Graven Images

Comic books have increasingly become a vehicle for serious social commentary and, specifically, for innovative religious thought. Practitioners of both traditional religions and new religious movements have begun to employ comics as a missionary tool, while humanists and religious progressives use comics' unique fusion of text and image to criticize traditional theologies and to offer alternatives. Addressing the increasing fervor with which the public has come to view comics as an art form and Americans' fraught but passionate relationship with religion, Graven Images explores with real insight the roles of religion in comic books and graphic novels. In essays by scholars and comics creators, Graven Images observes the frequency with which religious material—in devout, educational, satirical, or critical contexts—occurs in both independent and mainstream comics. Contributors identify the unique advantages of the comics medium for religious messages; analyze how comics communicate such messages; place the religious messages contained in comic books in appropriate cultural, social, and historical frameworks; and articulate the significance of the innovative theologies being developed in comics.

The classic study of gravestone art

Paul Fleischman spins three engrossing stories about the unexpected ways an artist's creations reveal truths - tales whose intriguing plots and many moods will entertain readers and inspire future writers. Can wood, copper, or marble communicate? They can if they are the graven images in Newbery Medalist Paul Fleischman's trio of eerie, beguiling short stories. If you whisper a secret into a wooden statue's ear, will anyone find out? Can a wobbly weathervane bearing the image of Saint Crispin, the patron saint of shoemakers, steer a love-struck apprentice toward the girl of his dreams? And if a ghost hires a sculptor to carve a likeness of him holding a drink to a baby's lips, what ghastly crime might lie behind his request? And, in a brand-new afterword, the acclaimed storyteller reveals how he found his own author's voice.

Three tales of mystery, comic misadventures, and dark deeds focus on what happens to people who put their trust and faith in graven images. A Newbery Honor Book. Simultaneous.

Henrietta, the heroine of this story lives in a state of diligent effort, fantasy ambition and ultimate sacrifice of her private life in order to become a known movie star. That is the delusion, to transfer one's immense talent, which she has, into the hands of another person, in her case those beside whom she would attract useful attention, is basis for the belief that they can augment her recognition on the road of stardom. who your seen with that matters," is her working philosophy.

No one is more surprised than Philip Nason when an uprising occurs within the walls of a New York rehabilitation hospital. Moments after Phil, director of recreation, hears that a group of mostly paraplegic patients have staged a rebellion, he learns that the hospital's director is furious and thinks the patients were inspired by Phil's current-events reading program. Now with his job in jeopardy, Phil is torn between his desire to empower his patients and pleasing hospital bureaucrats. After the rebel patients beg Phil to create an activity program to help them win the respect of hospital staff and improve their lives, he eventually complies. When Phil acts on a hunch and pops the end of a paint brush into young quadriplegic Clayton Thomas's mouth, Clayton begins creating beautiful paintings inspired by the Bible. Phil, spurred by his artistic goals, begins developing a program to showcase the patients' artwork. Now all he has to do is convince the hospital's reluctant administrators that unleashing their patients' creativity is a good thing. In this inspiring story, hundreds of chronically ill patients realize the power of art while rising up against the stifling restrictions of institutional bureaucracy-with help from their determined recreational director.

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth". So decrees the second commandment. Could anything be clearer? And yet, through the centuries, Jews have decorated their tombstones with graven images. This rich tradition of liberally interpreting the biblical admonition has provided centuries' worth of graphic symbols and motifs that illuminate Jewish history and lore. In Graven Images, a surprisingly spirited view of a usually somber subject, author and photographer Arnold Schwartzman has assembled a lavish array of color photographs of Jewish tombstones. Focusing on the treasures he has discovered in thirty-eight European cemeteries, this book reproduces more than two hundred graven images from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Romania. Schwartzman's beautiful close-up photographs and fascinating captions reveal the significance of some of the most common images found on the gravestones. Some reveal the occupation of the deceased (an inkwell and quill for a scribe) or something about character (a candelabrum for a pious woman). Others allude specifically to a person's name (a fish for a member of the Fischel family) or refer to biblical tradition (Noah's ark, Adam and Eve in the Garden). The book begins with a riveting essay by Chaim Potok, the renowned novelist and Jewish thinker, who asks: "How in the light of all these images are we to understand the second commandment?" A unique assemblage of what Schwartzman has called "hallowed milestones that plot the course of the Jewish diaspora", GravenImages will appeal to everyone interested in Jewish history, symbols, and tradition.