Reading Comics
Online, once-a-week advanced reading classes
19 Thursdays in Winter–Spring 2024
January 11, 18, 25
February 1, 8, 15, 22, 29
March 7, 14, 21, 28
April 4, 11,* 18, 25
May 2, 9, 16, 23
7:30–8:10pm Eastern / 4:30–5:10pm Pacific
Live class: $60/month
Recordings only: $30/month
This class is all about words, idioms, and references. We’ll focus on understanding every bit of meaning, so we can get the jokes!
This is a webinar — students will have their cameras turned off. They’re also able to volunteer to read their favorite strips aloud.
Oh — this class comes right before “Arguing Comics”, which is an optional add-on. This one is a webinar — students will not have their cameras on.
*NO class on April 11; the Hendrickson family will be on vacation
A problem
Isn’t it ironic?
An odd fact of modern society: most adults can’t read at an “adult level”.
The average American adult reads at a 6th grade level.
Only 25% of college graduates can read at a “proficient” level.
This holds smart people back.
As parents, this is disquieting. We want our kids to excel at their education, and to thrive in life! (We even want their skills to show on standardized tests like the SAT.)
We don’t want reading to be the barrier that (for most people) it is.
How can we help them?
Mastery, meet love
We’ve all seen the attempts to fix this. Worksheets, flashcards, grade-aligned primers…
Having worked at a tutoring center, I know that even when these tools work, they can ignore the most important task: getting kids to want to read. (Sometimes they can even backfire!)
What if…
But what if there were a way to help kids
learn to read closely…
at an adult level…
that made them hungry to read more?
Meet a boy and his tiger!
Calvin and Hobbes might be the most beloved comic strip ever. It’s imaginative, gorgeous, and hilarious.
What you might not know is that Calvin and Hobbes can be a powerful way to learn the art of “close reading” — and to foster a powerful vocabulary.
Words, words, words
And oh, the words they’ll learn.
Calvin and Hobbes is that rare sort of book that’s filled with explosions, aliens, and six-year-old humor… and also SAT-level vocabulary:
Anima. Ballistic. Consecrate. Dysfunctionality. Entreaty. (And that’s just up to “E”!)
In this class, your kids will capture college-level words, learn them cleanly and simply, and remember them forever.
Meet a girl and her terrifying warrior powers!
This year, we’ll also be reading Zach Weinersmith’s masterful graphic novel, Bea Wolf.
We’ll tell you the truth: this book is one of the greatest works of art we’ve ever read (and we read a lot of books). It’s a riff off of the Old English epic Beowulf, but… even better, somehow?
This book has the best language of any graphic novel we’ve read. This book made us cry. We couldn’t be more excited to read this book with families, and discuss what it means.
Meet a cartoonist who (okay, we’re overdoing this)
Starting in March, we’re offering a supplemental book: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, by Scott McCloud.
Wait, all of your cartoonist friends haven’t already yammered your head off about this book? And your 11-year-old hasn’t already re-read it so many times that the cover’s fallen off?
Wow. Your life sounds pretty slick.
This is one of the world’s perfect books. It’s a comic book that unveils how comic books work. Effortlessly, you’ll learn history, culture, and art theory — and you’ll start seeing these ideas everywhere in the world.
What do we get?
Books
After you sign up, you’ll need to buy your own copy of the books we’re reading together this term.
A translation packet
After each lesson, we’ll email you our “Calvin & Hobbes Dictionary” — a PDF that clearly lays out
the definitions,
the explanations, and
the pronunciations
for each of the challenging words.
Memory cards
After each lesson, we’ll email you a deck of spaced-repetition flashcards — so everything your kid learns gets locked in their long-term memory.
How’s it work?
1. Sign up
Choose “live” or “recorded”.
2. Buy the book(s)
In Fall 2023, we’re finishing The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, taking a few weeks to go through Bea Wolf, and then finishing with another Calvin & Hobbes book — There’s Treasure Everywhere.
Starting about halfway through, we’ll be adding on an optional extra: a chapter a week of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.
3. Come to class
We’ll explain everything, and get you started reading!
4. Do your homework
15 new pages a week of close reading, plus (if you want) spaced-repetition review of the past vocabulary.
5. Keep coming to class
In “Reading Comics”, we do dramatic readings of some of the strips, and ask why is this funny? In “Arguing Comics”, we do all that and discuss the big ideas that the strips raise.
Questions, answered
What dates?
In 2024, nineteen Thursdays in a row. (See the dates at the top of this page.)
(Okay, it’s not exactly in a row — we’re skipping a week in April.)
Why just 40 minutes?
With this method, we can get big results in a short time!
What ages?
Calvin & Hobbes is for all ages. For the sake of this course, we’ll set the bottom at 8, and the top at 18.
How much does it cost?
$60/month for the live course, and only $30/month for the recordings only. (If you’d like to do this and Arguing Comics, it’s more.)
Will there be grades?
Goodness no.
How many kids?
Around 20 kids, and more watching later.
Can I catch up?
Yes — or start in the middle! When you sign up, we’ll send you access to all of the lessons you missed.
How much homework?
Assume an hour spread through the week: 15 new pages, and daily review of past words.
I already own a book…
We’re scared of being sued by the publisher (famously, they’re the sue-y sort), so if you’re new to class, we insist that you buy a copy. (If you’d like, you can gift it to a friend who struggles to love reading. Pretty good karma, there.)
How does the recorded option work?
You’ll get the same materials, and every Friday, the video recording of the lesson will be ready for you.
Is there a family discount?
It’s built in! This is designed for whole families — so you can sign up all your kids for the price of one.
What if I don’t like it?
We’re happy to pro-rate a refund for you!
Will this be held again?
Maybe. We’re getting too busy… but we’re thinking of looping back to a book we’ve already done before — The Days are Just Packed.
Where’s this come from?
A curious kid
Growing up, you’d rarely find me without a Calvin & Hobbes book under my arm. I loved the series so much that I (literally) had most of it half-memorized.
A test-prep coach
For 15 years after college, I worked as an SAT, ACT, and GRE coach. And I realized something that should have been obvious — people struggle on those tests because they don’t know very many words.
It really is difficult to read well when you don’t know 99% of the words.
A classroom teacher
When my wife and I ran our own classroom, we created an entire curriculum around reading and performing Calvin & Hobbes. It was joyous.
A father
We have two twice-exceptional kids — and we’ve watched both of them become powerful readers as they’ve read, re-read, and re-re-read Calvin & Hobbes.
Not sure if this is for you?
Watch our open house!
We did an open house the week before class starts… and you can watch it right now!
Experience what the classes will be like. See the big picture of why this could change your kid’s experience of reading. Ask question after question.
Just an hour long. Kids and parents might both enjoy it.