Cartooning with Kids

I’m back working at the art summer camp and digging deep into cartoons and comics with 7 to 13-year-olds. 

I connected with the lady who teaches the newspaper class and convinced her to do a caption contest. She picked out a drawing one of my students did and published it in the camp newspaper. It’s a dog holding a leash in its mouth and a human angrily saying something to the dog. 

Any of the campers could submit caption ideas. The newspaper class narrowed the submissions down to the top seven and then my comics classes voted on the winner: “No. The fire-hydrants are traumatized enough.” Not bad!

The second and third place runners up were decent too.

2nd place: “Walking is a privilege.” I like this one because it seemed like something a parent might say to a kid when they’re whining or begging for something.

3rd place: “I told you, just because you can turn into a dog doesn’t mean I’ll walk you, skinwalker.” I like this one because it came at it from a totally unexpected direction. No one else submitted anything similar. A very unique and original take on the cartoon.

In my class we learned about how to write good captions. We did an exercise where I printed out some New Yorker cartoons without the captions. The students then passed them around, each taking a turn coming up with captions for each drawing. Some were pretty good!