Graphic novels for the reluctant early reader

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Though I never went through a horse phase myself, and so far my kids haven't caught that bug, your horse book recommendations may be the beginning of a new interest in our house. I've requested a few from the library, and the way Eleanor is burning through books these days, I'm pretty sure I'll be requesting more.

Today's reader question comes from Jean, the mom of Eleanor's good friend Casey. During a recent playdate, Jean and I got to talking about our kids' experiences with reading. Casey (also in 2nd grade) is reading some, but it's been a bit of a struggle for her, and she doesn't generally pick up books on her own. Here's Jean:

I think she's resistant to reading on her own for a couple of reasons. 1) You've known Casey since she was 2. She is a very energetic kid. Running around and playing active games is when she is happiest. So she's not a natural bookworm....2) Something you said at your house really resonated with me and it makes sense for Casey: she LOVES when we read to her, which we do every day. And we'll read The Wizard of Oz, or Harry Potter, Magic Treehouse, Jenny and the Cat Club. Books that are (with the exception of maybe the Magic Treehouse books) well beyond her level. She likes a good story, but can't read at the level of a good story yet.

Jean would like to find books that Casey really wants to read:

She loves a good battle, especially when the good guy pulls through at the end. She loves adventures and mystery. She's not a fan of anything with princesses or those kind of stories (unless, perhaps, if the princess is wielding a sword). But she loves magic. And cats, as you know. Anything with cats....We are trying not to force it too much because she'll come into it in her own time. But it would be great to have books around that she may just want to pick up on her own!

Given my kids' recent reading history, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I recommended Casey and Jean check out some graphic novels. Graphic novels have bridged a gap for us, allowing for a variety of different kinds of reading. For both Isabel (who can read very few words, but will pore over pictures for hours on her own) and Eleanor (who reads all the words and doesn't dwell as much on the pictures, but enjoys them), they encourage an independent reading experience, while still making room for reading together.

With this in mind, I scoured our posts and created a new page to add over there on the right: a list of all the graphic novels we've discussed on the blog, by theme and by appropriate age range.

Here are a few I think Casey would love, many with links to previous blogs we've written about them:

Rapunzel's Revenge, by Shannon and Dean Hale. This is the present we've bought for Casey's upcoming birthday: Rapunzel reimagined as an active, braid-whipping heroine. She's awesome and has a sense of humor, and the way the Hales play with the original story is great fun.

Zita the Spacegirl, by Ben Hatke. Zita is a girl from earth whose curiosity and impulsiveness cause first her best friend (a quiet boy named Joseph) and then Zita herself to shoot off to another galaxy. Zita has to find and rescue Joseph, teaming up with a ragtag bunch of aliens and robots. There's a real emotional punch here, too. Sequels Legends of Zita the Spacegirl and The Return of Zita the Spacegirl are also excellent.

Dragon Girl: The Secret Valley, by Jeff Weigel. Alanna, the 11-year-old heroine, finds and protects a nest of baby dragons, dressing up as a dragon herself so that they won't become accustomed to humans and be in later danger. Alanna is another active, strong heroine -- I think Casey would like her. There are clearly more Dragon Girl books coming, but this is the only one out so far.

Ottoline and the Yellow Cat (and other Ottoline books), by Chris Riddell. Though the yellow cat in the first title turns out to be a bit of a villain (sorry, Casey!), these books are quirky and tremendous fun. They contain terrific characters, both human and animal, and each has a not-scary mystery as a central part of the plot. Strictly speaking, I suppose they are only half graphic novel -- many of the pages contain typed text as well as comic book-style illustration.

Guinea Pig, Pet Shop Private Eye, by Colleen AF Venable and Stephanie Yue. All the characters here are animals who live in a pet shop, where Sasspants (the guinea pig of the title) and her sidekick, Hamisher the hamster, solve mild, funny mysteries. In Book #5, Raining Cats and Detectives, the plot involves the disappearance of a large, sleepy cat. Bonus: if Casey likes these, there are a bunch of them.



