Our graphic novel collection for kids is expanding! If you haven’t had a chance to check them out, this is your invitation.

Graphic novels, also commonly called comics, are books that typically combine words and pictures to tell a story. In fact, research indicates that comics are actually incredibly helpful for emerging readers.

Keep reading to learn more!

Graphic novels have the ability to greatly help young readers. Even graphic novels without any text help train early readers to move their eyes from left to right and create meaning from the images, building an important foundation for their literacy skills. The structure of the comic book panels and the blend of text and image prompt readers to make inferences and analyses–without even realizing they’re doing this! Perhaps most importantly, graphic novels can also be used to encourage reluctant readers to pick up a book.

For more information on the benefit of graphic novels in early reading, you can read this list of 5 reasons from Markham Library in Ontario or this article from teach.com that elaborates more in detail on these points. For even more in-depth studies on this topic, check out Visual Language Lab’s bibliography.

Our juvenile graphic novel collection features books for early readers all the way up to middle grade readers. Whether a reader is just starting out or advanced in their literary comprehension, there is a graphic novel here for them.

For example, here is a page from a graphic novel called Dewdrop by Katie O’Neill that may be a great option for readers new to comics:

For more advanced readers, the graphic novel adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan may be of interest. Below, an excerpt is pictured:

In addition to graphic novels that tell fictional stories, we also have a number of fact-filled graphic novels, including History Smashers and Hazardous Tales, series that teach about historical events through the graphic novel format.

Recently, our juvenile graphic novel section was slightly rearranged. We not only shifted their location but added on several additional shelving unites. With more shelves, the graphic novels are able to spread out more, and we can feature more graphic novels face-out so that they are easier for children to browse.

On top of this, we now have the newest graphic novels at the beginning of the section, so you can peruse all juvenile graphic novels in one place!

We hope you have the opportunity to visit us and explore the many options we have to offer in our juvenile graphic novel section!