Tom Willans – Author, illustrator, SEND teacher
Hello, my name is Tom. I am an author, illustrator and Special Needs teacher. For almost twenty years, I have had the privilege of working with students aged from five to twenty-five in every imaginable environment. My whole life is about word and image.
I wrote and illustrated a graphic novel last year called When I Was Seven for Collins Big Cat. This is a book about one year in my life where there was a lot of change.
But the most seismic change of all that year was that I started to read.
Really read …
When I was seven, I started reading for me.
Not books that were read to me by teachers or adults in my family, but whatever I could find that caught my eye.
Growing up, there were stacks of books like chimneys in every room. This was when I discovered film, music and reading, all kinds of different things - comic books, history books, biographies, sports annuals, gross insects and bugs magazines, the Beano comic every week. A mishmash of story styles and visuals from joyous slapstick to high art in dusty old reference books. I absorbed it all like a seven-year-old sponge.
I didn’t know it then, but that was to be the best year of my artistic life. Through reading, I was learning how to tell a story.
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When I was seven, my all-time hero was an American film star that played a boxer and a soldier. He was a silver screen hero, but he didn’t wear a cape or tights. This hero was like me …
I recognised the sadness in his eyes. I was sad, too!
I had developed a speech impediment, a stutter, that made it hard to speak at school.
My hero didn’t stutter, but spoke in a low mumble like a whale in the depths. My hero had a speech impediment, like me!
My hero had droopy eyes – like mine!
In a fanzine which I came across at my local library, I read that my screen hero was actually a writer. He had created his own story because he couldn’t get an acting job. My hero had made up his own characters and crafted a magnificent narrative that he believed in, and it played out just as he had written it – like a modern fairytale set in a city.
The seven-year-old me wondered: Could I do that, too? Could I become a writer?
But where on earth to start?
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When I was seven, I found the book that changed my life: How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.
This book changed the way I saw and read everything. The view from above, the view from below, everything a writer needs to consider in telling a story in an exaggerated way that is pure poetry on a page.
Decades later, I give all of my students a copy of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way at the end of our time working together, partly from a nostalgic perspective, but also because this book remains the holy grail for all prospective writers and readers and all appreciators of the lowest to the highest of written and visual art forms.
Suddenly, by experimenting with the ideas from this book, my ideas were having ideas, so I didn’t stop reading, writing, reading, writing, reading, drawing, and creating new storylines. A world of endless possibilities presented itself through reading.
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Today, when planning lessons or trying out new book ideas, words come first.
Sometimes, a phrase overheard on the bus on the way to school can lead to an idea. Or maybe a newspaper headline will nudge a fresh fragment of an idea into my mind. As soon as I get an idea, I write it down on a scrap of paper and when I empty my pockets later in the evening, that scribbled word will jog my memory.
Just like in When I Was Seven, these words lead to images as I plan out the storyboard panels in rough pencil sketches or collage.
If I can’t get an idea inspired by the environment or people chatting away in real life, I go back to my old trusty trick: Newspaper Consequence.
- Buy a newspaper or magazine. You will need a glue stick, too.
- Tear out random words and headlines that catch your eye.
- Stick them onto a bit of paper. Don’t worry if the sentences are a bit random, this is all part of the process!
- When the sheet is full of inspiring words, we move onto the STORYBOARD stage…
- Sketch or collage the images that work best with your new words. The story must flow!
- Most importantly – exaggerate.
I use Newspaper Consequence constantly in lessons and during periods of writing. It always works – give it a try, I promise you’ll be amazed at the outcome.
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Reading really has changed my life. And in my teaching work over the last twenty years, I have tried to pass this love of words and reading for pleasure on to my brilliant students.
In countless lessons, I have seen reading open up lines of communication in people who, like me, had difficulty expressing themselves clearly. People who felt useless and without a voice worth hearing or expressing. Until they let words into their life.
Each lesson essentially boils down to this…
Art is life. Life is Art. Every aspect of human communication is expressed through artistic means, through word and image.
At the dawn of human society, narratives of hunting rituals were daubed onto cave walls.
Before language was written down, human beings made images.
Later, the alphabets that enabled us to write and record (and misuse throughout history) were born from Art (probably to explain a hunting-gathering picture sequence to a non-creative caveman colleague who was puzzled or didn’t get modern art.)
So, time to wrap things up with a neat little scarlet bow.
In adulthood, Reading for Pleasure can easily become a way of life. A stolen ten minutes during the rush hour commute on the train, or a glance at the headlines over somebody’s shoulder.
Encouraging students to read for pleasure, however, can be tricky. Reading takes effort! But with a hefty dose of Newspaper Consequence and other creative games that promote communication, something life-affirming can occur.
On the surface, students will be staggered at the originality of their work. This heady feeling of growing confidence and achievement is contagious – I want more! – but also, something as valuable as treasure is happening alongside.
Reading for Pleasure enables students to become independent thinkers who question what they see and are told. And in a world where what we see and hear can be increasingly unreliable, these are invaluable tools with which students can navigate this life.