LITTLE SILVER – "Get ready to have your minds blown!"

Red Bank Regional High School English teacher Sara Van Ness said this to a class last week before continuing with her lesson, which wasn't one on Shakespeare or Hemingway, but rather comics and superheroes.

Van Ness, who has multiple published works about graphic novels to her credit, has turned her interest in the art form into a popular elective course at the high school.

Red Bank Regional High School teacher Sara Van Ness, who has published books on graphic novels, has turned her interest in the art form into a popular course at the high school.

"Graphic novels combine both visuals and the written word, so the reader is really participating in the meaning making process," Van Ness said. "The kids not only have to interpret the words, but also the pictures and the interaction of the two. So it's sometimes a more challenging reading experience for students, which is not the perception we have of graphic novels of: 'Oh, they're just for kids' or 'Oh, they're easier text to read.'"

The Wall Township native was introduced to graphic novels during her sophomore year at Monmouth University by one of her professors, Stanley Blair.

"He knew that I had interest in art, that I'm a visual artist and that I was doing a portrait business on the side. He said that he thought I'd really like this medium," she said. "So I started reading 'Watchmen' and I was instantly hooked."

Van Ness wrote her final paper for the class on "Watchmen" but continued doing research and writing papers on the subject throughout the rest of her undergraduate career.

"(Blair) always said you don't find the right project, it finds you. And this was that kind of experience," she said. "It just kept ballooning, to the point where I was writing more about 'Watchmen' and reading more graphic novels religiously."

When Van Ness graduated with her undergraduate degree, Blair recommend that she submit her work to publishers as a book proposal and McFarland Publishing not only said it was interested in a book, but that it wanted something even longer than what she had initially pitched.

So instead of jumping right into teaching after getting her undergraduate degree, Van Ness continued on with her Master's at Monmouth University and worked on her first book "Watchmen As Literature: A critical study of the graphic novel." She went on to contribute to another publication, "The Lost Art of Ah Pook is Here: Images from the Graphic Novel" and is preparing to publish a third book.

For the past few years, she has also been sharing her love of graphic novels with her own students at Red Bank Regional.

"During my first year here they were looking for new elective courses and I thought graphic novels might be of interest to some students, especially our really visual learners and our kids who are interested in the arts and reading. Even for kids who have never picked up a graphic novel, it would be something different," she said. "It started running in the 2011/2012 school year and has been running ever since."

Red Bank Regional High School teacher Sara Van Ness, who has published books on graphic novels, has turned her interest in the art form into a popular course at the high school.

Van Ness teaches three sections of the half-year course - one in the fall and two in the spring – with more than 20 students in each class.

"It's an indescribable to see kids really open up to new reading experiences, it's absolutely wonderful," she said. "I'm an English teacher and this is my passion, to see kids reading and writing in general. But then to share my passion for graphic novels with them and to see kids who are not typically readers outside of school picking up books or checking them out of our graphic novel section (at school), it's just really validating as a teacher and also just so rewarding to see kids enjoying reading and finding their passion just like I did."

The lessons on graphic novels help the students with more than just understanding the comics or inspiring them to read, Van Ness said.

"The kids really find that they can apply these skills of visual rhetoric and visual literacy to their every day lives," she said. "They're looking at advertisements or seeing a television show or even when they go to films, to see the interaction between visuals and reading visually. This becomes very powerful in our discussions."

Red Bank Regional senior Connor Kelly said he took the course because he had read comics before, but wanted to have a better understanding of what they were about.

"I would look at the pictures and think they were just drawings," the 17-year-old Shrewsbury resident said. "But in this class I learned that you can look at the lines and stuff to understand the meaning behind the pictures, and tell the emotions, actions and different things going on. It definitely gives you a better appreciation and understanding of what you're reading."

The subject matter isn't all about superheroes, however. The material that senior Chis Arnone said had the most impact on him was when the class read "Mause" a graphic novel dealing with the Holocaust.

"Art Spiegelman wrote about his dad's time in the Holocaust and what the whole experience was like," said Arnone, 18, of Shrewsbury. "It was more in depth and really touched home to be honest with you, because it was more of a learning experience that just reading it. It impacts you in a way that is different than a novel can because you can visually see it."

The students said they are also benefiting from the enthusiasm of their teacher.

"You can tell she really loves what she's doing," said junior Abby Westgate, 17, of Little Silver. "I think that it's really cool when you find that in a teacher, because it's so awesome to know that your teacher is in to what they want you to learn. It makes you want to learn it too."