Weekend Picks for May 2nd

Sean Myers

Welcome to the first Weekend Picks of May! We kick off ​the month with a contribution from one of Oakland University's current teacher candidates, and my (Amanda) recent student. It's a joy and a privilege to help amplify the emerging voices in ELA education. 

Sean Myers points us toward the amazing work of Alice Oseman, specifically the Heartstopper series that began as a digital “Webtoon” comic. Thank you, Sean, for your May Weekend Pick!

​Sean Myers is an English for Language Arts Education Graduate student at Oakland University. He is currently preparing to go into his final student placement and his student teaching, with hopes to be teaching high school English soon!

Heartstopper by Alice Osema

Alice Oseman

​Heartstopper (Volumes 1-5), written and illustrated by Alice Oseman follows the adventures of “out” gay student Charlie Spring, who meets his crush, Nick Nelson, in school. What Charlie doesn’t expect, is Nick’s own “bi-awakening” as the two’s friendship develops into something more. We get to follow their queer-love experience, as well as their friends! Oseman doesn’t just highlight queer male romance, but queer female romance, and transgender identities. We get to see how their own queer soul-searching plays out, and the ripples it has in friends, peers, family, and support systems.

The series began as a digital “Webtoon” comic, releasing short parts every few days, beginning back in August of 2019. As larger sections of the comic were completed, Oseman had volumes 

printed out into graphic novels, as there are currently 5 physical volumes, and more parts being published on Webtoon as of late April. The series has also been adapted by Netflix, which has three seasons, and is confirmed to have a movie instead of a 4th season. ​​

​As sweet and lighthearted as the series begins, we make our way through the different volumes and get to see more serious themes take center stage: depression, eating disorders, internalized homophobia, sexual harassment, and having to deal with less-accepting people in your families. While these are much more serious topics for a queer graphic novel, it’s important to bring awareness to these discussions, because the uncomfortableness of the topics doesn’t erase their prevalence in teenagers today. We get to learn alongside our characters that not every problem can be fixed with an “I Love You” or an “I’m Sorry”, and it’s so refreshing to see in modern literature.

As someone who identifies as a queer man, who struggles with things like poor mental health and depression, it is so comforting to me to see that someone is telling a story that sounds like me. ​

​The Heartstopper series is one that is commonly challenged in libraries and schools, and the restriction of telling queer stories takes away these diverse perspectives over allegations of “pornographic material” (there are no explicit sexual panels in the graphic novels), makes it harder for students to see themselves in the literature they read.

#ReadBannedBooks #CelebrateQueerLove