More powerful than the growth of other genres. Faster than other books to hook reluctant reading boys. Able to leap off library and bookstore shelves with amazing speed. Look, there they are on three NYT lists!
GNs, or Graphic Novels. These books composed of consecutively ordered texts, panels and images have brought new excitement to children’s reading. Four recent releases show the range and delights they offer.
GNs is actually a misnomer. They’re not just novel length, there are plenty that please the picture book crowd—books like Ashley Spires’ Binky, the Space Cat (Kids Can Press, ages 6-9). Our hero, a housecat named Binky, rips open an envelope and discovers he’s qualified for FURST (Felines of the Universe Ready for Space Travel). Binky, a black and white tuxedo with perked ears that fit perfectly into a kitty space helmet, now “has a purpose.” Readers old enough to follow frames will giggle at the fanatasies of an inside cat who protects his humans from aliens ( flying bugs), worries about “outer space” (“Binky hasn’t ever been outside”) and readies himself for in the “zero-gravity chamber” (clothes dryer). Humor happens when the familiar collides with Binky’s bizarre perspective. Hopefully more of Binky’s adventures will lead to a new series.
GNs have earned a well-deserved reputation for engaging elusive male reluctant reader, but there are plenty of GNs to please girls. This generation of visual children welcomes a scarcity of words and plentitude of pictures. GNs may be easy on the eye, but they’re not for lazy readers. Librarian Robin Brenner who reviews graphic novels on her sites No Flying, No Tights writes “…the reader must make the connections between the images and the text and create the links between each panel and the page as a whole.”
Certainly this is true of Matt Phelan’s The Storm in the Barn (Candlewick, ages 9 and up). The hero is eleven-year-old Jack whose Kansas farming family is victimized by the Dust Storms of 1937. Through a series of frames we watch Jack’s many emotions. He worries about his older sister bedridden with a cough and his energetic wandering younger sister. We note his sad-eyed response when his troubled father shoos him away. Fear fills his face and postures as Jack fends off bullies, overhears his parents’ concern that he has “dust dementia”. His fears turn to panic when he discovers the monstrous Water King hiding in a deserted barn. This GN is loaded with references to Frank Baum’s stories and nods to Jack Tales featuring a brave young hero. Phelan uses color to deepen meaning. Monochromatic frames turn vivid as Jack’s mother tells of a happy past. And perhaps the most potent frame in the whole book is a startling patch of redness. It appears amidst a series of images picturing men and boys whose moods change from determined to sickened as they club invading jackrabbits during a “rabbit drive”. The red frame goes beyond words and images to capture the horror of the event.
GNs don’t meet their own definition for they not constrained by their fiction label. They are a lawless genre with loads of room for innovation. James Sturm, Andrew Arnold and Alexis Frederick-Frosts take full advantage in their Adventures in Cartooning (First Second, ages 8-11). The book crosses genres within its own covers by merging a how-to cartooning book with an adventurous fairy tale. Meet our two heroes: a knight on a mission to rescue a princess from a sweet-loving dragon and an elf who wants to teach about cartooning. Amazingly both quests succeed in a seamless whole. Within the context of the humor-laden tale, the author-illustrators give specific graphic examples of the significance of panels, sequenced word balloons and the strength of thought balloons.
GNs are for all ages, a fact easily observable in David Small’s new memoir Stitches (W.W. Norton, ages 14 and up). The freedom of 324 pages and meld of picture and word with memoir, recount Small’s first fifteen years of life in 1950’s Detroit. Without blame, his frames blend the realities of his life and the fantasies he created to survive. Young Small (pictured in a striped shirt) draws and dreams to deal with his missing workaholic radiologist father and his mother who retreats in “silent furious withdrawls”. He pictures his adventurous spirit in a scene where he escapes the boredom of his father’s hospital by exploring, only to have images of bottled fetuses infuse his dreams. Small illustrates the nuance of relationships when he visits his grandparents. His naive curiosity contrasts with his grandmother’s ignorant cruelty. Meanwhile his grandfather, a funeral home “greeter”, offers him a welcoming world view. Word and images bear witness to Small’s innocent rebellion at adult unkindness, his fourteen-year-old fears facing two cancer operations, anger at discovering his parents hid the truth behind the surgeries, and his voiceless recovery and the alarming visions that register his terror. Finally we see potential for a happy future as Small whimsically depicts his straight-talking psychiatrist as the watch-toting White Rabbit. Adults who haven’t picked up a comic book in decades will marvel as Small’s poignant memoir reveals the possibilities of the medium and how it’s grown up.
Karin Michel, GN fan and Chapel Hill Public Library’s Children’s Librarian recommends these books and series: