Text Set: Middle Grade Graphic Novels

frankisibberson.com. Texts for this Text Set have been posted daily on Instagram. Follow @TextSets there to get daily updates!

This week's Text Set is a set of Middle Grade graphic novels. I try to keep up with my middle grade graphic novel reading because so often I am working with a reader who loves graphic novels.  And graphic novels are often so important to a reader's growth--these are the books that help many readers fall in love with reading.  The books I'll share are perfect for independent reading and they'd also each make for a  fabulous middle grade read aloud if projected on the screen. Each graphic novel in this Text Set features strong characters. Enjoy! 

Twins by Varian Johnson will have wide appeal for readers. It is realistic fiction and a great story of sisters.  The two twins in this book are figuring out how to have their own identities as they grow up.  I love that this book can also introduce readers to middle grade author, Varian Johnson. Or it can support readers of Varian Johnson who want to try a graphic novel!  

We don't see many books about the impact allergies have on children. This brand new graphic novel Allergic by Megan Wagner Lloyd does a great job of showing that and of telling the story of a child severely allergic to dogs and the grief that this causes. Many kids will see themselves in this book. 

Snapdragon by Kat Leyh is a story with a bit of witchcraft and creepiness! A fun story for readers of fantasy but also for readers who love a good character. Snapdragon and her friend Lu are characters with depth and the various storylines offer some complexity.  Some characters are queer and trans, and that is not the focus of the story. It is just a part of who they are within a story about bravery, friendship and more.  I especially appreciated the adult characters in this story and their relationships with the children.

Witches of Brooklyn by Sophie Escabasse is another fun fantasy featuring witches.  (This is the first in a series.) After being forced to move in with an aunt she's never met, Effie grows to love her aunt and her partner.  She also discovers that they are not actually herbalists (as they claim) but they are witches.  This graphic novel has just the right amount of magic and fun mixed in with themes of family and growing up.  In an interview, the author talked about the aunts and this is what she says, "I also wanted to show old people that are really fun to hang out with. Old people that anyone would love to have as friends and/or family. Tired of the “youth or nothing” philosophy. I like the age gap between my characters. It was important for me to show different generations sharing and living things together. " I loved this book even more when I read this! You can read the full interview here.

Measuring Up by Lily LaMotte is the story of Cici who has just moved to the United States from Taiwan.  Although she is settling in, she misses her grandmother terribly and tries to figure out how to have her grandmother visit for her upcoming birthday. She thinks she can afford the trip if she wins the cooking contest! However it isn't as easy as it seems. Cici learns so much in the process!

This week's books were linked at Cover to Cover Children's Bookstore. If you are looking for a fabulous children's bookstore to support, this is an amazing one. We are lucky to have them in Central Ohio!

You can find a downloadable pdf of this list at frankisibberson.com. 

Good Talk by Mira Jacob

Over the years, we've written about/reviewed lots of graphic novels here at A Year of Reading. When the Cybils were brand new, I chose to judge graphic novels so that I could learn more about the format. Perhaps my love of graphic novels was fueled by a childhood reading diet of comic books.  Stacks and stacks of comic books. (There were also shelves and shelves of books, the Weekly Reader Book Club books, mandatory purchases at the shopping mall bookstores when we drove the 3 hours to Denver, and the regular trips to the local library. But there were also always stacks and stacks of comic books.)

I've tagged 148 books "adult" in Goodreads, and three of them are graphic novels. But get this...all three of them are also memoir. I have no idea what that means. It just made me go, "Hmm..."

This is the most recent adult memoir in graphic novel format that I've read, and I think you should read it, too:

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

by Mira Jacob

One World, March 2019

Mira Jacobs is East Indian and her husband is Jewish. With a combination of drawings and photographs, the book is built around Jacob's conversations with her six year-old biracial son about Michael Jackson, brown and white skin, Trump's election, and police violence. Jacobs also allows readers to "listen in" on her conversations with her own parents, brother, and grandmother about how her family discriminates against her because her skin is a (tragically) dark brown, and with her mother in-law about how people at a party she throws assume Mira's the help because she's not white. There are conversations between Jacobs and her white friend about parenting, and conversations between Jacobs and her husband about dealing with white men who hold all the power without even being aware that they do.

This book, for me, was a window.* Perhaps for you it will be a mirror.* If we're going to repair the race issues that continue to divide our nation, we're going to have to use books like this as sliding glass doors* so that we can have conversations like these not just in our imaginations as we read, but in real life with the people around us -- other adults, our students and children, co-workers, politicians, family members, publishers, etc., etc., etc.

*Dr. Rudine Simms Bishop coined these terms in 1990. "Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books." (1990, p. ix)

Another Must-Read...

...although I feel slightly ridiculous because the contrast between this and the book Franki posted about earlier this week is...um...stunningly contrastful. But I'm going with it.

You MUST read...

My review from Goodreads:

Don't you dare put this in your (class) library without reading it first. Don't get stuck on the knock-knock jokes thinking they are ridiculous childish humor until you see what Pilkey does with them as a plot device. Think hard about the message he gives about a bad character wanting to change. And if you don't tear up when you read p. 216-223, then you just don't even have a heart.

Dav Pilkey is flat out brilliant. I've believed that since the first Captain Underpants books, and I'm not changing my story even though he made me cry at NERD camp.

Read. This. Book.
Read. This. Series.

Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas

A Trio of Graphic Novels

I'm always on the lookout for new graphic novels to add to my 5th grade classroom library. Lucky me (lucky readers in my room!), three of our favorite series have a new book out! This trio of books really shows that graphic novels are a FORMAT, not a genre. The first is a fantasy-adventure story with a strong female protagonist, the second is mythology, and the third is nonfiction.

Monsters Beware!
by Rafael Rosado and Jorge Aguirre
First Second, 2018

A glorious ending to a fabulous series. Claudette for the win -- OVER monsters and FOR her friends and family. Great back matter that shows how the story was revised even after it was finished.

Hermes: Tales of the Trickster

by George O'Connor

First Second, 2018

Readers of mythology love this series, and they won't be disappointed by Hermes' tale. He is quite the trickster, with surprises from the beginning of his story (he was a John Henry kind of baby, but maybe not as nice), until the very end.

Robots and Drones: Past, Present, and Future

by Mairghread Scott

illustrated by Jacob Chabot

First Second, 2018

This is one of the most kid-accessible in the series, while still being packed with information.

Oh Yes I Did

Because what good are you as a teacher of reading if you don't occasionally read the books your students are most excited about?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway
by Jeff Kinney
Harry N. Abrams, 2017

A humorous look at everything that could possibly go wrong on ditch-the-holidays family vacation, with a little bit of arachnophobia thrown in for good measure.

Dog Man and Cat Kid
by Dav Pilkey
Graphix, 2017

You can just about hear Dav Pilkey laughing out loud to himself as he writes these. I mean, really. Allusions to Faulkner? A robot named 80-HD? (say it out loud so you, too, can get the joke)

And in case you think Dog Man is all light fluff with no redeeming qualities, consider how Cat Kid reprograms his robot 80-HD (I can't even type that without cracking up) so that it has free will. "From now on, you can choose your own path." He tells it, "Thou mayest," so that it can choose whether or not to be loyal to Cat Kid. (It does.)

And then there's the part where Cat Kid admits he hasn't been perfect and, in a direct quote from Faulkner, the Italian actress tells him, "...now that you don't have to be perfect...you can be good."

Sure, there's Flip-O-Rama, but there's deep stuff, too.

Science Comics: Get to Know Your Universe!

How will your students know that graphic novels are a format and not a genre, unless you have titles that are history, memoir, and now...science?

Bats: Learning to Fly
written and illustrated by Falynn Koch
Science Comics Series
First Second, 2017
review copy from the public library

Thank goodness for Goodreads and for the public library. This title came up on my Goodreads feed and I clicked straight over to the Columbus Metropolitan Library and reserved the entire series.

I was not disappointed. The Science Comics (Get to Know Your Universe) series includes books about Dinosaurs, Volcanoes, Coral Reefs, Flying Machines, and coming up is Plagues. Although it's a series, because every book is not written/illustrated by the same teams, each book is unique. No cookie-cutter here!

