The Many Adventures of Johnny Mutton {Exploring Graphic Novels}

On Sunday, I celebrated Being Our of My Reading Comfort Zone with Ruth Ayers and community.  It's been about ten years since Baby Mouse and Lunch Lady entered my life.  I've been teaching younger grades recently and thought I would share books I'm exploring to learn more about graphic novels myself.  I'm also not going to google - What is a graphic novel?, until next weekend.  I want to explore, learn on my own and share my learning here.

The Many Adventures of Johnny Mutton written and illustrated by James Proimos is filled with six short stories.  A great feature for transitional readers who might be striving to retain longer stories.  The first story is a story we are all familiar with...a baby left on the front porch of a house.  But this baby isn't a human baby, it's a baby sheep who a human agrees to raise and care for.  This sets Johnny up for being a little bit different which guides his adventures and interactions with others.  He is funny and I really enjoyed his twists that make him successful in unlikely situations for a sheep.

I learned graphic novels can have short stories that can stand alone.  This graphic novel seemed to have more story through out the book above or below the graphic box making the reading a bit more involved than just speech bubbles.  As a reader, I love epilogues and this book has a follow up for each character on a page titled; Where Are They Now?