Popular Culture Review
feature one story line throughout the entire work, Baltazar and Franco created
a series of engaging one to three-page stories to match the short attention
span of beginning readers.
“D’Anne” commented, “The female characters are often portrayed in
stereotypical 'girly' ways, playing with Barbies and talking about cute boys”
(Goodreads 1). Reply: Boys romp, play, and have fun in groups. Girls play
with Barbie dolls (albeit one is a Batgirl doll), problem solve, cook, help others,
babysit, and quite often save the day. Although there is room for improvement
in Welcome to the Treehouse as far as sexual stereotyping, overall, the
creative authors are sensitive to this issue.
Text--captions, background, word balloons, and sound effects
uses the term “linguistic message” to refer to words as meaningful written
images. Text answers the question, “What does a character say?” It binds the
reader to the character. Text introduces, directs, anchors, and builds the story.
In the absence of words, readers rely on their own experiences to understand
the story. Comic book artists prove their talent by drawing a story with few
words.
The text-image nature of comic books helps children to read. Adults often
read comics to pre-school children. This anticipatory preparation encourages
them to learn to read. The Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale indicated a 2.5
com 1). The Lexile level allows teachers to match text with the developmental
level of learners. MetaMetrics, the parent company of the Lexile Reading
Framework, shared their research with the team that developed the Common
Core Standards. Lexile bands (ranges) match Common Core bands. Capstone
publishing added a hard cover and library binding to Treehouse for sales to
schools at a price of $15.95. The Capstone website refers to this work as a
graphic novel to avoid the stigma of advocating the use of a comic book in
school.
There is a tremendous amount of information in each frame. A sample
of 593 words in 75 frames of Baltazar and Franco’s Welcome to the Treehouse
indicate that the average number of words per frame is 7.0. Some of the words
“Yep!” (13), and contractions like “that’s awful” (17).
Certain artistic devices provide emphasis. Nick Napolitanto (letterer
issues #1 & 2) and Baltazar (letterer issues #3-6) both favor an upper-case,
straightforward lettering style. They use lots of bold type, color, and borders.
Eisner favors this type of old-school hand lettering because it is “the most
idiosyncratic and expressive me