I'll be ordering this entire series for my classroom!

Snow White: A Graphic Novel by Matt Phelan

Matt Phelan is an amazing graphic novelist. He does so much with so little: gestures, facial expressions, cinematic pacing and effects (zoom in, zoom out, film noir).

His version of Snow White is set just after WWI in New York City. If you want to analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text, or compare and contrast different versions of a story, or even study the impact of the setting (both time and place) or the telling of a story, this is the book for you. If you always wished for the witch to get what she deserves, Matt Phelan delivers. And the way he handles the seven dwarfs? You'll love it.

Snow White: A Graphic Novel

by Matt Phelan

Candlewick Press, due out September 13, 2016

review ARC provided by the publisher

Next Year's Readers: Three Next-In-The-Series

I believe in the power of series books.

I believe in the power of graphic novels.

Here are three next-in-the-series graphic novels that are on my TBR pile for the first week of June:

Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Alamo All-Stars
by Nathan Hale
Amulet Books, 2016

It was fun to sit and listen to a group of girls talk about the merits of this series last week. They are good readers and detail-oriented, so the amount of smaller-font text doesn't put them off. They each have a different favorite in the series, but none of them has read Donner Dinner Party yet (my personal favorite). They talked about how this is the kind of series where it's important to read the first one first so that you understand why Nathan Hale (the historic character) is telling all these stories (to delay his hanging). After that, you can read them in any order.

Thank you, Nathan Hale (the author) for making history fun and accessible!

HiLo: Saving the Whole Wide World

by Judd Winick

Random House Books for Young Readers, 2016

This is book two. The first book in this series ended on such (SUCH) a cliffhanger that I can't believe I'm not reading this book right now. (And as I typed that, I just guilted myself into taking this copy to school for the last 8 days so that every child who groaned audibly upon finishing it will be able to read book two before going on to middle school.)

HiLo is my new favorite superhero. Read this series; he'll be your favorite, too!

Cleopatra in Space: Secret of the Time Tablets

by Mike Maihack

Scholastic GRAPHIX, 2016

I love graphic novels with strong female characters who are cast as adventurers and sheroes. Bring on Cleopatra, Emily (in Amulet), Claudette (Giants Beware and Dragons Beware), and Zita (Spacegirl).

Don't get me wrong. There's a place for Babysitters' Club. I'm just loving these strong, capable girl sheroes.

A Happy Day for Graphic Novel Readers

Andrews McMeel Publishing is going to make my graphic novel readers VERY happy. Not one new book for our classroom library...not even two or three. FOUR new graphic novels, and I can't even imagine how over-the-moon they'll be to see the newest Big Nate! We'll start there.

Big Nate: Thunka, Thunka, Thunka
by Lincoln Peirce
Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2016
review copy provided by the publisher

Last week one of my readers had to remove himself from his table group because he was in hysterics over the Big Nate book he was reading. Big Nate is a character who resonates especially with my 5th grade boy readers. I'm just hoping there won't be an outbreak of boys emulating Big Nate by banging an empty plastic water bottle against their heads -- thunka, thunka, thunka!

Li'l Rip Haywire Adventures: Escape from Camp Cooties
by Dan Thompson
Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2016
review copy provided by the publisher

I have just the reader for this book. He's struggling to make the transition from graphic novels to books with all text, and this blend of graphics and text will be the perfect support for him. Plus, a boy who has to survive an all-girls summer camp is sure to be a hit!


These two will have to wait to meet my readers because I'm a little picky about having the first book in the series for other readers like me who HAVE TO read the first book first! But these will both be fun series to have for boy readers who are willing to cross over to a book that has a girl character (with a unicorn no less), and girl readers who might not go for Li'l Rip Haywire or Big Nate.