This week, we discovered Cleopatra in Space, by Mike Maihack. The premise: 15-year-old Cleopatra, who will grow up to be ruler of Egypt, touches a magic tablet and is zapped into the space-age future. It turns out that the future is governed by highly intelligent talking cats (!), who tell her the galaxy is in great danger, and a prophesy says that Cleopatra will come to save them all. In this telling, Cleopatra is uninterested in schoolwork, but highly energetic and a terrific fighter. Like many of the other heroines mentioned here, she is impulsive and stubborn, but ultimately good-hearted. There's not as much emotional depth here as in Zita the Spacegirl or Dragon Girl, and some of the vocabulary in the expository parts feels a little dry/advanced for kids, but overall it's a fun read.

For an early-reader taste of several of the big names in contemporary graphic novels, try Comics Squad: Recess! This is an anthology of eight stories, each centered around something that happens at school recess. It includes a story from Gene Luen Yang (whose American Born Chinese is awesome but won't be appropriate reading for our kids for several years); a story starring Babymouse, by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm; a story starring Lunch Lady, by Jarrett J. Krosoczka; a story by Raina Telgemeier (whose Smile and Drama will be accessible to our kids in just a few years), and more.

Both of the previous books, along with Dragon Girl, were recommended to us by Holly, frequent guest blogger and mom of Eleanor's best friend Ian. Another of Ian's favorites which has become a hit in our house is the odd little series Tiny Titans, by Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani. In it, DC Comics characters appear as elementary school-age kids, with appropriately kid-friendly plots. Perhaps "plots" is too strong a word: most of the stories are 2-4 pages long, short sketches, often with punchlines. I'll confess I'm not captivated by them, but Ian, Eleanor, and Isabel certainly are.

I'll close with recommendations for two long, intense series, and another great web resource.

Everything you say about Casey's love of a good battle, magic, and princesses only if they are sword-wielding makes me think she might love Jeff Smith's Bone books. This is the series that completely obsessed Isabel for several months. They are wild, wonderful books, which our entire family ended up reading several times through. Fair warning: the action, especially in the last couple of books, gets violent, and a few characters you come to care about deeply don't survive (though all the main ones do). Characters include the Bone cousins (strange rounded little white people), the sweet and ultimately fighting awesome secret princess Thorn, her tough cow-racing Gran'ma Ben, and a couple of rat creatures whose attempts to chase Fone Bone down are a fabulous excuse for slapstick. Try the first book: Out from Boneville.

The Amulet series, by Kazu Kibuishi, is another captivating read. Where Bone starts on the mellow side and gets progressively darker, Amulet leads with what I find to be its darkest episode.

In Book One: The Stonekeeper, Emily and Navin's father is killed in a car accident from which Emily and her mother escape. Mom, Emily, and Navin move to an old creepy family house, which turns out to contain all kinds of secrets left by Emily's great-grandfather. The greatest of these is the stone bequeathed to Emily: she becomes a Stonekeeper, possessed of great power but unsure whether the force animating the stone is good or bad. As if their father's death wasn't bad enough, Mom is kidnapped by a scary alien thing, and Emily and Navin set out into another world to rescue her.

The ensuing story (which covers six books so far, and isn't over yet) contains a wide variety of animal and robot characters, elves, both good and evil, and people who seem to be real but turn out to be animated by magic. The visuals are spectacular.

Finally, if this isn't enough for you, check out the graphic novel recommendations at A Mighty Girl (which is a pretty great website for other kinds of books, too).

And to think, back in my day we subsisted on Archie comics! Times have changed for the better.

Love, Annie

Reading graphic novels (alone, together, aloud, silently)

Dear Aunt Debbie,

First, how much do I love that you have a "random facts shelf" in your store? Not for the first time, I'm sorry we don't live closer to DC.

You asked in your last post about how I read graphic novels and comic books aloud. I've recently had a lot of time to practice the skill, because in the last couple of weeks we as a family have gone deep into the Bone series, by Jeff Smith. We have the first four Bone books out from the library right now, and they are in constant rotation, in a variety of ways:

"Reading" alone: When Isabel gets a new graphic novel, she first wants to read it by herself. I've made the mistake of referring to what she's doing as "looking at the book," and have been insistently corrected: "No, I'm READING it." She sits right down and examines every page, really taking her time with it. She starts to figure out what's going on, finds the characters she's most interested in, and determines which parts look scary, so she can prepare herself. (At least, that's how I interpret her poring over the pages. She doesn't talk much about what she's thinking as she looks through the books.)

