What to Read to Your Kids

2021 has seen many trends in children’s literature (body positivity and consent will make an appearance in next week’s blog post), but most fun is the onslaught of witches, ghosts and vampires, particularly in graphic novels. I’m not sure how to account for this uptake in supernatural activity on the page, except that maybe the last two years already have us feeling like we’re suspended between real life and an alternate universe. Magic has always been irresistible to kids—long before Harry Potter arrived on the scene, I can recall my own childhood obsession with The Blue-Nosed Witch—but perhaps at no time more than now do we share a collective desire to wield spells that could change the course of things. Of course, as the stories below caution us, magic is infinitely more messy than it seems.

All the graphic novels I recommend here—age ranges are provided in the headers—have come out in the past few months, just ahead of Spooky Season. That said, not a single one of these has anything to do with Halloween itself, so I have no doubt they will be read again and again, regardless of the season. But, with fire pit weather upon us and talk of spooky costumes in the air, I can’t think of a better time to drop a few new witchy reads into your child’s lap. (Amazon affiliate links below, though all of these titles are currently in stock at Old Town Books!)