Programming Spotlight: New Victory Residency + ELA collaboration

This month students at Belmont participated in a New Victory residency program that brought two extraordinary teaching artists from the theatre into our school library for a week.  The gifted teaching artists were Marisol Rosa-Shapiro and Ugo Anyanwu who led the series of workshops at Belmont  which were bookended by two trips to the New Victory theater where we saw productions of both Romeo and Juliet  and The Three Musketeers.  

Our two wonderful teaching artists played theater games with us,  taught us to give compliments and Shakespearean insults,  facilitated the drafting of an original soliloquy, and had us read and recite pieces from the classic texts connected to  the two plays we saw at the New Victory. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass By Mariko Tamaki, Art by Steve Pugh

A new take on an original… Badgirl? Anti-heroine? You’re never sure where Harley Quinn stands on the spectrum of good - bad. Even in this remake of her original story all the pieces are here - Poison Ivy as just Ivy, The Joker and even Bruce makes an appearance. However that is as far as the similarities go.  In this new story about Harley Quinn the author brings social elements to the table touching on the problems the LGBTQ+ community faces, gentrification, the economic divide,  and even climate change. 

All these topics can’t be addressed at a very deep level;  however this graphic novel is a good way to pique the interest of readers while they get their DC Comic fix.  Readers of the books Birds of Prey,  Ms Marvel,  Nubia and Real One should pick this one up. --Claudio Leon

Tamaki, Mariko & Pugh, Steve. Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass. Burbank: DC Comics 2019. Print