Every parent wants to get their kid to love reading. Ok, not all parents (no judgement.. mostly), but I'd say it's mostly a consensus that reading is an activity worth pursuing. Video games? That one's still up in the air (I'm pro btw, although only quality games, none of that Roblox stuff). Anyways, for as much as parents would like their kids to read, there is a subset of kids who fall somewhere on the spectrum of "meh" all the way to "I HATE IT!!!". Half the stuff you read on the internet about kids reading is how to get kids who hate reading to start liking it. There's always the same bits of advice, which honestly is mostly all good. "If you read for 30 minutes I'll give you a treat!" "If you read this book, we can watch the movie after!" "Maybe we should try the audiobook?" Or the all too popular "You just haven't read something that resonates with you yet, let's keep looking." If you've ever actually tried out that last one, you know that 100% of the time, you'll end up reading a graphic novel.
For those of us that are millennials, we have thoughts about "graphic novels." While we didn't grow up with graphic novels by today's definition, we had their maligned predecessor, the comic book. It's possible I'm misremembering it, but I don't ever remember our parents saying something like "so you don't like reading the Boxcar Children? How about you try some comic books instead!" Comic books were definitely not considered quality reading time. Our parents bucketed them into the smut category reserved for video games and South Park. We are not our parents though. We know that comic books were actually kind of great. Now we get to correct their mistakes and not only let our kids read the modern day version of comic books, but actually encourage it. I wasn't aware of how popular graphic novels had gotten. Dog Man is obviously an institution at this point. But just walk through the children's aisles in your local bookstore and you'll see tons of options. We've added a bunch to our personal library over the years and I can honestly say that some of these are my overall favorite books of all time (reviews incoming).
So graphic novels are great, huh?
Well, you've read the title, you know where I'm taking this. Objectively, graphic novels are great at engaging kids in reading. As any parent knows though, you will at some point be the one reading these books to your kids even if they are old enough to read them themselves. Or is that just me? Does my daughter just know that I'm a big softie? Honestly, probably both of these things are true. Either way, you'll be reading these books aloud and you'll quickly realize you need to throw everything you knew about read alouds out. All those sentences that end with "said So and so" to give your kid the context on who's actually talking? Gone. Complete nonsensical sound effects filling up entire spreads? Absolutely. Super thin dialogue because the pictures are telling most of the story? Awesome, but also yes.
So how do you read a graphic novel aloud to your kid? You could just power through. My wife powers through. My wife also hates reading graphic novels. Why? Because when you just power through you are opening yourself up to literally a million questions. "WHO SAID THAT." "WAIT WHAT'S HAPPENING." "WHERE'S MY NIGHT SNACK" (ok, that last one comes even when it's not a graphic novel). Before you know it, it's 9:24pm, she's still on page 11, and nobody has any idea what is even going on.
The voices do most of the work
Now I'm not going to profess that I'm some expert on reading graphic novels. Hopefully though you've read my blog on doing voices and know that it's something I lean into. For graphic novels, it's less of a lean and more of a full on dive. One way for your kid to figure out who's talking? Have a super distinctive voice for each character. Mine aren't even that good. However, nobody could deny that they aren't extremely recognizable as to who's talking. Voices are enough to easily get through 75% of the annoying questions you'll get while reading a graphic novel.
The next trick isn't quite as smooth unfortunately, but it's "the point." Sometimes it's not dialogue and just narrative prose. Well in that case I'll just do a little finger point on the panel I'm on so they can tie it to whatever picture accompanies it. What do you do about all those visceral sound effects? Do you just ruin your voice doing them and risk sounding like a lunatic? Well, yes to the latter, but for the former, honestly I just wing it. If it says "krakooooom" in hard to read italics? It might come out as "crack!!!" instead. Nobody's going to call me out on that and it's a much lighter mental load not having to figure out how to say these things (note: sometimes I actually do get called out for it, but I've mastered the art of just ignoring it and continuing to read anyways).
The last tip I can provide is not one you want to hear if you don't like reading graphic novels aloud. It's to slooooow down. Think back to when you read comic books. The pictures are the best part! They are still the best part for the kids too. Let them soak up those cool images of some weird hot dog thing with big biceps attacking a city while a half man half dog (half bear pig?) fights it off.
So there you have it. It is possible to read graphic novels and not hate every minute of it. It's not going to roll off your tongue like Dr. Seuss or anything like that. But I promise you, you don't have to hate every minute of it. Maybe just like half of it.