Graphic Novels: It’s a Love/Like Relationship

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.

In the past ten years, there has been an explosion of graphic novels published. Even traditional series like Magic Treehouse and the Babysitter’s Club have graphic novel versions now. And so there are better graphic novels now and more of them. Additionally, children born within the past ten years have grown up with more screens, and for better and worse, they are used to more fast-paced and visual formats.  Graphic novels are often more engaging and therefore have the ability to better attract and maintain the attention of young readers. And lastly, my fondness for graphic novels has grown because of my appreciation for their sophisticated vocabulary and the critical thinking and empathy required to understand many plots.

But I should specifiy that this love/like relationship for graphic novels begins for young readers who are reading at about the second grade level or above, and my reasoning for this is two-fold. Many graphic novels have text that is not highly decodable for younger readers. The text is often solely dialogue and does not always include full sentences for the younger readers to sound out and read fluently. For a child learning to read, graphic novels are not the best format. My second reason for recommending graphic novels for second grade and above is based on the content of many of these books. There can be crude language or character scenarios that are not developmentally appropriate or appealing to first graders. Do we really need six-year-olds to be thinking about kissing and crushes?

The Booktrition website has a list for recommended graphic novels for second grade. We are working to build out a third grade list as well but many of the second grade recommendations will also appeal to older kids. And just as my thinking around graphic novels has shifted, so too have our lists. Check them out regularly for more recommendations as our thinking continues to evolve. As of now, we recommend Narwhal and Jelly, Bad Guys, Pizza and Taco, Squidding Around, Dog Man, and (sigh) Captain Underpants. We do not recommend for our youngest readers Big Nate, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or Dork Diaries. There is a time and a place for those series and scenarios, bit it is no second or third grade…