articles

What do Comic Books Have to do with Children’s Book Week?

By Charlou L. - Johnson County Library April 23, 2015
This year, Free Comic Book Day is kicking off Children’s Book Week on May 2nd. More than just a way to “trick” nonreaders into reading, comic books and graphic novels are just a different format used to tell a story. The reader must make connections between the words and the pictures to understand the story.  So, what’s the difference between a comic and a graphic novel? The length and the binding - comic books are usually about 30 pages long and graphic novels can be much longer.

If you haven't taken a look at a graphic novel, try this one that just arrived, Lost in NYC, by Nadja Spiegelman and Sergio Garcia Sanchez. It is about a school field trip to the Empire State Building. It's about Pablo, the new kid, whose mom sneaks his teddy bear into his backpack. It's about making new friends. It's a lesson about the New York City subway system. And all of those stories are told through conversations in word balloons and in the illustrations. The pages are packed with art, just like New York is packed with people doing everyday things like checking their phones and listening to music. The city is shown in layers as the class goes down into the subway. Many of the pages use diagonal lines to show movement and height. There are also maps and photos tucked in with the drawings. Read about the author and illustrator at the end and you will find out the illustrator put himself in almost every scene. 

Graphic Novels are showing up on more and more awards lists. El Deafo, a memoir by CeCe Bell, was a winner of a Newbery Honor Medal  this year.  She tells her story as a little rabbit who goes to school with a very clunky hearing aid and uses changes in the word balloons to convey her advancing deafness.

Graphic novels are often associated with humor, so how about a little humor with your history. Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales tell the true life stories of a Revolutionary War spy, the ironclad steam warships of the Civil War, the first mechanized global war (WWI), and, here’s some of the humor, an ill-fated journey
from Illinois to California in Donner Dinner Party.

For more ideas, take a look at this list and remember, it’s free comic book day every day at your neighbor library.