Reading aloud together: After Isabel is done with her first read-through, she will allow me or Jeff (or sometimes Eleanor) to read the book to her. In my read-alouds, I follow the excellent advice provided by the folks at Toon Books (publishers of our beloved Maya Makes a Mess).

Here's the beginning of their list of top ten tips for reading comics with kids:

1. Find the right book

There are many comics and graphic novels out there, but not all are appropriate for every age. Look for titles made especially for children. It's best to choose a story that fits the child's age and interests.

2. Guide young readers

Keep your fingertip below the character that is speaking, so kids can follow along with the story even if they can't yet read the words.

3. Ham it up!

Think of the comic book story as a play. Don't hesitate to be a ham! Read with expression and intonation. Assign parts or get kids to supply the sound effects--it's a great way to reinforce phonics skills.

In reading aloud, this is what I do. I keep my fingertip at the bottom of each panel, under the character who's speaking, so I don't need to narrate who is saying what. I also try to differentiate my voices for different characters, giving them accents or higher or lower tones. Both Jeff Smith, in the Bone books, and Ben Hatke, in the Zita the Spacegirl books, help out by providing accent hints via phonetic spelling.  Here, from Zita, is an alien named Topper, who you can't help but read in a Cockney accent:

In Bone, the rat creatures hiss in long strings of SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, which Isabel has claimed as hers to read aloud.

Reading alone: As soon as Isabel has put down a Bone book, Eleanor grabs it up, takes it to the corner we've dubbed the "reading nook," and reads it to herself. This is awesome in all ways but one: she has a terrible time keeping major plot points to herself. Lots of spoilers around here.

Reading aloud separately: When Eleanor reads to herself, she likes to stop and read aloud sentences and brief scenes that she finds funny: "Listen to this!" Mostly, these lines are completely out of context, so if she's reading something no one else in the house has read yet, it's difficult to understand what she's talking about. Every once in a while, however, she hits on a scene  that stands alone. She's fallen in love with this exchange between happy-go-lucky Smiley Bone and dour barkeep Lucius in Bone #3: Eyes of the Storm:

After reading it aloud by herself first, she drafted Jeff to play Lucius, and memorized all of Smiley's lines. They have probably recited this scene aloud 25 times in the last two days.

Rereading/reading out of order: Both Eleanor and Isabel pick up graphic novels out of order, paging through them to find and reread their favorite parts. Right now, Eleanor has read all of the first four books to herself, but likes to listen when I read aloud. Isabel has "read" all of them on her own. I've read the first three books aloud to Isabel, and today we started the fourth. Simultaneously, Jeff is rereading Isabel the second book, and Isabel on her own is reading the end of the fourth. Tonight I read to both girls by myself, as Jeff stayed late at work: Isabel requested a funny rat creature scene from the second book, and Eleanor wanted the continuing narrative in the fourth. The text and illustrations are rich, and the plot is growing increasingly complex, so the rereading doesn't feel repetitive. Often, it provides Eleanor and Isabel the opportunity to notice connections and foreshadowing we missed during the first readthrough.

It is such a pleasure to be immersed in this world as a whole family.

Love, Annie

Zita the Spacegirl

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Happy New Year! I'm glad to hear the holiday season at Child's Play wrapped up well for you. Vacation and travel over the last two weeks gave us lots of good reading time, both together and separately -- Eleanor made the case for being allowed to stay up reading in bed with a flashlight on non-school nights. It's interesting seeing the way she reads independently: after we picked up five new books at the library this week, she stayed up and read the first chapter of each, rather than reading any one book start to finish. When one book she's reading gets a little suspenseful, she'll often put it down in favor of another, then come back to it later. All this switching around doesn't seem to hurt her comprehension.

With Isabel, our foray into graphic novels continues. We've probably read Bone ten times by now, in whole or in part. Isabel requests specific episodes and pages, and sits alone with the book when I'm busy with Will, poring over the illustrations. We have the next three volumes on hold at the library.

In the meantime, we've discovered another excellent graphic novel, recommended by our good friend and frequent guest blogger Holly: Zita the Spacegirl, by Ben Hatke. I bought it sight unseen for Isabel, and it's turned out to be a massive hit. (Happily, there are two sequels.)

Zita begins as an Earth girl, running through a field teasing her friend Joseph. They come across a crater made by a meteoroid, and poking out of the meteoroid, a device with a big red button. Against Joseph's fearful objections, Zita presses the button. A portal opens,and metallic tentacles shoot out to capture Joseph, then retreat as the portal closes again. Zita is left, shocked and guilty, on the grass. After gathering herself, she presses the button again, choosing to go into this other world to rescue Joseph.

The other world turns out to be a planet populated by all kinds of alien creatures, large and small. The button (a jumpgate between worlds) is accidentally broken, and Joseph disappears in a spaceship with the tentacled thing, leaving Zita to gather a band of misfits to go after him. Oh, and there's an asteroid on track to destroy the planet in three days.

It's a Wizard of Oz-like journey, a ragtag bunch led by a girl who's landed unexpectedly far from home, and longs to return. There's a giant mouse who communicates by way of a printer hanging around his neck; a not-quite-trustworthy man called Piper who can make and fix all kinds of fabulous devices, and plays a magical pipe to boot; a fierce red orb-shaped robot named One, who doesn't work well with others; a nervous, rattling robot named Randy; a giant alien (not smart, but helpful) named Strong-Strong. Together, they confront the Scriptorians, a group of aliens who believe that Joseph has the power to save them from the asteroid. There's suspense here, danger, some betrayal, but nothing too scary for my brave 4-year-old.

Zita is an appealing character.  She's adventurous, loyal to her friends, and brave enough to keep trying to find Joseph in the face of overwhelming odds. When given the choice, she doesn't want to hurt anyone in her quest -- she stops One from shooting a couple of times -- but she also puts on a massive pair of boots and stomps a pack of robot spiders into smithereens when they attack her and Mouse. She's also quite human. Her reactions throughout feel realistic, including the guilt and fear over what she's caused to happen to Joseph. I'm happy to have her as a role model in this house.

I think Isabel is drawn to the humor as much as to the adventure, in both Zita and Bone. She's started quoting lines verbatim from both books, and two of her most-requested pages focus on interactions with comparatively minor characters engaged in the humor of total exasperation.

In Bone, she loves this interaction between the two rat-creatures who try to catch Fone Bone for dinner:

In Zita, it's these two little guys who live inside and maintain a series of pipes, and come out because they hear Zita's tears plinking down and worry that there's a leak:

Humor, adventure, monsters and aliens -- we're on a roll here.

Love, Annie

Give the people what they want

Dear Aunt Debbie,

In my continuing quest to find books with longer narratives that Isabel will tolerate having read to her, I have two more success stories -- or rather, one semi-success story on my terms, and what appears to be one slam-dunk on her terms.

The semi-success (which is also a HUGE success for Eleanor):
Eleanor has been reading another series by my friend and prolific YA and middle grade author Tui Sutherland, whose book The Menagerie was a hit in our house last summer. The series is called Pet Trouble, and each of the eight books follows a different kid in the same town. Each kid owns a dog who causes some kind of trouble: a golden retriever runs away, a beagle howls incredibly loudly, a poodle can't stop getting dirty.

Each book can stand alone as a story, but there are sightings of the dogs and characters from one book in other books, which makes for fun connection-spotting. Eleanor loves the dialogue, and finds the situations hysterically funny. There's a little bit of suspense, but the trouble of the title doesn't get too serious -- they're fun reads.

