. Kate graciously replied with the following:

“I just read through all the stories and they are so great. I can’t believe how scary a few of them were too! But all of them were wonderful and creative. Demitria and I are so happy that we inspired them and hope that they keep writing and finding ways to tell their stories.

Best,

Kate”

We also created a bulletin board with QR codes for about 2 dozen of the stories so that anyone could scan the QR codes and read the books in Book Creator.