We The People!, a graphic novel smart enough to be simple

Prior to reading We The People! I had no idea about the woman who was the first Second Lady and the second First Lady. Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams, the first Vice President and second President of the United States. Abigail Adams is also the narrator in Big Ideas That Changed The World, We The People! The Big Ideas That Changed The World graphic novel series is from Don Brown and absolutely nails the intersection of education and entertainment down to the floor. We The People! gives people a deep, yet entirely accessible, dive into American democracy and how it came to be.

It’s challenging to make anyone, much less school-age children care about the government. If you want a surefire way to stifle holiday parties or to make someone feel unwanted, let’s talk politics. We The People! is not a graphic novel that’s about politics. It’s not out to say that one side is right and the other is wrong. This is a graphic novel deftly walks the thin line of the Venn Diagram of being informative, entertaining, and fun to read, but is also self-aware and not judgmental as to a society’s historical errs. Yeah, that’s a tall order, isn’t it?

We The People! starts out with Abigail Adams introducing herself and a roast beef sandwich. Without any context, that comparison makes no sense. Author Don Brown makes it make sense as he draws parallels to that sandwich, the resources needed to make it happen, the serfdoms that appeared, and the kings that happened in order to rule and tax accordingly. A couple of corners of the world, like India and Africa, didn’t have kings, then around 4,000 BC in Greece, a new form of government appeared.

‘Demokratia’ meant people power or ‘rule by the people’, it gradually became ‘democracy’ to the western countries that adopted its ways. Various religions, kings and queens entered the fray, which meant that each respective belief had its own power structure, as well as the need for money, power, and land so that it could grow. The world and its relationship with democracy really started to change in 1620 with the Mayflower Compact.

That document espoused the idea that a king was equal to a person and was quite revolutionary at the time. However, it also left out half of the population, as well as, the people who were on lands prior to erstwhile discoverers. We The People! does a great job in balancing the facts of what happened, acknowledging how it’s viewed from current times and sprinkling in comedic bits in-between the storytelling.

Much like Brown’s other graphic novels, We The People! is approachable and entertaining, all the while being educational. His books are similar to Nathan Hales’ Hazardous Tales in their unflinching manner in approaching sensitive topics. The biggest difference between the two excellent series is that Brown’s books are simpler and don’t play things for as many laughs. That is not to say that Brown’s books are devoid of jokes or humor. It’s more that the moments of levity are expressed by one-liners or wry illustrations that allow readers to find the absurdities in the story themselves.

We The People! is a graphic novel that’ll be most comfortable with those fifth-grade students that are genuinely curious about history. Those middle school students will get untold amounts of information from the book if they choose to read it. For some odd reason, most middle school students I’ve run across, aside from the manga folks, shy away from graphic novels. To be clear, a majority of the middle school students that I’ve taught recently run away from all books as if they were dipped in Ebola. I wish that weren’t the case. If it were possible for me to lay Tik Tok, Instagram, and kitten video sugar coatings on the book to make it irresistible to those audiences I would.

As it sits, We The People! is a smart, sophisticated graphic novel with a very casual approach, that ages 10 and up will dig. Yes, it’s possible to take the high road, and still be a trek that doesn’t put those upper elementary readers off. The back of the book has a timeline, notes, bibliography, and an index so that those readers who want to go to the deeper end of the research pool can easily do so.

We The People! Big Ideas That Changed The World is by Don Brown and is available on Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams Books.

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