History Comics: The National Parks: Preserving America's Wild Places

by Falynn Koch

Overview

Let this graphic novel be your time machine—experience history like never before! Our past is only the beginning with History Comics.

In this volume, The National Parks: Preserving America's Wild Places, turn back the clock to 1872, when Congress established Yellowstone National Park as an area of unspoiled beauty for the "benefit and enjoyment of the people." Meet the visionaries, artists, and lovers of the American wilderness who fought against corruption and self-interest to carve out and protect these spaces for future generations. See for yourself how the idea of National Parks began, how they've changed, and how they continue to define America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250265876
Publisher:	First Second
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Series:	History Comics
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	1,042,718
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	9 - 13 Years

About the Author

Falynn Koch was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. She has an MFA in sequential art from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta and is a graduate of the International Culinary Center in New York City. She loves to travel and explore the outdoors with her husband and occasionally her dogs. Her books from First Second include Science Comics: Bats, Science Comics: Plagues, Maker Comics: Bake Like a Pro!, History Comics: The National Parks, History Comics: The Wild Mustangs (with writer Chris Duffy), and Science Comics: Elephants (with writer Jason Viola).

Editorial Reviews

2022-04-27
Get your park passports stamped!

Wisecracking Bigfoot (who in this book symbolizes the National Parks) and Eagle narrate this in-depth exploration of the “recreational areas, historic sites, monuments, landscapes, seashores, [and] ecosystems” that make up the parks system. The story begins in 1850 with Yosemite, then a state park and America’s first large nature park. When Eagle points out the land had been the home of the Ahwahnechee, Bigfoot explains that “early Anglo-Americans didn’t see it that way” and “arrogantly believed they had the authority to tell allIndigenous people where and how to live!” These attitudes unfortunately continued. The complicated politics and practical aspects of preservation versus conservation are anchored in time as different presidents approve new parks. Koch covers Lewis and Clark; John Muir; the Buffalo Soldiers, who experienced racism as they enforced rules at Yosemite; journalist Virginia McClurg, who took a stand against the looting of Mesa Verde; Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who advocated for the Everglades to be made into a national park; and women who worked in the parks as rangers, naturalists, and cultural demonstrators in the 1920s. Digitally created illustrations portray contemporary park visitors as diverse.

Sassy guides lead readers through a witty yet complicated history of the national parks. (preface, afterword, further research, timeline) (Nonfiction comic. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews

"Sassy guides lead readers through a witty yet complicated history of the national parks."—Kirkus

"Middle grade readers visiting any of the hundreds of ­national park sites will find their enjoyment and appreciation of the experience much enhanced by this graphic overview."—School Library Journal, starred review

From the Publisher

★ 05/01/2022

Gr 5–7—Trotting in Bigfoot as tour guide and spokescryptid for all of our national parks, monuments, and historical sites, Koch offers both a general celebration of their wonders and value and a history of how they came to be. This begins with the forcible removal of the indigenous Miwoks from the Ahwahnee valley (later renamed "Yosemite") in 1851 and continues on to the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone in the 1990s. Koch includes nuanced introductions to significant figures and visionaries of the past, from Presidents Grant and Roosevelts to John Muir (an overt racist, for all his good works) and Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Readers will come away understanding how the parks and other preserves as we know them today are the products of often violent struggles between competing interests: native populations and would-be settlers; commercial exploiters and preservers of wild places; strict conservationists and officials bent on improving access with new roads and facilities. Brightly colored cartoon art in sequential panels featuring animated people (notably an excitable Teddy Roosevelt, who positively bounds across some pages) and wild creatures livens up the substantial informational load, which is presented almost entirely as dialogue and capped by a time line to 2019 and a short list of print resources. VERDICT Middle grade readers visiting any of the hundreds of national park sites will find their enjoyment and appreciation of the experience much enhanced by this graphic overview.—John Edward Peters

School Library Journal