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Penguin Random House - 394

A.D. Teacher’s Guide

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SKU: 9780375714887
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A.D. Teacher’s Guide

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NOTE TO TEACHERS

In A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, nonfiction cartoonist Josh Neufeld paints a masterful portrait of a city under siege. Through the stories of seven real New Orleans residents who survived Hurricane Katrina, A.D. chronicles a catastrophe of epic proportions—and the survivors’ attempts to rebuild in its aftermath. In A.D. we meet Denise, a social worker; “The Doctor,” a physician and French-quarter fixture; Abbas and Darnell, two friends who face the storm from Abbas’s family-run market; Kwame, a high-school-age pastor’s son; and the young couple Leo and Michelle. Each of the characters in A.D. is forced to confront the same wrenching decision—whether to stay or to flee—and to suffer the consequences.
 
A.D. is a book that takes as its subject the large-scale, the epic: this is visible in the full-page panels of cityscapes before and after the hurricane, and in the depiction of the masses of humanity swelling and wilting in the storm’s aftermath. It also focuses on the small, the intimate, in its blow-by-blow account of a diverse group of city residents who live through the storm.
 
A.D. poses timeless questions about the interplay of humanity and the natural forces that at once sustain us and also threaten our very survival. At the same time, it casts a spotlight on one of the most tragic government failures in recent American history, asking important questions about a society’s responsibilities to its citizens.
 
A.D. belongs to the tradition of journalism in which a writer captures an event by immersing himself in the experiences of witnesses and survivors. In 1946, journalist John Hersey spent three weeks interviewing survivors of the August 6, 1945, atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The result was the book-length article “Hiroshima” that chronicled the bombing and its effects on six Japanese survivors. A.D. extends this journalistic tradition to the realm of words and pictures. In doing so, A.D. expands the literary boundaries of one of our most popular literary forms—the comic book. Dave Eggers writes, “A.D. is one of the best-ever examples of comics reportage, and one of the clearest portraits of post-Katrina New Orleans yet published.”
 
As a teaching tool, A.D. allows students to grapple with seemingly unfathomable events by compassionately observing their impact on a few individuals. In this way, it follows in the footsteps of the nonfiction graphic novels Maus and Persepolis, each of which explores major historical events from the perspective of personal history.
 
For the college-level educator, this is a text with cross-disciplinary application. A.D. gives students the chance to engage visually, analyze techniques of visual storytelling, connect with emerging journalistic practices, and discuss the manifold issues facing America at the dawn of the twenty-first-century: class, race, the role of media, communities, and institutions.
 
In high school classes, this is an excellent work to use with English Language Learners and mixed-level reading groups. The graphic format, with its detailed and information-rich panels, provides ample opportunity for students to identify context clues, make inferences about character, draw conclusions about theme, and identify author purpose. Teachers should be aware that A.D. has some adult language and should be reviewed before use in a classroom setting. In particular, the scenes that take place at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, in which Denise witnesses several deaths due to overcrowding and lack of resources, may be disturbing. However, the tone of A.D. is ultimately uplifting and speaks to the enduring power of the human spirit in the face of adversity. As the Los Angeles Times wrote, “A.D. is a work . . . of literature, of high art, and of reverence for nature and humanity.”