Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Graphics for Elementary

We recall a meeting of our district media folk during which graphic novels were discussed, lo, not so very many years ago. These titles were just hitting our shelves, having shed their status as lowly comic books (trouble right here in River City!) and gained cachet as serious works of art. The upper schools had bought several new titles, then been shocked to note that a few of the pages were, well, fairly graphic in content. "You have to look at every page," it seemed. Still does. The nature of the format is to be graphic in every sense of the word. Still, there are wonderful titles, which elementary students are snapping up enthusiastically, that are perfectly and delightfully age appropriate. Some of the most loved-to-death titles sprinting out our doors include:

Jeff Smith's Bone series
Scott Morse's Magic Pickle series
David Steinberg's Loud Boy series
Emmanuel Guibert's Sardine in Space series
Jimmy Gownley's Amelia Rules series
Max Axiom (science series) from Capstone
Jennifer Holm's Babymouse

Newer (we haven't picked up past book one) is The Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi, which skews a little more in the manga direction. A popular, and covertly educational, non-fiction choice is Howtoons by Saul Griffith. There are also some nice new titles for the primary set coming from Top Shelf Productions -- which are also interesting enough for older students reading below grade level who rather read nothing than be caught with Biscuit's New Friend.

But do check out a terrific new graphic title: Wonderland by Tommy Kovac (art by Sonny Liew). It revisits Alice in Wonderland from the viewpoint of the much maligned (but never, in the original, seen) character of Maryann, the White Rabbit's parlormaid. Weird and wondrous, it might even send a few readers back to the Lewis Carroll books.

No discussion of graphic novels would be complete without a harangue about their general lack of durability. There seems to be a large subset of elementary boys who are "active readers," for lack of a better term. These are the readers who wear away the edges of paperbacks, break the spines, loosen all the "flip-o-rama" pages in the Captain Underpants books (thank you SO much, Dav Pilkey . . .) Now, we would not for a moment think of barring these readers from touching our precious books (we are NOT that kind of librarian) but some sort of preventative action is required lest we spend our few and dwindling book dollars on constantly replacing the same old favorites. Here we go in for some unabashed product placement: buy Permabound. One starts out gleefully noting that the company swears to replace any book that doesn't hold up. Aha! one thinks: they haven't met our boys! Then one discovers that . . . the books actually do stay in one piece. Who'd a thunk it? Worth the price.