Stinky Cecil: Terrarium Terror

by Paige Bradock

Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2016

review copy provided by the publisher

Unicorn vs. Goblins: Another Phoebe and Her Unicorn Adventure

by Dana Simpson

Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2016

review copy provided by the publisher

Graphic Novel is a Format, Not a Genre

Every Thursday in October, we'll be celebrating Graphic Novels here on our blog. We are teaming up with blogger friends at Kid Lit Frenzy and Assessment in Perspective, so you'll want to check out their blogs every week too! If you want to know more about our monthlong celebration, read our Nerdy Book Club post announcing it. We also hope you'll join our Google Community where the party will come together! We love Graphic Novels and we want to share that love with the world.

Last week while my students were taking a math test, I went from shelf to shelf around my classroom, gathering books for this post. That's right -- there's not a "Graphic Novels" shelf in one spot in my classroom. There are graphic novels shelved with autobiography and memoir, fables, mythology, and short stories. There are tubs for the graphic novel series (BabyMouse, Lunch Lady, etc.), but graphic novel fiction and fantasy are shelved by author's last name with the other fiction chapter books.

That's because graphic novels are a FORMAT and not a genre!

FABLES

Fable Comics

edited by Chris Duffy 

FAIRY TALES

Fairy Tale Comics

edited by Chris Duffy

MEMOIR

To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel

by Siena Cherson Siegel

SHORT STORIES AROUND A THEME

Explorer: The Mystery Boxes

edited by Kazu Kibuishi

MYTHOLOGY

Zeus: King of the Gods

by George O'Connor

HISTORICAL FICTION

Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy

by Nathan Hale

HISTORY

Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans

by Don Brown

This is a history book that is not for the faint of heart. In the graphics, towns are erased by crashing waves, people and pets drown and starve, crowds are locked out of the SuperDome, and aid is slow in coming. In the same way that the images force us to see the truth of what happened in New Orleans, the text is completely straightforward and honest. In fact, when you get to the end of the book and look at Don Brown's source notes, you will see that nearly every (maybe every?) line of text is referenced to a primary source. This is an amazing mentor text for accurate journalistic writing. Don Brown didn't get emotionally involved in the story he was telling; he was simply the conduit to tell the story, to remind us about what went wrong so that hopefully we can get it right the next time. (Heaven forbid there's a next time.) And he told it true as a tribute "To the resilient people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast" who have been working ever since 2005 to rebuild their cities and their lives.

With all the light-hearted, fun-to-read graphic novels that are available, you might think this is an odd choice for our give-away today, but this is an important book that will expand your notion of what a graphic novel can be and what graphic novels can do for readers.

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10 Graphic Novels Recommended by 3rd Graders

Every Thursday in October, we'll be celebrating Graphic Novels here on our blog. We are teaming up with blogger friends at Kid Lit Frenzy and Assessment in Perspective, so you'll want to check out their blogs every week too! If you want to know more about our monthlong celebration, read our Nerdy Book Club post announcing it. We also hope you'll join our Google Community where the party will come together! We love Graphic Novels and we want to share that love with the world.  And don't forget to visit Kid Lit Frenzy today for your chance to win a prize!

Graphic Novels are quite popular in our classroom. Last week, I talked to my kids about this post and this monthlong celebration and asked them which 10 Graphic Novels they'd recommend to other 3rd graders. This is the list they came up with. These are the books that are being read like crazy in our class right now.

Babymouse (all of them!)

Squish (all of them!)

Lunch Lady (all of them!)

Comics Squad

Smile

Sisters

Baby-Sitters Club Graphix 

 The Misadventures of Salem Hyde

Hilo

Mal and Chad

#GNCelebration -- Sunny Side Up

Every Thursday in October, we'll be celebrating Graphic Novels here on our blog. We are teaming up with blogger friends at Kid Lit Frenzy and Assessment in Perspective, so you'll want to check out their blogs every week too! If you want to know more about our monthlong celebration, read our Nerdy Book Club post announcing it. We also hope you'll join our Google Community where the party will come together! We love Graphic Novels and we want to share that love with the world.

The winner of last week's give-away here on A Year of Reading is...Kim Haines! We'll be contacting you, Kim!

Sunny Side Up

by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

Graphix/Scholastic, 2015

Back at the end of August, Franki wrote about the AMAZING podcast that Colby Sharp and Travis Yonkers created, called The Yarn. Over the course of eight episodes, Sharp and Yonkers explored every aspect of the making of Sunny Side Up.

We both loved the book, and the podcast gave us fascinating insight into all kinds of back story from a variety of points of view. We couldn't wait to see how the book would be received by its intended audience -- middle grade readers.

Yesterday, I sat down with four of my 5th grade girls who have read the book and asked them what they thought of it.

Before I tell you what they said about Sunny Side Up, I should tell you about the class' conversation about our next read aloud. Earlier this week, we finished The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart, and we were discussing the ending and the themes. Specifically, we were talking about the power of reading books with hard, emotional topics. I told them that perhaps I would choose a book that was emotionally a little lighter for our next read aloud, and they protested...LOUDLY. They clamored for another book that nearly broke their hearts, that made them sit on the edges of their seats gasping, that caused them to grapple with hard life issues. That was exactly what I hoped for with The Honest Truth. I wanted our read aloud and our classroom community to be a safe place to think about and talk about a book that wasn't all sunshine and roses. I never would have guessed, though, how hungry they would be for more of that after one book full.

Because of this, I wasn't at all surprised that my readers loved Sunny Side Up. They absolutely got that although it is a full color graphic novel with the word SUNNY on the cover, it's actually the story of a dark time in a family's life. They knew why Sunny was in Florida with her grandpa (they could turn to the exact page in the text where the reader is told outright). And they could name specific chapters that they loved -- one cited "Terrific" because her mom had told her about "old fashioned things" like the "Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific" ad campaign from "a long time ago," another turned right to the chapter, "Big Al" where Sunny leaves the golf course pond in quite a windmilling walk-on-water hurry after meeting the local alligator while salvaging lost golf balls for 25 cents apiece. One girl loved the flashbacks that slowly revealed why Sunny and her family aren't going to the beach house as planned (and I loved her for knowing, as a 10 year-old reader, how Jenni Holm had structured her narrative).

None of the girls read the authors' note in the back of the book, so they had only wondered if maybe this was a true story; they hadn't realized it was memoir until I told them. But I don't think that mattered to their understanding.

If you haven't read this graphic novel,  you simply must. If you haven't listened to the podcast, you simply must. This is an amazing time to be a middle grade reader, and even if you're long past that age, you owe it to your younger self to dive into the books you didn't know you were missing, but that you would have loved. Sunny Side Up is definitely one of those.

Celebrating Raina Telgemeier! #GNCelebration

We are excited to begin our monthlong celebration of Graphic Novels.  Every Thursday in October, we'll be celebrating Graphic Novels here on our blog.  We are teaming up with blogger friends at Kid Lit Frenzy and Assessment in Perspective, so you'll want to check out their blogs every week too!  If you want to know more about our monthlong celebration, read our Nerdy Book Club post announcing it.  We also hope you'll join our Google Community where the party will come together!  We love Graphic Novels and we want to share that love with the world.

It was not easy for me to fall in love with graphic novels, but once I read Babymouse and fell in love with that character, I gave others a try.  (Thank you Jenni and Matthew Holm!).  I still find them a bit tricky as I have to constantly remind myself to spend time with the visuals--I tend to want to read quickly through the words and move on.  But knowing Graphic Novels and having many in my classroom has changed our Reading Workshop. I have several baskets of favorite authors and series in the Graphic Novel section. I have graphic novels in a variety of genres and I have graphic novels that span a variety of levels. So there are graphic novels for everyone.  I find that these are fabulous additions to our classroom and I am so glad I listened to Mary Lee and let her show me how to read these.  In preparation for today's post, I dug into the Graphic Novel tag on our blog and was amazed to see how many graphic novels we've shared on the blog over the years.  

To kick of our Graphic Novel Celebration, let's celebrate Raina Telgemeier!  I discovered Raina's work in 2010 when I read Smile. I fell instantly in love with it and couldn't wait to read more by this author. The idea of a Graphic Novel memoir was something I hadn't considered and I found the story to be fascinating.  This was one of the first graphic novels I read that helped me understand that graphic novels were not a "genre". Instead they could be any genre and Raina wrote a genre I had never read in a graphic novel.  It totally drew me in!

