Jeff Smith: Creator of Bone

Jeff Smith: Creator of Bone

Jeff Smith was born February 27th, 1960, in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio where he continues to reside today. Jeff Smith has been cartooning since he was small. The Bone characters first appeared when he was about five years old when he was experimenting with facial expressions. From this developed the three cousins: Conscientious Bones, Smiley Bone the easy going-go lucky character and the Weesley cousin Phoney.

Jeff Smith shares two pointers with any aspiring cartoonist or graphic novelist, "Read" and "Draw". Some of the early influences on Jeff's work are: Charles M. Schultz's Peanuts, Walt Kelly's Pogo, Carl Barks, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Prior to the Bone series, Smith was involved with other cartoon projects. He worked as a co-founder with "Character Builders", an animation studio. He developed the character, "Thorn" for the student newspaper "Lantern". The Bone series seems to coalesce the best of the characters developed over a forty year period.

Jeff Smith, in order to publish his series Bone, launched his own company in 1991. The original series was in black and white and was published in fifty five different issues. The series was well received and in 2004 Scholastic published the series in nine books and in color. The following

interview highlights the creation of Bone.

Jeff Bone's Interview

(www.scholastic.com/bone/)

• Are graphic novels appropriate for adolescent classroom literature?


• Why teach Bone in the classroom?


• What interests the struggling male reader?
  These questions and others are answered in the following teaching resource:
  

Teaching Bone/or other graphic novels in the Classroom

Discussion Questions for SED 611:

1) How can the Bone series be parallelled with other more traditional literature works in the classroom?

2) What aspects of the series appeal to the struggling male adolescent reader?

3) What adolescent struggles/milestones are portrayed throughout the series? (Who originally claimed the series as adolescent literature?)

4) How is humor used? Is there a place for humor in renown literature?

5) Reading the series through a gender lens, describe how the male reader identity might be constructed.

Classroom activity: Parallel with Gulliver's Travel by Jonathan Swift

Each student complete a Venn diagram of the similarities and differences between Bone and Gulliver's Travel. Once this is completed partners discuss their ideas and then a whole class discussion and large poster paper is completed with all the ideas.

To assist with differentiated instruction for the classroom using the "Bone out of Boneville" series, or for all students to begin to try and write in a graphic novel format the following website allows the individual to write a series for "Bone out of Boneville". I found this fasinating to try personally and more challenging than I first considered. Have the students try making a comic strip.

Discussions: How is Bone out of Boneville like or different from other graphic novels?

Journal: Have students journal about the experience of reading a graphic novel when they have finished their work.

Try writing a comic strip:

www.scholastic.com/comic_maker.htm

Games that enhance the meaning of the text:

Other interviews with Jeff Smith: