James Bucky Carter

James Bucky Carter, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of English Education at the University of Texas at El Paso. His work focuses on literacy issues and popular culture’s connections to education, specifically those inherent in sequential art narratives (comics and graphic novels). His work has appeared in Marvels and Tales, ImageTexT, and International Journal of Comic Art. He has taught middle school, high school, community college, and university courses. In addition to writing lesson plans for ReadWriteThink, Carter has contributed material to the Summer Activities section of the site. An NCTE member, he is the editor of Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel, a collection of essays geared toward giving middle and high school teachers ideas for how to use graphic novels in their classrooms.

Lessons on ReadWriteThink

Enchanting Readers with Revisionist Fairy Tales (6-8)
This lesson asks students to examine three examples of revisionist fairy tales—a book, a graphic novel, and a poem—in which female characters act in empowered roles rather than behaving helpless and submissive, which is often the case in traditional folk or fairy tales.

The Comic Book Show and Tell (9-12)
Students learn about the people involved in making comic books and learn how central the script is to the process. They craft comic book scripts using clear, accurate, descriptive, and detailed writing that shows (illustrates) and tells (directs). After peers create an artistic interpretation of the script, students revise their original scripts.