Since then I've read all of her books and have loved every one. She is already a favorite in our classroom as my children can identify her art and notice when they see a new piece in a graphic novel anthology (such as Comic Squad Recess!). My student relate to her stories and talk about "Raina" like she is sitting with us sometimes. Her writing and art combine to create some of the most amazing stories I've read.  She really changed my whole understanding of what a graphic novel could be and the impact it can have on readers.

Raina is a rock star in the graphic novel world. She was one of the authors who changed the way we thought about graphic novels and she continues to create amazing works.  If you did not get a chance to hear her interview on The Yarn about Graphic Novels, it is so worth listening to. It is an amazing interview by Colby Sharp and Travis Jonker.

Lately, Raina has been updating the Baby-Sitters Club books by Ann M. Martin. I love that these books that so many of us loved years ago, are back in graphic novel form. This gives students two ways to fall in love with the characters. A few years ago, Raina  did black and white versions of a few of the Baby-Sitters' Club books but now they are being published in FULL COLOR. And they are fabulous.  It is amazing to see my kids pick these up BECAUSE they know and love Raina's work.  I love that they can see the power of her work in so many different stories.  

I can't imagine what it takes to create one of these full color Baby-Sitter Club graphic novels. Needless to say, they are not being released as fast as we would all like as I am sure they take a while to create! But this week, the full color edition of book #3 was released:  Mary Anne Saves the Day. And we are giving away a copy as part of today's celebration! Complete the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win. Comment on this post for an optional entry!  

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Celebrate graphic novels with us today by reading or sharing one of Raina's books with students or colleagues! Go Raina!

Making Comics with Bitstrips

Near the end of the school year, I introduced my students to Bitstrips. "Introduced" means I showed them where to find all the tools, gave them the login code and got out of the way.

After spending a ton of time creating their avatars, they got down to the (funny) business of making comics. You can imagine that with an available background of a bathroom, there were plenty of cartoons that would appeal mostly to a 10 year-old sense of humor. What surprised me the most were the comics that captured a moment in our classroom

or a moment in their lives

or something completely random that shows they were playing with the tools and wound up making something that made some kind of sense!

Every year, I have students who read graphic novels and want to make their own in writing workshop. I've never had success supporting these students because of the limitations of students to draw their own stories, the limitations of the digital tools I had tried in the past, and the lack of an accessible mentor text for beginning graphic novelists.

I think this coming year might be the year of the student-created graphic novel. Instead of renewing the three subscriptions to magazines no students in my classroom have read for the past two years, I am going to pay for a subscription to Bitstrips (digital tool -- √).

And I'm going to share this book (mentor text -- √) with my writers as a graphic novel/comic strip mentor text:

G-Man: Learning to Fly

by Chris Giarrusso

Image Comics, 2012

The book starts with a longer story, but the ones I really want to share with/study with my students are the 1-2 page "Comic Bits" and the two-panel "Mean Brother/Idiot Bother" strips. Every budding Kazu Kibuishi has to start somewhere, right?

Summer #bookaday Begins!

Cleopatra in Space: Target Practice

by Mike Maihack

Scholastic, 2014

review copy purchased for my classroom library

Cleopatra in Space: The Thief and the Sword

by Mike Maihack

Scholastic, 2015

review copy purchased for my classroom library

School's out -- let #bookaday begin! And what better way to begin than with a fun new (to me) graphic novel series!

Columbus College of Art and Design grad Mike Maihack has plucked Cleopatra out of history and sent her to the future as the hero prophesied to save the galaxy from the evil Xaius Octavian who destroys civilizations by deleting all their electronic data and simultaneously stealing it for himself and his uses. 

Maihack's action and battle scenes are spectacular -- very cinematic. He is masterful at using flashbacks and flashforwards. At the end of the first book, her school/training academy is planning a winter dance, and at the beginning of the second book, the dance is in full swing. The second book ends with a more dramatic cliffhanger (think massive fleet evil army spaceships in close pursuit of the tiny spaceship our main characters are on) that will leave readers anxious for the next book in the series!