Check It Out

Discover Biographies and Memoirs in a Graphic Novel Format

February 2nd, 2010 KathyB

Starting in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the term graphic novel was first coined as artists and writers began to create more and more sophisticated stories using the traditional comic book format. With the publication of Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1985, the violent and disturbing subject of real-life war was first presented through the format of the graphic novel. In Spiegelman’s award-winning Maus,  Spiegelman shares the stories told by his father Vladek Spiegelman about life in Poland during WWII. Since Spiegelman’s Maus, the genre has continued to make giant leaps beyond Archie jokes and superheroes to such complex issues as war and wartime, aging and disease, and GLBTQ issues amongst others.

Now available on Madison Public Library’s Don’t Miss Lists,  check out our new Graphic Novel Biographies and Memoirs booklist featuring such titles as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Joe Sacco’s Palestine, and David Small’s Stitches. While some of these graphic novels tell the story of such famous historical people as Emma Goldman, Martin Luther King, and Leo Trotsky, many of the books are firsthand accounts of the actual writer/artist at some pivotal point in their life story.

Ask your librarian where the Graphic Novels section is in your library today!

Entry Filed under: Ashman Branch, Authors and Books, Comics and Anime, New Materials, Pop Culture, Teens