Owly, The Way Home-now in a graphic novel for new audiences

We often chat about all age comic books. Since 2012 we’ve done a weekly podcast where we talk about some of the week’s new comic books. That podcast is accompanied by a post where all of the week’s comic books and graphic novels that are good for kids are listed. Owly is an OG all age graphic novel and the first book in Eisner Award-winning series is being reprinted, this time with color illustrations done by creator/artist Andy Runton.

His first Owly adventure was published in 2004; it was entitled The Way Home & Bittersweet Sumer. Runton’s books were initially published in black and white. As librarians and parents know, there’s just something about a graphic novel that entices children into wanting to read it.  Our eight year-old is a great example of this in that he knew Owly and he’s seen some Owly books in his class room, but he’s never read one.

Owly, The Way Home in graphic novel format is immediately pleasing to him for several reasons. First off, it’s in color and regardless of how great teachers, librarians or parents say a book is, it’s more unlikely that elementary kids to read it if it’s black & white. Secondly, as our son demonstrated, Owly is a known property for elementary school students. This is especially good for reluctant or delayed readers, like our son, because it provides further encouragement for them to read.

That last part is great for early elementary aged students because the text in Owly is simple. It’s very close to a wordless graphic novel in that Owly himself doesn’t speak. The characters around him speak in simple sentences, but Owly communicates in simple pictographs, punctuation marks and facial expressions.

Our eight year-old also felt confident after reading the graphic novel because it’s a book that he could read in its entirety. At the end of it he even counted the pages. “I just read a book that was 148 pages!” he said.

Owly teaches lessons, but not in the preachy way that will make kids tune out. All he wants to do is help people and get some friends. These are lessons and desires that any kids can get behind and relate to. In The Way Home he befriends a worm who has become separated from his family. Initially Wormy is alarmed that an owl is helping him, but after nursing the little guy back to health he realizes that all Owly wants to do is help him.

The lessons and slow context might be too juvenile for those approaching 10. Having said that, our 10 and a half year old grabbed this graphic novel and ran up stairs to read it by himself. He already knew the Owly story and was eager to see the pages in color.

It makes sense that Owly is published by Graphix, the same company that does Dog Man. In some ways, Owly feels like a simpler character that students will meet and love before they level up. And if you’re library or students are anything like our kids then they’ll keep coming back to the introductory material to see how they’ve changed or what new adventures they’ve gotten into.