Welcome back to Book Break! Today I am talking about graphic novels, and specifically cosy
graphic novels that are perfect for autumn. It's still autumn, i'm still clinging onto that season
for as long as possible before winter sets in. Right now we've still got loads of orange leaves
everywhere, I'm feeling really snuggly. So the graphic novels in this video, I have chosen
some of them because they're actually set in autumn, some of them I just think have cosy
autumnal vibes, but I would love to know which graphic novels you guys think are perfect for the
cosy spooky season. The first one I'm starting with, I had to lead this video with because it
is the most autumnal thing I have ever seen, and that is the book Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell
and Faith Erin Hicks. So this is set on a pumpkin patch, you don't get much more autumnal than that,
and it's about two best friends and their last night together working at this pumpkin patch,
going on an adventure. And just look at the colours in this book, look at all that plaid
that they're wearing, I feel cozy just looking at this book. And it's such a great story as well,
I love the relationship between these two in this book, they're best friends once a year every year
when they work together, and they don't see each other in between, so they've got this very
unusual friendship, and I really loved this one. And while we're talking cosy books,
my next recommendation is to go all the way back to childhood and pick up some of your old Moomins
comic strips. So the Moomins are a family of fairy tale creatures, that look kind of like hippos,
but they're actually trolls. And they appeared in loads of books and comic strips created by
Tove Jansson from the 1940s onwards, and I've got a gorgeous book here called The World of
Moominvalley, which is an illustrated guide to the world of the Moomins. So we've got some of Tove
Jansson's original sketches, loads of behind the scenes about how she created this whole family, as
well as just beautiful drawings, this illustrated guide and explanation of the whole world. So it's
a gorgeous book. So my recommendation is go back and read some of your old Moomins comic strips,
and then when you're feeling really nostalgic, you're gonna want this. Then for something a bit
more hard-hitting, Dragon's Breath and Other True Stories by MariNaomi is a collection of really
emotional stories from the author's own life. They're these really raw and honest stories,
and definitely something to settle in with for a long evening, and they've got this beautiful,
really really simple illustration style that just gets you straight into the heart of the story.
And there is lots of sadness and remorse in these stories, but there's also lots of hope as well.
And then another one with dragons in the title, I don't know why dragons feel so autumnal to me but
they just do, and this one actually does feature dragons: that's The Tea Dragon Society by Katie
O'Neill. So this is a completely adorable story that has been really popular on BookTube about
a blacksmith apprentice called Greta who finds a tea dragon. And tea dragons are these tiny little
dragons who grow herbs along with their horns, and so the story is about Greta and her friends
learning to care for these tea dragons. And everyone I've seen talking about this book
online has now really wanted a tea dragon as a pet. If only they were real! Or if autumn to you
means more spookiness rather than cosiness, you might want a scary zombie graphic novel.
So The Walking Dead series by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, you may well know from the TV show,
is about a sheriff's deputy who wakes up from a coma into the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
And they're in Kentucky which has been placed into this statewide quarantine and he ends up having to
lead a community to survive in the middle of this zombie apocalypse. So there's a whole series of
graphic novels which are really popular and once you've enjoyed those there are also novels set in
the same universe but with different characters and storylines, so I would recommend those as
well. Or you could go for spooky meets cosy and read Sheets by Brenna Thumler, which is a really
cute story about the unlikely friendship between a girl and a ghost who haunts the laundromat.
And in this world, the afterlife is this whole community, so ghosts have jobs and support groups,
they have emotional therapy to help them deal with what's happened to them, so it's this very sweet
but often rather sad story with a really lovely ending. And while we're on the slightly sad,
bittersweet stories, Dan and Sam by Mark Watson and Oliver Harud is about a couple tragically
torn apart when the wife dies in an accident. And we then check in on them once every year
on Halloween, so it's very autumnal, when Sam comes back to life for one day only. Snd she
says she will keep doing this every year until Dan falls in love again. So as you can tell
from that premise, that is a rather bittersweet story of wanting Dan to move on and be happy,
but also wanting to cherish the relationship that they had. And I think Autumn is a bit of
a bittersweet season sometimes so that's perfect. The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen is a YA graphic
novel about a Vietnamese American boy called Thien who bonds with his parents over the books that
they borrow together from the library. But they don't speak fluent English, and so sometimes Thien
struggles to find the right words in Vietnamese to tell them how he's feeling, particularly when
it comes to telling them that he's gay. So we get this merge in this book of the contemporary
story with some history with the fairy tales they read together, so some magic in there, all really
beautifully drawn together. And finally there is a graphic novel called Blossoms in Autumn by Zidrou
and Aimee de Jhong, which is about a romance blossoming between two people in the autumn of
their lives. So we have a widower called Ulysses who has just been forced into an early retirement,
and he meets a woman called Mediterranea who is grieving her mother who she had been caring for
up until her death. So Ulysses and Mediterranea, you can see there's a bit of an Odyssey reference
in there. And the two of them meet and start up a romance, so it's a very sweet story about
getting a second chance at life. So I would love to know your suggestions for the cosiest autumnal
graphic novels. Do leave us a comment below, and I will also link here to a video we made before
on the best graphic novels for people who've never read one before if you're just getting
started with this format. So do click through and give that a watch, and we'll see you next time!