The First Americans

by Bentley Boyd

Chester the Crab meets the first people to live in North America. He traces the cultures of the Anasazi and Pueblo in the Southwest, the Nootka and Kwakiutl in the Northwest, the Plains Indians in the Midwest, the Mound Builders in the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys and the Iroquois in the East - and their clash with European settlers and explorers! And he tells you who Pocahontas really married. This funny, colorful graphic novel will excite reluctant readers, prepare students for standardized tests in history and help homeschooling parents!

Genres: History

24 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2003

About the author

There was no class at Harvard University to learn how to draw a talking crab on Patrick Henry’s shoulder.

But I’ve strung together ideas and curiosity and a little bit of talent for 30 years now and have used comix to teach several generations of young people about American history and civics.

When I was a kid desperate to buy a comic book — ANY comic I could find — I didn’t think we’d ever really get to live in a science fiction world with a computer in every pocket and dedicated comic book stories packed with a rainbow of books of all shapes and sizes. I did dream, though. I devoured the daily newspaper and its comix before I delivered the paper every morning. I read biographies all summer long. I wrote fiction for myself and nonfiction for the school newspapers. I drew my own characters in my own comix (and quickly realized I don’t have the patience for drawing complicated city skylines — so a career with Batman was out). My early career centered on being a political cartoonist for newspapers. An opportunity in 1995 allowed me to transform that work into Chester the Crab and my dream of graphic storytelling.