Isabel has always loved dogs, so I thought that Pet Trouble might work for her as an early chapter book read-aloud. We've been reading Mud-Puddle Poodle together this week (that's the book Eleanor is reading on her own in the picture above), and it's worked pretty well as a mutual read-aloud. The narrator, Rosie Sanchez, is a girly-girl who wants her new poodle to be clean and ladylike, but Buttons turns out to be obsessed with rolling in the mud, and doesn't want to be dressed up in doll clothes.  Rosie's four older brothers are at first dismayed by the cute little dog, but Buttons wins them over by being smart, energetic, cute, and a magnet for the girls who one of the brothers wants to attract. (Side note: as with The Menagerie, I appreciate here that Tui's main characters are a variety of races. Rosie and her family are Latino, which is both clear throughout and not made into a big deal at all.) Isabel loves the descriptions of Buttons's dog-play behavior:

She ran in big circles on the grass in front of us as we walked. The wind blew a leaf past her nose. With a ferocious yip, she pounced on it, then blinked in surprise when it didn't try to run away. She poked it with her little black nose, then looked up at me like, Did I win? Did I win?

Isabel said to me last night, "When you read it, it's like I can see the pictures in my head!" And I thought, yes! This is the revelation I've been hoping for!

But truth be told, even Buttons's antics don't make Isabel clamor to read a book without pictures.  So now we come to...

The slam-dunk (and one of your recommendations to me over Thanksgiving): 

Jeff Smith's Bone: Out From Boneville. This is an odd, wonderful series focused on the adventures of three small white bone-people: Fone Bone (the sweet hero), and his cousins Phoney Bone (the schemer who's always getting them into trouble) and Smiley Bone (the dim-witted, cheerful one). In Volume 1, the Bones are kicked out of their hometown of Boneville because of Phoney Bone's antics. They become separated in a desert, and Fone Bone finds himself in a valley populated by huge toothy rat-monsters (visually scary with hairy faces and red eyes, but made somewhat comic through their bickering over how they plan to cook Fone Bone for dinner). There are also kind possums, bugs shaped like leaves, a beautiful, kind human girl named Thorn, and her incredibly tough grandmother, Gran'ma Ben, who raises racing cows. And of course a big red dragon with furry ears who is protecting Fone Bone (no one knows why). I've only read the first book (there are nine, plus a couple of prequels and a connected series), but so far it is weird and wonderful. Rereading your description of Jeff Smith's appearance at the National Book Festival a few years ago, I like him even more.

Why on earth haven't I gotten graphic novels for Isabel earlier? I picked up Out From Boneville earlier today at the library, and gave it to Isabel to look at in the car as we drove up to my parents' place. She was immediately excited: "It has pictures on every page! Oh, thank you, Mommy!" By the time we got to the Upper West Side, she had looked through every page, and was already making up names for the characters. She was thrilled to have Jeff read it to her tonight, and warned him ahead of time that she knew there were going to be a few scary parts. She loves monsters. She loves pictures. She loves humor. We have a winner here.

I hope that business at the store is humming, with Christmas right around the corner, and look forward to hearing from you when you get a chance to breathe!

Love, Annie

Bad Manners

Dear Aunt Debbie,

What a joy to see you and Lizzie today, on what would have been Grandpa's 100th birthday!  I loved the combination of family read-alouds: starting the afternoon watching Lizzie read to my girls, and then reading aloud so many of Grandpa's old letters and postcards.  A good day.

I mentioned to you that, of the books you sent Isabel for her birthday, another clear favorite has emerged: Maya Makes a Mess, a Toon Book by Rutu Mordan.  We have a couple of other Toon Books (both, I think, gifts from you) and I've always liked the idea of the series: easy-to-read comics aimed at kids, written and drawn by current cartoonists and graphic novelists.  The series is edited by Francoise Mouly, Covers Editor of the New Yorker.  On some of the early books, her husband Art Speigelman was listed as an advisor, and in looking at the website tonight, I noticed that their daughter Nadja (who I had the pleasure of teaching for a semester in high school) has written some of the titles in the series.  More to check out!

The girls like our other Toon Books: Little Mouse Gets Ready, by Jeff Smith (of the Bone series), and Silly Lilly in What Will I Be Today?, by Agnes Rosensteihl.  And I like them fine, too: active, cartoony drawings, a good introduction to the idea of a story in panels.  They're both a little one-note, however.  Little Mouse spends the panels of his book getting ready to go to the barn, putting on one item of clothing at a time, and talking himself through it.  The punchline at the end comes from his mother: "Why, Little Mouse!  WHAT are you doing?...Mice don't wear clothes!"  Silly Lilly's structure follows the days of the week.  On each day, she chooses a role to dress up in and act out: cook, city planner, musician, etc. They're cute, just a little flat.

