Howdy. I’m Jesse Karp, librarian, reviewer and Great Graphic Novels for Teens committee-member. Since I work with ’em and love ’em and this is my first post, I figured I’d throw out my top five favorite graphic novels list. What better way to give you a sense of my tastes and (hopefully) inspire some more interest the form?
Here goes:

1. The Arrival by Tan (Beautiful, insightful silent tale of being a stranger in a strange land — pushes the art form to a whole new level)
2. The Storm in the Barn by Phelan (Powerful, folk tale-ish coming-of-age story and deep, moving homage to the art of storytelling in any form)
3. Superman for All Seasons by Loeb and Sale (a retelling of the big guy’s early years that gives it the feeling of real American mythology)
4. Tales of Colossus by Andrews (Medieval action/adventure . . . with a robot!)
5. Selina’s Big Score by Cooke (Catwoman goes for a huge heist — Cooke’s art is peerless).

There ya go. Hope there are a couple you don’t know about yet and that you’re curious enough to take a look.

About Jesse Karp

Early Childhood and Interdivisional Librarian at LREI - Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, Booklist Reviewer, Guys LIt Wire Blogger, Serving on ALA's Great Graphic Novels for Teens Committee

One Thought on “Graphic Novels: A Top Five

  1. Jamie Elston on September 23, 2009 at 11:22 am said:

    I would love to use this list as a starting point for building our graphic novel collection, but some of the titles are not available through our book jobber. Thanks for the recommendations, though!

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