One of our projects in The Rye Bookshop this year was to introduce a children’s graphic novel collection, curated by our staff. 2026 is the National Year of Reading, a campaign designed to promote a love of reading throughout the country. In recent years, our attention has been occupied by the little black rectangles that have suddenly emerged in our hands, feeding us bite-sized “content” for five seconds before moving onto the next item on the social media menu.
Our busy lives make it difficult for us settle down for ten minutes a day to read, but a growing concern has been the waning interest by children. The National Literacy Trust reports how just 1 in 3 young people (aged 8-18) say that they enjoy reading in their free time, as of 2025, which is a 36% decrease from their reports in 2005. The key word that appears in these reports is “enjoyment”. Children are always going to react negatively to being told what they should do, and being handed a classic book, no matter how good, will always be seen as homework.
Graphic novels can inspire a love of storytelling, not just reading. Comics teach the reader to follow a story through visuals, picking up the breadcrumbs laid down by artists without even realising it. They can be entertaining, funny, dramatic, or informative. Comics are not a genre, but a medium. The talent displayed on these shelves are dedicated individuals who live and breathe comics.
Diversity is another factor in our choice of books, making sure there is something for everyone. We included popular titles, Carlos Sanchez’s Rune books, and Alice Osman’s teen romance Heartstopper, but it was also important for us to include a diverse range of subject matter.
One of the biggest trends in recent years is the popularity of manga from Japan, thanks to publishers such as Viz Media and Kodansha Press making titles like the pirate epic One Piece (Eiichiro Oda) or the beautiful fantasy series Witch Hat Atelier (Kamome Shirahama) finally available in the UK.
5-8 years are the ages of independent reading, where children begin to recognise characters, or the names of authors. Here in our collection, we see Lock and Angell bring chaos back to Greek mythology in Tiny Hercules. Luke Pearson’s Hilda series encourages a love of outdoor exploration in Nordic-inspired adventures. Donut Feed the Squirrels (Mika Song) sees a squirrel duo perform a heist on a donut truck. The fun cartooning of this range inspires a love of storytelling in children.
In the 9-12 demographic your reader has developed their love of the medium, and are now hungry for meatier stories. These can be one-off tales, like Millie of the Manor (Karina Evans and Andrea Bell), in which the introverted Millie grows to feel more comfortable around others when she is invited to a mystery-themed party by a classmate.
Raina Telgemeier is the champion of relatable children’s comics, often inspired by her own experiences at school, as we see in Smile, Sisters, or Drama, all of which have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list. She has also illustrated and co-written the book, The Cartoonist’s Club, which sees a group of schoolchildren meet up in the library to make comics, and offers mini tutorials for the budding cartoonist at home.
Superman Smashes the Klan is a terrific superhero tale, in which the Man of Steel protects a family of Chinese immigrants from the racist attacks of Ku Klux Klan, in this all-ages adventure of truth, justice, and a better tomorrow. There are also series in this range, like Lightfall (Tim Probert) or Jeff Smith’s Bone, introducing fantasy adventures to the young reader.
The teen reader is also represented, with titles like 83 Days in Mariupol (Don Brown) offering a journalistic perspective to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A personal favourite is the manga Neighborhood Craftsmen (Akihito Sakaue), a series of short stories each focused on a different craftsperson in Edo, Japan.
If we want to encourage a new generation of readers, we have to allow them to love it, whether they fall in love with a well-tested classic, or a daring donut heist between two squirrels.
Image Credits: Oliver Brooks/Rye Bookshop .