Owly: A Time To Be Brave by Andy Runton
So if you Google “Core lists graphic novels” I can almost guarantee that Owly will be on every list you find. If you go to any presentations on great graphic novels for your library, there’s like a ninety eight percent chances that Owly will come up. If you’re looking a lists of series that have won awards for children’s publications, Owly will probably be on there somewhere.
Because Owly is awesome.
And also wordless.
The characters communicate with each other, and the reader, entirely through simple pictures.
This is my first experience reading a wordless graphic novel and it was totally positive.
There are many awesome things about this book. For one thing it teaches narrative literacy so well because kids have to tell the story themselves, using the clues in the pictures. I mean, it’s a pretty simple, sweet story and there’s definitely characters and character development and a beginning, middle and end but without words the kids have to tell the story just a little more. I also think it teaches them how to read graphic novels, introducing frames and speech bubbles and the left to right concept and the page numbers and all kinds of other things that will be useful for kids who decide to read anything, not just graphic novels, in the future.
But for kids who aren’t reading yet, this is particularly awesome because it’s a novel. I mean, it took me like twenty minutes to read but for kids who’re used to picture books, which have a relatively short emotional connection, to be reading something a little longer, to get to know characters and watch their story for over a hundred pages is an absolutely wonderful experience.
Plus Owly and Wormy are absolutely adorable.
Last movie I watched: The Amazing Spiderman. Again.
Last TV episode I watched: Grimm! Sooo good!!
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