This generation is different. They are not as interested in chasing money or material possessions. I believe that this generation is more interested in seeking social change and a more just society than any generation since those that brought about the civil rights movement and the struggles for human dignity of the 1960s.

I spent almost two years working on this book ['March'] before we ever had a publisher, before we ever had a title. And when you're reading it, and you're writing it, and you're ingesting it, sometimes a single word just comes up over and over and over again. And if you're trying to capture the essence of what it is you're trying to tell, you don't have a whole lot of space.

Most students graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and "I Have a Dream." And that's it!

In so many ways, forces unleashed in response to the Movement have come to dominate our politics, and technology is allowing the same injustices to be seen anew.

I have been a comic book fan nearly all my life. My fascination began as a refuge after my father left because it was within the stories told in comics that I could find heroes who fought for justice and where outcasts or misfits could find purpose and commonality. But over time I have come to love comics as a medium for its ability to tell stories with tremendous depth and emotion that in some ways go beyond what is possible solely with the written word.

It's important to realize that the series actually grows with the reader. "March: Book One" is a great introduction for kids as young as eight or nine years old. But then they grow with the reader. Book Two is bigger, Book Three is even bigger. And they grow more violent and more confrontational.

We don't want to just tell [students] who the people are, we don't want to just tell them what happened - we want to show the process by which it formed itself.