Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults

“An essential resource for anyone interested in children’s and young adult literature. Expertly curated, this volume not only features diverse essays on diverse topics; it also tells the story of comics’ return to childhood, in a sense—its contemporary reinvestment in child readers and collaborators. Highly recommended.”

—Kenneth Kidd, president of the Children’s Literature Association and author of Making American Boys and Freud in Oz

“Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults is an indispensable collection for scholars and teachers working in children’s literature and culture. Walk into any bookstore and you will see that children’s comics are a major force in the reading lives of young people today. What Abate and Tarbox present in this collection is a fully theorized analysis of the accomplishments of this body of literature, offering a range of essays on landmark texts like Jeff Smith’s Bone and Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, to bestsellers like Raina Telgemeier’s Drama and John Lewis’s March, to books by innovative writers like Sarah Oleksyk’s Ivy and Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer. Particularly exciting is all of the great work here on girls and comics. These essays counter longstanding assumptions about the gendered appeal of the form. Not only does this timely collection present lively, engaging readings that will serve teachers, students, and scholars alike, but it opens up and shapes a field that will continue to develop both in print and on the web.”

—Katharine Capshaw, professor of English at the University of Connecticut and author of Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks