Here are 100 books that Garlic and the Vampire fans have personally recommended if you like
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I loved graphic novels even before I became an author/illustrator. But because I create for young readers, I also read a lot of graphic novels aimed at them. I am also a big believer that books with female protagonists are important for all readers: male, female, and non-binary. All of the books I’ve recommended are books I plucked off my own bookshelf, and that I’ve read several times and I think are exceptional in some way.
For the teen reader who likes a bit of a scare, Anya’s Ghost tells the story of Anya, a teenager of Russian descent who wants nothing more than to fit in at her American high school.
Ah, to be blonde and popular! While walking home through the park, Anya falls into a deep hole and discovers a set of bones. Freaky! And a ghost. Double Freaky!
The ghost seems nice enough but Anya doesn’t want to set off on some quest to find a murderer or anything. She just wants to go home, get a hot shower, and be normal. The ghost tags along when Anya is rescued and tries to help Anya fit in.
It’s good – until it’s not, and Anya does have to solve some mysteries to get rid of the ghost and save the people around her. Anya’s Ghost is just scary and spooky enough to…
Anya could really use a friend. But her new BFF isn't kidding about the "Forever" part . . .
Of all the things Anya expected to find at the bottom of an old well, a new friend was not one of them. Especially not a new friend who's been dead for a century.
Falling down a well is bad enough, but Anya's normal life might actually be worse. She's embarrassed by her family, self-conscious about her body, and she's pretty much given up on fitting in at school. A new friend―even a ghost―is just what she needs.
As a kid, I was obsessed with the fantastical, especially when it came to books. I was constantly trying to find my own door to Narnia to go off on an incredible adventure. While I never found a door that led to another world, I found that books offered me a similar experience…and all from the comfort of my fave places to read. Magic is still something I’m enthralled with and love exploring in books I read as well as the ones I write. And these are some of my favorite magical graphic novels.
This story plays more on our own insecurities and how that can take on a form of its own that torments us. Young people don’t always have the experience to put to words the things they’re feeling but not knowing if we’re good enough and the anxiety that stems from that is very relatable and universal. Lorena Alvarez does an incredible job of telling a story that weaves that in while presenting stunning, jaw-dropping art to her audience.
Every night, tiny stars appear out of the darkness in Sandy's bedroom. Sandy catches them and creates wonderful creatures to play with until she falls asleep, and in the morning brings them back to life in the whimsical drawings that cover her room. One day, a mysterious pale girl called Morfie appears at school and is fascinated by Sandy's drawings in a way that no one else has been before. But there is a price to pay for this new friendship...
As a kid, I was obsessed with the fantastical, especially when it came to books. I was constantly trying to find my own door to Narnia to go off on an incredible adventure. While I never found a door that led to another world, I found that books offered me a similar experience…and all from the comfort of my fave places to read. Magic is still something I’m enthralled with and love exploring in books I read as well as the ones I write. And these are some of my favorite magical graphic novels.
As someone who grew up on Sabrina the Teenage Witch in Archie Digests as well as the TGIF sitcom, I have long had a soft spot for stories featuring witches. As a kid, you always think that magic is the pinnacle of exciting! And that’s how young Moth feels, especially as she finds out that she is a witch. Except her mom has sworn off of magic and doesn’t want that life for her daughter…which I feel for Moth being extremely upset about it. She has to find a way to get in touch with her roots, learn about her magic, and discover secrets about her past that are intriguing and exciting! It’s such a fun story told by a talented creator. Everything about this book is—wait for it—magical!
A School Library Journal Best Graphic Novel of 2019 A YALSA 2020 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers A YALSA 2020 Great Graphic Novel for Teens
Sabrina the Teenage Witch meets Roller Girl in this hilarious, one-of-a-kind graphic novel about a half-witch who has just discovered the truth about herself, her family, and her town and is doing her best to survive middle school now that she knows everything!
Magic is harder than it looks.
Thirteen-year-old Moth Hush loves all things witchy. But she's about to discover that witches aren't just the stuff of movies, books, and spooky stories.…
As a kid, I was obsessed with the fantastical, especially when it came to books. I was constantly trying to find my own door to Narnia to go off on an incredible adventure. While I never found a door that led to another world, I found that books offered me a similar experience…and all from the comfort of my fave places to read. Magic is still something I’m enthralled with and love exploring in books I read as well as the ones I write. And these are some of my favorite magical graphic novels.
If, like me, you’re a fan of Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away or Ponyo, then this graphic novel is for you. It not only tackles a story revolving around growing up with magic but it adds in many other things that many of us have struggled with such as family expectations, living up to your potential, and more. Of course, everything feels a little more exciting when magic is added to the mix, but those themes that exist in the real world ground this story and allow for a strong connection to Sophie, our young protagonist.
Perfect for fans of Studio Ghibli and The Tea Dragon Society, this is a magically heartwarming graphic novel about self-acceptance and friendship.
Sophie is a young witch whose mother and grandmother pressure her to attend the Royal Magic Academy—the best magic school in the realm—even though her magic is shaky at best. To train for her entrance exams, Sophie is sent to relatives she’s never met.
Cousin Sage and Great-Aunt Lan seem more interested in giving Sophie chores than in teaching her magic. Frustrated, Sophie attempts magic on her own, but the spell goes wrong, and she accidentally entangles her…
I’ve worked as a tugboat hand in Singapore and Peace Corps Volunteer in Polynesia. I’ve served on the editorial staffs of five newspapers, from a small-town daily in New Mexico to The New York Times. I’m also the authorof contemporary novels for young adults. Like the writers of these five great graphic novels, I choose themes that are important to me. Foremost are hope, healing, family, and friendship. These are themes I’d like my own children to embrace. Life can be hard, so as a writer I choose to send out that “ripple of hope” on the chance it may be heard or felt, and so make a difference.
