Revolutionary Rumblings (Chester the Crab's comics with content series)

by Bentley Boyd

Chester Comix can teach history to reluctant readers! The full-color comic Revolutionary Rumblings traces the political and economic arguments leading up to the American Revolution: the French and Indian War, the Boston Tea Party, the Committees of Correspondence, the Continental Congress and Battle of Lexington and Concord. Jokes and action carry today's students through these hard nonfiction concepts. A timeline across the top of every page helps them place events and people in context. The title on each page is a question, which makes for a good writing prompt. And the comix is indexed, making it a good research tool.

Genres: History

24 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

There was no class at Harvard University to learn how to draw a talking crab on Patrick Henry’s shoulder.

But I’ve strung together ideas and curiosity and a little bit of talent for 30 years now and have used comix to teach several generations of young people about American history and civics.

When I was a kid desperate to buy a comic book — ANY comic I could find — I didn’t think we’d ever really get to live in a science fiction world with a computer in every pocket and dedicated comic book stories packed with a rainbow of books of all shapes and sizes. I did dream, though. I devoured the daily newspaper and its comix before I delivered the paper every morning. I read biographies all summer long. I wrote fiction for myself and nonfiction for the school newspapers. I drew my own characters in my own comix (and quickly realized I don’t have the patience for drawing complicated city skylines — so a career with Batman was out). My early career centered on being a political cartoonist for newspapers. An opportunity in 1995 allowed me to transform that work into Chester the Crab and my dream of graphic storytelling.