Shock City

by Aaron Alexovich

In Aaron Alexovich’s graphic novel Shock City, a timid boy’s encounter with an exuberant monster girl leads to an unlikely friendship and an adventure in a strange, run-down city. Energetic cartooning, spooky surprises, and humor support a story about courage, connection, and looking beyond frightening appearances.

Big Idea

Courage can begin with getting to know someone who seems different or frightening. Graphic storytellers shape that experience by controlling how quickly readers move through images, dialogue, action, and moments of quiet.

Discussion Questions

1.How does the friendship between the boy and the monster girl challenge their first impressions of each other? Which words or pictures support your thinking?
2.When does the boy act courageously even though he is still afraid? How is that different from being fearless?
3.How does Shock City itself influence the mood of the story? Where do its surroundings seem frightening, funny, or unexpectedly welcoming?
4.Choose a moment that feels both spooky and funny. How do the pictures and words work together to create those different feelings?
5.Where did you read quickly, and where did you stop to look closely? What choices by Alexovich might have influenced your reading speed?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 Copies of Shock City, paper or six-panel comic templates, pencils, erasers, crayons or colored pencils, and a board or document camera.

Learning Goals

Explain how words and illustrations work together to develop character, mood, and meaning in a graphic novel.
Identify at least two techniques that influence pacing, such as panel sequence, dialogue length, repeated images, or silent reactions.
Create two coherent comic sequences that present the same event at different speeds.
Use textual and visual evidence to discuss courage, friendship, and first impressions.
Revise a comic after receiving feedback about its pacing and emotional effect.

