After releasing a variety of graphic works based on licensed bestselling business and motivational titles, the Round Table Companies is turning to the educational market and releasing The Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation, adapted by Nadja Baer and illustrated by Nathan Lueth. The full-color work includes the full text of the U.S. Constitution, brought to life by illustrations that examine its creation. The book will be released in March in print for $12.99 and in all digital formats for $6.99.
The Round Table Companies are best known for its line of Round Table Comics, comics adaptations of bestselling business titles like Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, or bestelling motivational titles like Robert Renteria’s Mi Barrio (based on From the Barrio to the Board Room). Since 2010 the company has published a line of nonfiction graphic adaptations of books by Tom Hopkins, Larry Winget and others.
David Cohen, Round Table Companies v-p and chief strategist, said “education has always been in our plans but we haven’t been able to do it, so we jumped on the chance to do this book in an election year.” Round Table Companies president Corey Blake said the company surveys properties in the public domain that they can convert into educational publications, “the Constitution jumped out. We believe we can make it much more entertaining and we think schools will be very interested. Every year a million kids have to study the constitution.” RTC print runs range from 5,000 to 10,000 copies.
RTC is working with Dr. Katie Monnin, assistant professor of literacy at the University of North Florida, to produce a curriculum guide to supplement the comic book in the class. The curriculum guide will also be released in March and its free of charge. “We developed the free curriculum to work together with the comic book to help teachers get students more interested in the framework of our government,” she said. “the comic is fun and easy to read, but students will be able to further comprehend the concepts with the supplemental material.”
The work was created by Nadja Baer, who created an original narrative outlining the creation of the Constitution and historic roles of each the founding fathers, and Nathan Lueth, who have both worked on previous Round Table Comic projects. In addition the book will be released in all digital formats through Graphicly, Amazon.com, Facebook, Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet. And Cohen said that RTC, which has licensed its app technology from Hachette, will release its own iPad app in about month.