This is the stunning opening salvo of John Lewis’ brilliant trilogy tracking his lifelong struggle for civil and human rights. We follow Lewis’ upbringing in rural Alabama during which young John honed his preaching skills before an audience of barnyard chickens, his transformative meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the birth of the Nashville Student Movement. In shedding light on our country’s racist history, Lewis rakes you raw, holds no punches, and yet offers hope.
Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.
Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award…
Brett Dakin is the author of American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and the Battles of Lev Gleason and Another Quiet American: Stories of Life in Laos. Brett's writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Brett grew up in London and now lives in New York City with his husband—and their dog, Carl.
Another readable academic work, Bradford’s book helped me situate the history of comics within the broader narrative of post-war America’s emerging youth, pop, and consumer cultures.
As American as jazz or rock and roll, comic books have been central in the nation's popular culture since Superman's 1938 debut in Action Comics #1. Selling in the millions each year for the past six decades, comic books have figured prominently in the childhoods of most Americans alive today. In Comic Book Nation, Bradford W. Wright offers an engaging, illuminating, and often provocative history of the comic book industry within the context of twentieth-century American society. From Batman's Depression-era battles against corrupt local politicians and Captain America's one-man war against Nazi Germany to Iron Man's Cold War exploits in…
I’m a stay-at-home working dad, and have handed my boys countless books to keep them entertained so I could get some work done. There’s something magical about giving your kid a book that sparks their love of reading. In my own experience, adventure books that made my boys laugh out loud would captivate my kids for hours…and keep them out of my hair.
Jame’s Bird & Squirrel series taught me a lot about comedic timing in comics. When I sold my own book and realized I actually had to write a book I had a slight panic attack. My agent recommended I look at Bird & Squirrel as a guide to writing and illustrating a graphic novel. James also works in animation and those skills are on display with how his characters move and interact in his books. Reading Bird and Squirrel is like watching a beloved Saturday morning cartoon.
Squirrel is afraid of his own shadow. Bird doesn't have a care in the world. And Cat wants to eat Bird and Squirrel. Of course, he'll have to catch them first, and that's not going to be easy. Join this trio as they head south for the winter in a hilarious road trip. But watch out! Cat is waiting around every bend, and he's one pesky feline.
I’m a stay-at-home working dad, and have handed my boys countless books to keep them entertained so I could get some work done. There’s something magical about giving your kid a book that sparks their love of reading. In my own experience, adventure books that made my boys laugh out loud would captivate my kids for hours…and keep them out of my hair.
The Glorkian Warriors Delivers a Pizza is a great book for early readers. There isn’t a complicated plot, instead, it’s so jam-packed with wonderful nonsense and silly jokes that it’s as fun to read to your kids as it is to see them read it themselves. I also love buddy comedies, and the Glorkian Warrior’s banter with his backpack is a delight.
The Glorkian Warrior isn't the brightest bulb in the box, so it's good he's got his trusty talking backpack to advise him as they set out on a perilous journey to deliver a pizza. The pizza's got clams and peanut butter on it, so it's not clear who's going to want it, but deliver it they will. With bright, lively illustrations and classic prat-falls, this graphic novel for kids is 112 pages of super icky gross-out humour and ludicrously bad decisions- in other words, The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza is a winner.
Brett Dakin is the author of American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and the Battles of Lev Gleason and Another Quiet American: Stories of Life in Laos. Brett's writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Brett grew up in London and now lives in New York City with his husband—and their dog, Carl.
Amy’s book takes on the same topic, but from the perspective of an academic—and with a more balanced, objective approach. In particular, she examines the role of anti-comics crusader Dr. Fredric Wertham, arguing that his “role in the crusade against comics has been largely misinterpreted by fans and scholars alike, who dismiss his findings as naïve social science, failing to understand how his work on comic books fits into the larger context of his beliefs about violence, psychiatry, and social reform."
For the past forty years the content of comic books has been governed by an industry self-regulatory code adopted by publishers in 1954 in response to public and governmental pressure.
This book examines why comic books were the subject of controversy, beginning with objections that surfaced shortly after the introduction of modern comic books in the mid-1930s, when parents and teachers accused comic books of contaminating children's culture and luring children away from more appropriate reading material.
It traces how, in the years following World War II, the criticism of comic books shifted to their content, and the reading of…
Documentary Comics are this genre of comics in which you can make a community visible, denounce a crime or expose yourself to the world. Being able to dialogue with the world while dialoguing with the reader is amazing. The elements you have to take into account the things you can hide in the silence of a drawing, compelling the reader to read again, to find the easter egg about that thing you really want to talk about. The ways of telling the truth in drawings. All those things are the things that I love about documentary comics.
I am not recommending a particular volume or compilation. In general I love the work of Harvey Pekar. He has brought me closer to Documentary Comics than any other author. He worked with reflections and anecdotes and was one of those authors that from the writing was able to defy the common places in comics making. Yes, he was a scriptwriter, but he pulled out so many amazing comics from the graphic formula and made them work. I remember seeing gigantic balloons with blocks of text. Pages and pages of close-ups, and they weren’t boring. A comic about him reflecting on his masculinity by unclogging the toilet. Amazing.
Meet Harvey Pekar, a true American original. For over 25 years he's been writing comic books about his life, chronicling the ordinary and mundane in stories both funny and touching. Working as a hospital file clerk in Cleveland, his dead-on eye for the frustrations and minutiae of the workaday world mix in a delicate balance with his insight into personal relationships. Illustrating his stories are the cream of the underground comics world, including the legendary Robert Crumb. Pekar has been called 'the blue collar Mark Twain', and compared to Dreiser, Dostoevsky and Lenny Bruce. With American Splendor now an award-winning…
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