Recently I listened to Daniel Wilingham's book, Why Don't Kids Like School?, about how we can use what we know about how the mind works to make school work better for kids.

And I found myself nodding along in chapter two as he talked about reading: "Do whatever you can to get kids to read, but it's not enough. People sometimes ask whether graphic novels count, or whether audiobooks do. The answer is an emphatic yes." I couldn't agree with Wilingham more.

Sure, I've heard the argument that students need "rigor" at school. The canon. The classics.

But I would certainly side with Penny Kittle and repeat the mic-drop line from her book, Book Love: "A book isn't rigorous if students aren't reading it."

Sure, we can give kids only Dickens, Austen, and Hawthorne. That's an option. We can say only print-reading is "real" reading. But what will we gain, and what will we lose? It seems pretty obvious to me that while a few more kids might read classics if they're the only option, what will mostly happen is that we'll lose the majority of kids who might have started to love reading in our classrooms, given different starting points.

So today I want to share the graphic novels I'll be showcasing in my classroom library this year. I'm really happy with this collection for my high school students, and I hope you'll find some new options for your library as I share mine. Of course, as always, you know your community best.

Dig into the research and see the infographic and sources here: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2026/07/the-uncrackable-justification-for-choice-reading.html

Watch Gene Luen Yang's Ted Talk, "Comics Belong in the Classroom" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjvTIP7pV20

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