I stole the title of this blog post, and my post on Beowulf, from an episode of the NCTE/IRA podcast Text Messages about ways to engage students with classic stories. You can play that episode right here.

http://www.readwritethink.org/util/media/rwt_audio.swf

All-Action Classics: Dracula by Michael Mucci

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoy reading books from the Victorian Era in England. Dracula was one of the novels I taught during my student teaching. I love the graphic adaptation as an introduction to the story. Bram Stoker’s original used correspondance to tell the story — Jonathan Harker’s journal, telegrams, newspaper clippings, letters. Mucci’s adaptation takes the big events and makes them visually stunning. The colors he uses are dark and subdued, giving the graphic novel a gothic feel that mirrors the book.