In the last decade, graphic novels have made a place for themselves on the shelves of readers young and old. While often misconstrued with comic books, these visual stories are an excellent way for readers of all kinds to experience books. Many graphic novels are geared toward boys and reluctant readers, which is why this list focuses on the female leads found in these stories. The books in this list are all graphic novels with female main characters; some are their own unique stories, while others are graphic representations of well-known tales. These books are best suited to readers ages 8-12. Contributed by: Mary Lanni
After the tragic death of their father, Emily and Navin move with their mother to the home of her deceased great-grandfather, but the strange house proves to be dangerous. Before long, a sinister creature lures the kids’ mom through a door in the basement. Em and Navin, desperate not to lose her, follow her into an underground world inhabited by demons, robots, and talking animals. Eventually, they enlist the help of a small mechanical rabbit named Miskit. Together with Miskit, they face the most terrifying monster of all, and Em finally has the chance to save someone she loves.
Presents a graphic novel version of the story of a kind and beautiful maiden who releases a handsome prince from the spell which has made him an ugly beast.
In the year 241, twelve-year-old Lina trades jobs on Assignment Day to be a Messenger to run to new places in her decaying but beloved city, perhaps even to glimpse Unknown Regions.
In this cleverly illustrated graphic novel, Cece Bell re-imagines her childhood self as a superhero bunny with deafness. Cece is only four years old when she becomes deaf. Her doctor gives her a Phonic Ear to help her hear. From then on, her life changes dramatically. The Phonic Ear, a box that hangs around her neck with cords and earbuds attached, makes Cece feel very insecure. Eventually, she realizes that the earbuds, buried deep in her long rabbit ears, give her the superpower of hearing others, even from far away. This superpower leads to the creation of Cece’s new secret identity: El Deafo.
Giants Beware!
By: Jorge Aguirre
Illustrated by: Rafael Rosado
Claudette wants nothing more than to slay a giant, but her little village is too safe and quiet.
Good-bye Marianne
By: Irene N. Watts
Illustrated by: Kathryn E. Shoemaker
Tells the story of Marianne Kohn, an eleven-year-old Jewish girl in Berlin in 1938 who experiences the division in her homeland due to the Nazi regime, and who eventually boards a boat to take her to safety in London.
When a little girl finds an adorable robot in the woods, she presses a button and accidentally activates him for the first time. Now, she finally has a friend. But the big, bad robots are coming to collect the little guy for nefarious purposes, and it’s all up to a five-year-old armed only with a wrench and fierce loyalty to her mechanical friend to save the day!
Moon is everything Christine isn’t. She’s confident, impulsive, artistic . . . and though they both grew up in the same Chinese-American suburb, Moon is somehow unlike anyone Christine has ever known.
Locked in a tower with her sisters and tired of waiting to be rescued by a prince, Princess Adrienne, her sidekick Bedelia, and her guardian dragon Sparky begin a quest to save themselves.
Dancers are young when they first dream of dance. Siena was six — and her dreams kept skipping and leaping, circling and spinning, from airy runs along a beach near her home in Puerto Rico, to dance class in Boston, to her debut performance on stage with the New York City Ballet.
A graphic novel adaptation of the classic tale in which Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg’s father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government.
Throughout history, underground movements have aided, freed, and saved the lives of numerous groups of people. As the Nazis overcame cities and countries throughout Europe, many citizens fought back by forming underground movements, named Resistance groups. Each of the titles in our list looks at the brave young people who joined the Resistance groups, whether knowingly or not, and the impact it had on them, their families, their friends, and their community.
Twelve-year-old Marcel loves riding his bicycle, and dreams of competing in the Tour de France, but it is 1942 and German soldiers are everywhere, stopping him as he delivers bread from his parents’ bakery around Aucoin. One day he discovers that it is not just bread he is delivering, and suddenly he finds himself in possession of dangerous secrets about his parents and his new friend from Paris, Delphine.
Pearl Witherington Cornioley, one of the most celebrated female World War II resistance fighters, shares her remarkable story in this firsthand account of her experience as a special agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Told through a series of reminiscences–from a difficult childhood spent in the shadow of World War I and her family’s harrowing escape from France as the Germans approached in 1940, to her recruitment and training as a special agent, and the logistics of parachuting into a remote rural area of occupied France and hiding in a wheat field from enemy fire–each chapter also includes helpful opening remarks to provide context and background on the SOE and the French Resistance.
Despite the horrors of World War II, a French teenager pursues her dream of becoming an opera singer, which takes her to places where she gains information about what the Nazis are doing–information that the French Resistance needs.
In August 1939 Genevieve makes an impulsive decision not to get on a train to take her to a boat back to New York and must spend the duration of World War II with her grandmother in a small village in Alsace, France, where she becomes involved with the French resistance.
In Amsterdam, 1943, Hanneke spends her days procuring and delivering sought after black market goods to paying customers, her nights hiding the true nature of her work from her concerned parents, and every waking moment mourning her boyfriend, who was killed on the Dutch front lines when the Germans invaded. She likes to think of her illegal work as a small act of rebellion against the Nazis. On a routine delivery, a client asks Hanneke for help. Expecting to hear that Mrs. Janssen wants meat or kerosene, Hanneke is shocked by the older woman’s frantic plea to find a person, a Jewish teenager Mrs. Janssen had been hiding, who has vanished without a trace from a secret room. Hanneke initially wants nothing to do with such dangerous work but is ultimately drawn into a web of mysteries and stunning revelations that lead her into the heart of the resistance, open her eyes to the horrors of the Nazi war machine, and compel her to take desperate action.
In German-occupied Normandy, France, fifteen-year-old Marianne worries that her mother is exposing the family, especially Marianne’s deaf younger brother, to great danger by volunteering for more perilous assignments in the resistance movement.
In 1942 sixteen-year-old Chaya Lindner is a Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Poland and a courier who smuggles food and documents to the isolated Jewish ghettos in southern Poland. When a mission goes wrong and many of her colleagues are arrested she finds herself on a journey to Warsaw, where an uprising is in the works.
Paul and Marie’s bucolic French town is almost untouched by the ravages of WWII. When the Jewish parents of their friend Henri disappear, and Henri goes into hiding, Paul and Marie realize they must take a stand.
In Nazi-occupied Norway, fourteen-year-old Espen joins the resistance movement, graduating from deliverer of illegal newspapers to courier and spy. Includes historical note, code-breaking activity, and instructions for making invisible ink.
In England in 1995, fifteen-year-old Tamar, grief-stricken by the puzzling death of her beloved grandfather, slowly begins to uncover the secrets of his life in the Dutch resistance during the last year of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the climactic events that forever cast a shadow on his life and that of his family.
When World War II breaks out seventeen-year-old Betty, an American studying in England, trains as a spy and parachutes into German-occupied France to join the Resistance, but after meeting a young American pilot she begins to realize fully the brutality of the war and their dangerous position.
In January 1945, fifteen-year-old Tygo Winter, a locksmith’s son who has been forced by the Nazis to loot abandoned Dutch homes, finds himself protecting a Jewish girl he has found in a villa, and in possession of information about a German super-weapon that the Nazi high command plans to use to defeat the Allied forces in the Battle of the Bulge–information that the Resistance wants.
While evacuating her grandmother during Hurricane Sandy, twelve-year-old Lily discovers that her Granny Collette has a mysterious past in France during WWII. The story alternates between Brooklyn in 2012 and German-occupied Brume in 1944.
Anne O’Brien Carelli is the author of adult nonfiction, a middle grade novel, Skylark and Wallcreeper, and the picture book, Amina’s New Friends. She has always been fascinated by the French Resistance and studied history at Case Western Reserve University. For her PhD, Anne researched psychology of the gifted. Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Anne lives in the Hudson River Valley in upstate New York and spends any free time quilting and reading, reading, reading.
We are delighted that she took time out of her busy schedule to talk with us about the novel and the power of language.
Your book, Skylark and Wallcreeper, came out last October and received wonderful reviews. Can you tell our readers a little about the plot, without spoiling the ending?
It’s hard to talk about the book without giving things away! Skylark and Wallcreeper alternates between New York City in 2012 and southern France in 1944. When twelve-year-old Lily is helping to evacuate her grandmother during Hurricane Sandy in New York City, her granny insists that Lily hang on to a fountain pen and never lose it. That pen, and a lot of other mysterious clues, leads Lily on a mission that reveals her granny’s past during WWII. Part contemporary, part historical fiction, the story is full of secrets, intrigue, danger, and affection.
You’ve said that you started writing Skylark and Wallcreeper after talking to a nurse about her experience evacuating residents from a nursing home during a hurricane. What is it that drew you to write about the French Resistance?
I have been interested in the French Resistance ever since I learned about it in a social studies textbook. It was just one paragraph, but since then I have read tons of resources about the topic, including original diaries and resistance newspapers. I’ve always wondered whether I could be in the Resistance and have concluded that I would probably be pretty good at organizing spies and decoding, but I am definitely not as brave as the characters in the book.
What lessons or reactions are you hoping readers will take away from the book?
My goal when I write for children is for them to be immersed in the story, eager to see what happens. A number of readers have shared their reactions to the book, and it is fascinating what they take away from the story! I built in some underlying messages, but I love it when readers tell me that they started talking to their parents and grandparents about family history. Lots of wonderful conversations have come from reading Skylark, so I’m very pleased about that.
This is your second book for children. Can you tell our readers about your first book and why it holds a special place in your heart?
My first children’s book, Amina’s New Friends, was written in response to a theme in my work with refugee children who had resettled in the United States. The children had been through terrible journeys, and when they arrived in America they just wanted to make a new friend. The book is about a Somalian refugee girl’s first day in an American school and is used in resettlement centers all over the world. www.aminasnewfriends.com tells more about refugees.
What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
When I was five years old, I was in the hospital because I had cut my arm. I was given a slice of watermelon and was worried because I had swallowed a seed. The doctor, thinking he was being amusing, told me that a vine would grow from my stomach and out of my mouth. I was terrified, and my poor mother could not figure out why I would not stop crying. Later I realized that what you say to children has such a profound impact! (This story has the makings of a picture book, doesn’t it?)
What question have you always wanted to be asked in an interview? And, how would you answer that question?
I have never been asked if writing a book is fun. I would answer, “Yes, absolutely, positively, definitely yes.” It is hard work, sometimes frustrating, often overwhelming. But for me, it never ceases to be fun.
If you were writing a book about your life, what would the title be?
This is a mind-blowing question! I think there would have to be a series because I can think of so many possible titles! I guess the title that would be appropriate for my entire life would be What Shall I Write About Next?