Activity Steps

1.Notice and discuss, 7 minutes: Read a short, teacher-selected encounter from Shock City. Identify what readers learn from dialogue, facial expressions, body language, and the setting.
2.Map the event, 5 minutes: Together, reduce the encounter to three beats: expectation, meeting, and changed understanding. Discuss which beat Alexovich stretches or compresses.
3.Plan a new encounter, 5 minutes: Students invent a nervous visitor and a friendly but alarming-looking character. They write one sentence describing the misunderstanding and one describing its resolution.
4.Draw two versions, 15 minutes: Students tell their encounter in two six-panel comics. In the slower version, they use intermediate actions, reaction shots, or silence; in the faster version, they omit intermediate actions and move directly between key beats.
5.Partner-read and revise, 8 minutes: Partners read both versions without being told which should feel faster. They identify the choices that affected their reading and suggest one revision.
6.Reflect, 5 minutes: Students share a revised panel and complete the statement, 'I changed the pace by ___ so the reader would feel ___.' Connect their choices to an example from Shock City.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS.RL.3.7 — Explain how aspects of illustrations contribute to a story’s meaning, including mood, character, and setting.
ELA: CCSS.RL.5.7 — Analyze how visual elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text.
ELA: CCSS.W.3.3b and W.5.3b — Use dialogue, descriptions, and narrative techniques to develop events and character responses; grade 5 explicitly includes pacing.
ELA: CCSS.SL.3.1–SL.7.1 — Participate effectively in collaborative discussions, using the grade-appropriate expectations for preparation, evidence, and response.
SEL and visual arts: Practice social awareness by examining first impressions, and communicate narrative meaning through sequential images.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Shock City offers an inviting way to study writing because readers can see storytelling time taking shape on the page. Alexovich’s energetic cartooning brings together a timid boy, an exuberant monster girl, and a spooky urban world. Their contrasting reactions give students a useful question to investigate: how can the same encounter feel frightening to one character and exciting to another? Dialogue, expressions, panel sequences, and visual surprises all help construct that experience. In a Pace-Write-Read study, students first notice how a passage guides their attention, then try a comparable technique in their own work, and finally read the result aloud or exchange it with a partner. A silent reaction may invite readers to linger; a sequence of actions may create momentum; a sudden change in expression may turn fear into comedy. These are effects to test rather than fixed rules: a large panel can encourage lingering, but it can also deliver an immediate shock. For grades 3–4, emphasize clear event sequences, expressive drawings, and the difference between a quick action and a stretched-out moment. For grades 5–7, add analysis of omitted actions, viewpoint, page layout, and the relationship between suspense and humor. Across grades, ask students to explain not only what Alexovich does, but what that choice makes the reader anticipate, notice, or feel.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare an energetic encounter with a quieter exchange between the boy and the monster girl. Ask students to identify the particular panels, words, or visual details that make each passage feel fast or slow.
2. Plot	Map how the central friendship draws the boy further into Shock City’s adventure. Separate major turning points from smaller reactions, then discuss why both are needed.
3. Prosody	Read a short dialogue exchange aloud, using the characters’ expressions and lettering as clues to stress, volume, and pauses. Compare a hesitant delivery with an exuberant one.
4. Word	Choose a brief speech balloon from a spooky or comic encounter and test a different verb or exclamation. Discuss how even one word can change urgency, attitude, or the timing of a joke.
5. Concept	Explore the story’s central contrast: a frightening-looking monster can become a friend. Have students explain how that premise creates opportunities for both suspense and humor.
6. Voice & Worldview	Contrast the boy’s cautious responses with the monster girl’s exuberance. Discuss how their different expectations influence what each notices and how each reacts.
7. Point of View	Distinguish the character a passage follows from the angle shown in an individual panel. Ask how readers’ feelings might change if an encounter emphasized the monster girl’s reactions rather than the boy’s.
8. Setting & Place	Study the buildings, spaces, and atmosphere of Shock City. Ask how the setting makes a character’s movement through the city feel risky, intriguing, or comic.
9. Original Characters	Examine how Alexovich distinguishes the central pair through silhouette, posture, expression, and behavior. Students can design contrasting characters whose reactions generate story without lengthy explanations.
10. Dialogue	Compare what a character says with what the accompanying face or body suggests. Try shortening a balloon and decide whether the drawing can communicate the missing information.
11. Details	Choose a panel of Shock City and identify a small detail that contributes to atmosphere or character. Discuss whether it delivers essential information immediately or rewards a second look.
12. Descriptions	Translate one city panel into a short prose description, then compare how the two forms deliver information. Notice that a drawing can present several descriptive details at once, though readers still choose where to look.
13. Firsts	Study the first appearance of a central character or an unfamiliar location. Identify what Alexovich reveals immediately and what remains unknown, then discuss how those choices establish expectations.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Find a moment when a strong expression, close view, or visible action pulls attention toward the characters. Ask what students understand before they finish reading the words.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Compare an encounter developed across several panels with a transition that moves the story onward more quickly. Explain how selecting which events to dramatize controls the importance and duration readers assign to them.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Track what the boy fears, what readers expect, and what actually happens in a selected encounter. Discuss how a surprising friendly or comic response can release tension.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check a selected sequence for a shift in time or an unresolved stopping point rather than assuming all three devices appear. If a device is absent, students can propose an alternative version and explain how it would change the flow.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine what readers know just before an actual page turn and what they discover afterward. Consider whether the turn delays a reveal, changes location, or gives a reaction extra emphasis.
19. Pace & Creativity	Retell one Shock City moment in three panels and then six. Compare how adding intermediate actions or reactions changes the experience without necessarily changing the event.
20. Play	Explore how the book makes room for playful responses within a spooky world. Invite students to invent a harmless misunderstanding that could shift an imagined encounter from alarming to funny.
21. Performance	Perform a brief exchange as a tableau sequence, freezing at each panel boundary. Use facial expressions, gesture, and pauses to show how much storytelling happens outside the dialogue.
22. Personality	Identify repeated behavioral evidence of the boy’s caution and the monster girl’s exuberance. Discuss how contrasting personalities can create movement even when characters are simply talking.
23. Humor	Find a comic moment and identify its setup, expectation, and payoff. Test whether removing the reaction panel or changing its placement weakens the joke.
24. Pause	Locate a silent panel or a moment when a character’s reaction deserves close attention. Ask what emotional information would disappear if readers rushed past it.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Look for sound effects, repeated sounds, or visually exaggerated language in the selected pages. Where present, discuss their sonic effect without treating the graphic novel as a verse narrative.
26. Repetition	Look for repeated expressions, actions, words, or compositions across an encounter. Ask whether repetition builds anticipation, establishes a pattern, or makes a later change more noticeable.
27. Rhythm	Tap a beat for each panel in a short sequence, then vary the beat to reflect dialogue and action. Discuss why equal-sized panels do not always take equal amounts of reading time.
28. Punctuation	Examine how punctuation works with lettering and expressions in the characters’ speech. Read a balloon with different punctuation and explain how the character’s apparent confidence or urgency changes.
29. Questions	List the questions readers have as the boy encounters the monster girl and explores Shock City. Track which questions receive quick answers and which encourage continued reading.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare the central characters’ responses to the same situation, using visual and verbal evidence. Connect their differences to the story’s exploration of fear, friendship, and first impressions.
31. Objects	Select an object actually visible in a chosen scene and trace how characters interact with it. Ask whether it establishes setting, supports action, attracts attention, or contributes to a joke.
32. Threes	Test a three-beat reading of an encounter: expectation, escalation, and reveal. Treat this as an analytical tool, not a claim that every sequence in Shock City follows a rule of three.
33. Lists	Create a brief inventory of what readers notice in a detailed Shock City panel. Compare the experience of reading those details as a written list with discovering them in the illustration.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Study panel gutters and relatively open areas within the art, including spaces that are not literally white. Discuss how separation or emptiness can isolate a reaction, clarify action, or suggest a pause.
35. Art & Graphics	Analyze how Alexovich’s expressive cartooning communicates fear, enthusiasm, and surprise. Ask students to support interpretations with specific choices in line, shape, composition, and expression.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Turn close reading into a classroom hunt for an expressive reaction, a suspenseful stopping point, and a mood-setting detail. This is a teaching adaptation, not a claim that the book contains game mechanics.
37. Placement	Trace the reading path through one page, noting balloon order, character positions, and focal points. Ask how placement helps readers encounter a setup before its payoff.
38. Form	Rewrite a brief wordless or visually driven passage as prose. Compare what must be stated explicitly in prose with what Shock City communicates through sequential pictures.
39. Dummy	Make a folded-paper mock-up of an original encounter inspired by the central friendship. Move the reveal between pages and test how the physical page turn changes anticipation.
40. Passion	Invite students to identify a scene whose energy or emotional stakes they find compelling, then support that response with craft evidence. Use the discussion to help them choose a feeling they genuinely want their own comics to convey.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task — A Scare Becomes a Greeting. Minutes 0–3: Revisit a teacher-selected early encounter between the boy and the monster girl in Shock City. Identify how the boy’s apprehension and the girl’s exuberance create contrasting expectations. Minutes 3–5: Plan an original, noncanonical four-panel encounter featuring the pair: the boy notices something alarming, anticipates danger, discovers a friendly intention, and reacts. Minutes 5–12: Draw the sequence, using at least one silent reaction panel and keeping dialogue brief. Simple figures are sufficient; prioritize clear expressions and actions. Minutes 12–15: Revise the timing by splitting one moment into two panels or combining two panels into one; keep the outcome unchanged. Minutes 15–18: Exchange versions with a partner, who identifies where anticipation builds and where it releases. Minutes 18–20: Share one revision and complete an exit ticket: 'My panel choice changed the pace by ___ and helped the reader feel ___.'

Classroom Activities

One Encounter, Two Speeds

Students create two comic versions of an imagined encounter inspired by Shock City: a nervous visitor meets an apparently frightening character who does something friendly. One version stretches the anticipation; the other moves rapidly toward the surprise. Students compare how panel choices, dialogue, expressions, and pauses change the reader’s feelings while keeping the same events.

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