Maya Makes a Mess is on a whole different level.  Maya begins her story at home, eating dinner with her parents, who criticize her manners repeatedly in a series of instructions both of my girls can now parrot:

Her father asks, "What if you were eating dinner with the QUEEN?!"  Immediately, the doorbell rings, and it's a royal messenger, inviting Maya to come to dinner with the Queen at once.  She gets on the airplane (which has apparently landed in her backyard), still being admonished: "Put on a dress!"  "No time, no time!" the royal messenger says as he reaches up to turn the propeller manually.

The palace is pleasingly royal, and Maya, seated at the Queen's right hand, is surrounded by adults in fancy dress and faced with an array of disgusting foods (Snail Salad, Stuffed Tomato, Spinach Juice) and a tremendous number of utensils.  She asks for, and receives, pasta with ketchup, which she proceeds to eat with her hands.  Everybody stops and stares, including the Queen.

And so they do: 

Turns out, it does taste better.  The Queen declares that everyone in the kingdom will now eat "as Maya showed us.  But only on holidays."  Maya is redeemed, and everyone is happy.

There's such a sense of loopy fun throughout the whole book.  It feels like a kid's fantasy, rather than an actual invitation to bad behavior.  Both Eleanor and Isabel have taken to quoting it throughout the day, and we have easily read it thirty times in the last week.  I've found Isabel more than once turning the pages and examining each picture by herself on the couch.  Toon into reading, indeed!

Love, Annie

Bone at the book festival

Dear Annie,

I love your reading-at-the-party photo.  Isabel is really focused in.

I wanted to go back to the National Book Festival for one last author.  I went predisposed to like Jeff Smith, author of the
Bone graphic novel series.  He grew up in Columbus, Ohio -- the big city of your grandpa's childhood.  And he grew up reading lots of comics, including
Pogo by Walt Kelly, which you and I both were introduced to in my parents' home (yeah, well, 25 years apart).  While still a kid, Smith created the character Bone, and added Bone's two cousins who look remarkably similar.  In interviews, Smith is very up-front about being influenced by Kelly.

What I really liked about Jeff Smith was that, even though he wrote Bone for adults before it was bought by Scholastic, he treated his kid fans with wonderful respect.  Some children's authors will show up at an event where the audience is more or less split between kids and grown-ups and play to the adults in the crowd.  But Smith really talked to the kids in the audience, without talking down to them.   Smith is 50 years old, and started out saying he grew up in a time when reading comics was not considered to be reading.  He was fascinated by drawing cartoon characters, created Bone early on, and wanted to insert cartoon characters into more serious folklore/legend-style stories.  That's basically what the Bone series is: three clueless Bones who have wandered into a world of mythic good and bad guys (and some fabulous women) and creatures deep in generations-old struggles.

One nine or ten year-old in the audience asked Smith a slightly inarticulate question about why the Bones didn't have swords.  The cartoonist understood the question immediately, talked about how the characters were inserted into this mythic setting.  "They're classic slapstick comedians ... Their job is to get in trouble."  And it's up to other characters -- usually Gran'ma Ben and her granddaughter Thorn -- to wield the swords to get them out of trouble. "The Luke Skywalker part of the story goes to Thorn and Gran'ma."

Smith drew several pictures of the main characters on a big newsprint tablet.  It was remarkable how after just two strokes of his pen, you could see the character.  One girl asked him if he saw the whole picture in his head before he drew, or if he figured it out as he went along.  The latter, he said, and proceeded to demonstrate by drawing Smiley Bone throwing a ball.  Smith threw an imaginary ball four or five times in the 90-second process of doing the drawing.  It was great -- made you feel a part of his creative process.

"I like comedies that forget they're comedies sometimes," he said, which sums up the feel of the Bone books quite nicely.  Good reads, probably ages 9 or 10 and up.

I plan to spend this weekend unpacking boxes and boxes of books in the new store.  I hope all of you are immersed in books too, but less overwhelmingly.

Love,

Deborah