Saturday, August 24, 2013

Some great graphic novels for young kids

Hi all! Is it just me or have there been a lot of terrific graphic novels for young kids lately? I thought I'd put up a random and incomplete selection of some of our current faves (because "random" and "incomplete" is easier than "exhaustive" and "organized").

Clementine is four, and we've read all of these with her. A few of them require some selective altering of words while reading aloud, but none have anything big or visually violent or disturbing.

In no particular order ...




On the very gentle end of the spectrum, here's a silly, wonderful story about friendship and quirkiness. Odd Duck by Cecil Castellucci, illustrated by Sara Varon. It gives us the giggles :-)




This isn't new, but we love Bake Sale, written & illustrated by Sara Varon. Another sweet and gentle story of friendship. Conflict-free. With recipes :-) It's just so pleasant. Perfect for really littles.





Jim Henson's The Storyteller. I guess this was a TV show that I totally missed in the late 80s? How did that happen? *shrug* Anyway, the book is a gem. An anthology of nine stories by different writers and artists (some gorgeous art), some a tad mature for the wee ones, but only a tad. Mostly they're a delight. Clementine adores them, and so do we.




The Sleepwalkers by Viviane Schwarz (who is German and lives in London). A sweet tale of a trio of sheep who walk in dreams to rescue children from their nightmares. As the story begins, they are old and just beginning to create apprentices to replace themselves when they retire. For instance, an old quilt finds new life as a bear, because the little boy who owned it used to wrap himself up in it and pretend to be one. It's a unique story, offbeat, poignant, and pretty deep. 




Monster on the Hill by Rob Harrell. A fun one! The premise here is that in the fantastical 1860s England in which it is set, every town has its own monster, which terrorizes it ... to the delight of the townspeople. Basically, having a good monster is a source of civic pride, not to mention a tourist draw. But Stoker-on-Avon isn't so lucky. Their monster's depressed sighs can be heard all the way in town, and he isn't scary in the least. Until a discredited doctor and a street urchin set about trying to help him get his mojo back ... discovering along the way that the monsters serve a much more important function than scaring their town, and that is protecting it. 




For something a little different ... Sundarkaand: Trimph of Hanuman, for those of you who've been wanting to start your kids on the Ramayana :-) From India's Campfire Comics, this is just beautiful, and though *some* judicious editing is called for while reading aloud to the littlest, it's a big action epic refreshingly free of death and blood. The art is beautiful, and it's just very far from the usual Western fare. There are more in the series. We have Sita, it's gorgeous, but we haven't finished reading it yet. I'm not otherwise providing links, but since this one's tricky to find, here it is at Powells.

(Fun coincidence, the newest movie added to Clementine's very limited repertoire of movies was A Little Princess, the Cuaron version, and the Ramayana is woven into it, if you recall, by way of Sarah's stories. Sita and Ram and Ravana, and the neighbor monkey is even named Hanuman. It was perfectly congruous, to read this when we did. Clementine is going around putting curses on people like Sarah does in the movie, "Rakshasa ..." :-) Also, the book comes with a Hanuman poster, which is now on the wall.)


Though I've posted about these before, another shout out for ...



The Wizard's Tale by Kurt Busiek and David T. Wenzel (Previous post here), a strong favorite, 
and ... 




The Hilda books by Luke Pearson. (Previous post here.) I adore these books. If I had to weed Clementine's library down to a single shelf (the horror!), these would make the cut easily. 


Okay, well there's a few. I'm sure I'll be back with more! These I gathered in Clementine's room in the dark while she was sleeping, and didn't want to dig around too much and wake her up. Cheers!










7 comments:

Charlotte said...

Just wanted to add that the Owly books by Andy Runton are lovely ones--we are very fond of them.

Karthy said...

Robot Dreams is another great one :)

Anonymous said...

The Storyteller TV programme was awesome. If you can get hold of a copy on DVD, I highly recommend it. They did a Greek myths one as well.

Miss Tiff said...

I do love Sara Varon! You just reminded me that I have some catching up to do.

Jenn said...

Oh yay! Thanks for sharing, Laini!

Nabila Khashoggi said...

This is a great list, thank you for publishing it. As an author of a graphic novel series for children, I like to share other well-thought of books with my friends and fans. Education combined with a sense of adventure is my key as an author, and I like to stay in good company with that. Thank you! http://bit.ly/HD0qaR

Anonymous said...

hi Laini,Can you recommend some books for children around the age of 8 and 9...female
cheers

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