Either I’m getting better at reading graphic novels or I’m finding better ones to read.  I brought several graphic novels home with me over the summer to read.  Here they are:

Brain Camp by Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, and Faith Erin Hicks (First Second 2010):

Jenna and Lucas have been labeled losers by their friends and family.  Desperate for a last chance to make something of their children, their parents sign them up for a summer at Camp Fielding.  Camp Fielding promises to take juvenile delinquents and slackers and turn them into high achievers with high test scores.  Jenna and Lucas discover that something fishy–or is it something birdy–going on at camp.  They band together to figure out the insidious secrets behind the camp’s success, but will it be too late?

Amulet, Book One:  The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic 2008)

I now understand why this series is so popular in my classroom.  I snagged the first one to take home and read over the summer, but most of the rest of the series never came back.  I hope they show back up sometime, or I’ll have to buy more to replace them.  After a family tragedy, Jenna and Navin move with their mother to an old house that has been in the family for generations.  It needs a lot of love before becoming livable, and during the cleanup, the children discover the house holds many secrets.  Before the first night is over, they have all fallen through a hole into an alternate reality.  A monster devours their mother, and Jenna is claimed by the stone amulet.  If she accepts it power, she will have the help of mechanical creatures to save their mother.  But if she accepts it power, she also accepts the danger it brings.