I think graphic novels can be an amazing source of education and/or entertainment to those who are more visual among us. There is a very good reason that some people struggle with reading and graphic novels can bridge that gap.
As for series fiction, well, there is a new series starting every month, it seems. But for good reason. Just last week I had a teen come in wanting to start a new series, "a long one, if you have it." I gave her the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare and she left happy. Teens get invested in their characters and want to see them over and over. Series books meet that desire. So while they may be a complete pain to anyone who orders books for a YA department, the teens love them and that's what counts.
Larkin is 14 years old and is not really a fan of his age (or his height, for that matter). This book is written as a notebook/blog for an English class.
Things aren't really going Larkin's way. It turns out his girlfriend isn't really his girlfriend, just a friend. He's not very cool (and neither is his best friend). There is a world class jerk, Dalton, who is bullying him somewhat. His older sister is a total drama queen. And his parents won't let him get a job so that he can buy a super expensive video camera and fulfill his dream of being a world famous director/cinematographer. Life is hard.
This is an illustrated novel, so dispersed throughout the text were pictures. I thought the pictures really enhanced the text and added to the overall story. This story was really fun to read and went by quickly.
These books made me want to rush out and buy all of the canned goods from my local Wal-Mart. They were terrifying.
Told in journal form, the first book, Life As We Knew It, Miranda starts her journal in the usual teen way. She talks about school, boys, her family and other very normal things. Eventually she casually mentions that an asteroid is set to hit the moon and astronomers say you'll be able to see it with a simple telescope or binoculars. The night of the impact, everyone on Miranda's block is outside, set to watch the event. Only when it happens, something goes terribly wrong and the moon is pushed significantly closer to the Earth. This causes all kinds of weather/environmental problems like tsunamis, volcanic eruptions (and the subsequent ash cloud), and lightening storms.
The rest of her diary (and we get her perspective again in This World We Live In) is her chronicling this very challenging time. Plants are dying due to the ash cloud, which means animals are dying. Stores are totally out of canned goods. People begin to starve. The infrastructure completely goes under.
The Dead & the Gone is more of a companion novel to Life As We Knew It, which is eventually tied together with This World We Live In. In this book, we meet the Morales family, who live in NYC. Alex's parents disappear in the tidal surge/tsunami after the initial asteroid impact and he's left to care for his two younger sisters alone. Where in the first book we get a more rural view of the catastrophe, this is the city's perspective. Infrastructure is a bit better in the city, but you also have the problem of more bodies to deal with.
This trio of books is terrifying. It is presented in a way that makes the situation feel plausible, which is a very scary thought. These remain popular in my library among kids who like dystopian and post-apocalyptic books.
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