The article that stuck out the most for me this week was the one written by ![\"IMG_2789](\"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/files\/2015\/02\/IMG_2789-1-300x96.png\")
William Moulton Marston himself. \u00a0What interested me in \u201cWhy 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics\u201d was where Marston\u00a0discusses how comics help students improve in school, more specifically in English. In his research he explains how \u201cExcerpts from superman have been used successfully in teaching English in public schools\u201d (Marston 42). This interests me because I have used\u00a0graphic novels and comic books to help my sister.<\/p>\n
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My little sister was diagnosed with dyslexia when she was in first grade. People don\u2019t really understand what it means to have dyslexia. Even today it\u2019s kind of hard trying to wrap my head around the difficulties that she has to go through. Dyslexia itself is such a fluid concept and it means something different for every person that has it. For my sister, it means that the she confuses her d\u2019s, p\u2019s and b\u2019s, w\u2019s and m\u2019s. It also means that when she reads, words will flip and letters will move around when they aren\u2019t supposed to. She\u2019s had moments in her life were people, especially kids, have made fun of the way she spells or reads. When she was in middle school, her teacher belittled her in front of her entire class because of her disability.<\/p>\n
So my sister worked harder than I\u2019ve seen anybody work to get amazing grades, but it still wasn\u2019t enough to stop those negative comments. People can kind of be evil that way. Plus, dyslexia doesn\u2019t really go away. People just learn to work around it. My sister carried this negativity everywhere, and like Gloria Steinem expressed in her article, she needed something or someone to empower her. So, I did some research, and I read an article that explained that graphic novels and comics help dyslexics read faster and comprehend more. It\u2019s because, like Marston points out, all comics are visual: if a dyslexic can\u2019t understand what they\u2019re reading, they have pictures to help them along.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>We were both pretty apprehensive about trying it out, because she\u2019s not the comic book type. She honestly didn\u2019t think it would work, and I was afraid the \u201cpinup\u201d female superheroes would have a negative effect on her (Lepore). But it actually worked. I ended up getting her about six graphic novels, and one of them, Injustice, contained Wonder Woman. Not only did the visual aspect of the graphic novel greatly improve her reading, but she also noticed that she could read faster because every letter was capitalized and the words had different fonts. The pages seemed \u201ccleaner\u201d because they contained color so the letters weren\u2019t as confusing compared to a black and white page.<\/p>\n