Why graphic novels work for middle school history
Middle schoolers are ready for big questions about fairness, identity and belonging, but a textbook chapter on the Revolutionary War can feel far away from their lives. Graphic novels close that gap. Pictures and words work together, so readers follow the action, read characters' emotions and remember what they learned. Graphic novels also help reluctant and struggling readers, while giving strong readers plenty to analyze.
Marblehead was written for readers ages 10–14 and the teachers, parents and siblings who read alongside them. Here are practical ways to use it in a classroom, library or homeschool.
1. Start with the characters' questions
Each of the book's three main characters carries a key theme:
• Boston Black, enslaved valet to Colonel John Glover, asks: What is freedom?
• Isaac Morgan, son of a white father and a Natick mother, asks: What is identity?
• John Rhodes Russell, a white private from a prominent family, asks: What is legacy?
Try this: Before reading, have students write a short response to all three questions. After finishing the book, they revisit their answers and explain how a character changed their thinking.
2. Pair the story with real history
Marblehead is a work of historical fiction based on the real 14th Continental Regiment, John Glover's "amphibious regiment" of fishermen and sailors from Marblehead, Massachusetts. That makes it easy to pair with primary and secondary sources.
Try this: Assign small groups one real event from 1776 to research and compare with the book:
• The evacuation of Brooklyn (August 29, 1776)
• The Battle of Pell's Point (October 18, 1776)
• The crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton (December 25–26, 1776)
Good starting points include the American Battlefield Trust's biography of John Glover and Washington Crossing Historic Park. Our post Who Were the Marbleheaders? has more background.
Then ask: What did the author and artists keep accurate? What did they imagine? Why might they make those choices?
3. Meet a real Marblehead soldier
The National Park Service's profile of Caesar Glover tells the true story of a man kidnapped from Africa as a child, enslaved in Marblehead, and still enslaved when he enlisted in 1775. He rowed in the Delaware crossing and later gained his freedom.
Try this: Students create a timeline of Caesar Glover's life, then write a journal entry in his voice on the night of the crossing. Compare his experience with Boston Black's in the book.
4. Read the art closely
Graphic novels build visual literacy. Panels, angles, color and the space between panels all carry meaning.
Try this:
• Choose one page and ask students to describe what happens between two panels.
• Discuss how color and lighting shift the mood in battle scenes compared with camp scenes.
• Have students compare a crossing scene from Marblehead with Emanuel Leutze's 1851 painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Who appears in each boat? What does each artist want us to feel? (See our post on the deeper meaning of the painting.)
5. Create their own panels
Try this: Students storyboard a three- to six-panel comic of a moment from 1776 that isn't in the book, such as a family in Marblehead waiting for news or a soldier writing home. They must include one fact from a historical source and cite it.
6. Hold a respectful discussion about hard history
Marblehead doesn't avoid difficult truths. Some of the men who fought for American liberty were not free themselves. Help students hold two ideas at once: the Founders' ideals were real and powerful, and they weren't yet extended to everyone.
Discussion questions:
• Why would an enslaved man choose to fight in the Revolution?
• What did "liberty" mean to different people in 1776?
• How did the words of the Declaration of Independence eventually help expand freedom?
• Why do you think Glover's regiment, made up of men from different backgrounds, worked so well together?
7. Connect to America's 250th
July 4, 2026 marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and December 2026 marks 250 years since the crossing of the Delaware. Use Marblehead as an anchor text for a school-wide or library program, a history night or a reading challenge. Students can also learn about the National Liberty Memorial, a planned memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring the Black soldiers, sailors and patriots of the Revolution.
Curriculum connections
• Social studies: the American Revolution, the founding era, perspectives on liberty and slavery, Native communities in colonial New England
• English language arts: theme, character development, point of view, comparing fiction with nonfiction
• Visual arts: sequential art, composition and historical painting
Bring Marblehead to your students
Librarians and educators can contact us for ordering information, bulk pricing, author and illustrator visits and programming ideas. Families can pre-order Marblehead today.
