if you never read a graphic novel before
it's easy to feel a bit left out here on
booktube because they are so popular
here and it's hard to know where to
start so in this book rate video I'm
here to help you out because before I
ever read a graphic novel I thought they
all had to be about superheroes so I
wasn't sure where I'd find one to suit
my reading taste and I also wasn't sure
how easy I would find the actual reading
experience of reading a graphic novel
but it turns out I didn't need to worry
I've read quite a lot now and absolutely
loved them and found them really
accessible and in a really big range of
genres so I have picked nine here of the
best recommendations I think for
beginners these are a range of genres
and I think you'll find ones to suit you
so the first one I ever read was the
diary of a teenage girl by Phoebe
Gloeckner and this is actually a great
one for beginners because it's only part
graphic novel and part traditional prose
so this is about a 15 year old girl
called Minnie who starts up a
relationship with her mother's boyfriend
so this book does cover a lot of heavy
issues from drug abuse to sexual assault
a lot of it is based on the author's own
life but I think it's a really great
introduction to reading some passages
drawn as comics and it's also just a
really interesting use of the format so
once you've got the hang of reading the
format then we can move into books that
are entirely graphic novels like pumpkin
heads by Rainbow Rowell and faith Aaron
Hicks so this is a really it's a sweet
story it's actually perfect for autumn
because it's set on a pumpkin patch but
it's so lovely you can just read it all
year round so this is about a pair of
best friends who work every autumn on a
pumpkin patch and then they don't see
each other the rest of the year but this
is their last year working together
before they go off to college so in the
last night they go on an adventure and
it's just adorable and such a lovely
looking book it's so fun to see this
pumpkin patch really properly visualized
and while we're on the really sweet
stories heart-stopper by Alice Osmond is
one I've seen all over booktube at the
moment maybe with books in particular
has been raving about this this is
definitely one to read if you want to
join in with some of the conversations
so this one is a really sweet love story
about two boys could Charlie and Nick
who go to the same all-boys grammar
school and this one is a series so if
you fall in love with the characters
here you can keep going an extra
slightly different type of love story so
last two are wire
down in sand by Mark Watson and Oliver
her it is for adults and is a bit more
bittersweet so this is about Dan and Sam
who are very happily married couple
until a tragic accident happened and Sam
dies and so over the next year after her
death Dan is finding it really really
hard to move on he goes and talks to her
grave all the time he says goodnight to
her in bed at night it's very sad it's
all in black and white for these words
but then on the anniversary of her death
it bursts into color and some kind of
magic brings sound back just for the
night and she says that once a year on
the night of her death she can come back
just for that night and she'll keep
doing that every year until Dan falls in
love again so this one is a really sweet
story but also very moving and explores
quite an emotionally complicated issue
of falling in love again after a loss
and that's something really different
for fans of Marie Kondo you might not
know that she wrote a graphic novel
called the life-changing manga of
tidying up so this is about a young
woman who uses Marie Kondos methods but
ends up tidying more than just her house
so if you're a fan of Marie Kondo you
love the TV show maybe you haven't
picked up the original book this is a
really sweet alternative it's a great
way of learning Marie condos methods
through the form of a story and it has
got a little bit of a romance in here as
well so it's not just all about tidying
but you can also get graphic nonfiction
so one of the most famous examples of
this is Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi's
so this is the story of such of his
childhood in Iran during the Islamic
Revolution and then the second volume
which is also included in here sees her
moving to Austria for high school to
escape the war and then coming back to
Iran four years later and having to face
that culture shock all over again so I
learned so much by reading this both
about the Islamic Revolution but also
just about Marjon Sasha Pease
experiences of navigating her Iranian
identity with also her identity as a
feminist so for example challenging the
notion that the veil necessarily has to
be a symbol of oppression and then once
I'd loved that one I went on to read
embroideries by the same author so this
time this is about an afternoon where ma
Jones mother and grandmother and a group
of their other female friends and
neighbors came together for an afternoon
of drinking tea and gossiping and this
is a really lovely light-hearted
embroidery of these women's lives and
then telling some quite outrageous
stories like how to enjoy being a
mistress or how to fake your virginity
or how to escape an arranged marriage
and then another very heavy one one that
I still really recommend is Mouse by Art
Spiegelman and this was one of the first
graphic novels to get serious academic
attention so this book is Spiegelman
retelling his father's experiences of
surviving the Holocaust as a Polish Jew
and in the book the Jewish people are
drawn as mice and the Germans as cats so
it's obviously very symbolic and it's
also very postmodern so in the book Art
Spiegelman talks about the different
artistic choices that he could make and
kind of retells the story of him writing
this book within the book it's
absolutely brilliant and then to finish
on one for fans of classics I've got
blast town by Isabel greenberg so Isabel
Greenberg is the author of 100 nights of
hero which is another one that's been
really popular here on booktube so I'm
sure you've seen that talked about blast
town is her new book and this is about
the Bronte siblings so when they were
younger the Bronte's wrote these
childhood stories about a fictional
world called blast town and in this book
vast town is brought to life and the
Bronte's can actually step inside it so
it's this really great mix of real
stories from the Bronte's lives as well
as Isabel Greenberg's fantastic
imagination at work here but as you can
see from the amazing displays behind me
here gosh comics the range of graphic
novels is just endless and I've already
chosen just from looking this morning
the next one I want to buy which is
through the woods by Emily Carroll which
looks like Brothers Grimm style stories
and if you are more reading
recommendations from Britt break we have
loads click on this playlist to browse
whatever you want and do come to gosh
comics to browse they're amazing graphic
novel selection see you next time