To say I’ve had a love/hate relationship with graphic novels throughout my teaching years would be too dramatic; perhaps it has been more of a love/dislike relationship. A decade ago, it’s safe to say that I disliked graphic novels. I would cringe as my students picked up the Captain Underpants books during independent reading time. But now, just ten years later, my thoughts have shifted; I think I’m having more of a love/like relationship with them, and here’s why.

This entry is dedicated to Gail Geiger, my fourth grade teacher at Wiggin Street Elementary School in Gambier, Ohio.

It wasn’t until my ninth year of teaching that merely opening a book brought tears to my eyes.  At the end of the school year, I routinely put our classroom library books away in a storage cabinet so the Shady Hill summer camp could use the room. 

After reading an article in the New York Times entitled, “The Hack that Doctors Should Take from Popstars and Quarterbacks,” my mind went straight to reading. In fairness, my default is always to connect back to reading; literacy is a priority in my professional and personal life.

I remember it vividly; my sweet middle child cocooned on my lap. He was a kindergartener at the time, and was holding a book I’d given him to try his best to read aloud. I breathed in the aroma of shampoo from his recent bath and cherished our ritual of reading before bed – a habit we began at birth.