Some kids aren’t natural readers.  Either they find it difficult to read or just don’t enjoy it.  Introducing them to Graphic Novels is a way to grab their attention and get them reading.

Graphic novels entice kids into stories with illustrated comics and compelling plots told primarily through dialogue. I love that kids get excited to read with graphic novels.

Below are several reasons to use graphic novels to draw your grandkids into reading:

They are fun to read –
Why does reading have to be miserable? It doesn’t. You read what you love.  Let your grandkids read what they love as well.

Story Elements –
Graphic novels contain the same story elements and literary devices as narrative stories. Such as characters, conflict, resolution, setting, symbolism, theme, point of view, and so forth.
This is important to consider because good readers need to understand literary devices and narrative elements and use those to comprehend what they read.

The visual format provides built-in context clues –
Because comics are visual, even if the text is difficult, the visuals give the reader support in comprehending the story. Just like good readers use the picture clues in a picture book to support their understanding of the story, good readers reading graphic novels do the same thing. We’re a visual culture and the visual sequence of comics makes sense to kids.

Different Process –
Reading a graphic novel is a different process of reading requiring a lot of inference. With a comic, readers must rely on the dialogue, transition text, and the illustrations. The reader is required to infer what is not written out by a narrator, a complex, high-level reading strategy.

Variety is the Spice of Life –
Readers need variety in their reading diet. We can’t read one thing all the time or we’ll get bored and stop growing as readers.

There is a growing selection of graphic novels.  The variety is getting bigger, better, each year and reaches a wider age-range than ever before.