Graphic Novels & Sick Days
The books getting us through this tough week of illness! All fun!
It’s January in the northeast, which means that it’s the season for illness and sick kids. Both of my kids got pretty sick over Martin Luther King weekend. There’s only so much television and screen time that can be watched. I’ve had them pick out books to read while they are recovering and resting.
My younger daughter has been reading The Baby-Sitters Little Sister Graphic Novel books. She and I read the Little Sister novels last year and over the summer and she really enjoyed them. So, she is familiar with the storylines and the characters. It’s not hard for her to get into them and they are fun for her to read. A light read during this time!
My older daughter loves to read graphic novels to relax so she has been reading a bunch of them over the week. She read Clash by Kayla Miller twice this past week.
It is interesting to me that my kids gravitate to graphic novels for their enjoyable reading. Graphic novels are not a genre or text format that I would jump to read, but my kids really like them. They are relaxing and comforting and I’m really glad they have figured that out so that they know what they can read when they have unstructured time.
This also gets me thinking about the restrictions that my students are facing. I have a student who teaches third graders. She has been facing so much push-back about allowing her students to read graphic novels. Her administration and colleagues have told her that the kids should not be reading those books. Why? I have a lot of trouble understanding the restrictions. If we want our kids to enjoy reading and become lifelong readers, then they need to be able to read books that they want to read. It’s fine to read particular texts during instructional time, but we need to encourage students to make decisions about what they read when they are reading independently.
I know for myself, I read funny novels (that have a happy ending) when I am reading for enjoyment! If I had to read a different genre in my own time, I probably would not read as much.