Every year YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) puts together a list of great graphic novels for teens as well as a top 10 list. Here are 2012’s top ten list. Put a hold on them or come check them out at the library today!
- Zahra’s Paradise by Amir and Khalil.
Set in the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra’s Paradise is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has vanished into an extrajudicial twilight zone. What’s keeping his memory from being obliterated is notthe law. It is the grit and guts of his mother, who refuses to surrender her son to fate, and the tenacity of his brother, a blogger, who fuses tradition and technology to explore and explode the void in which Mehdi has vanished. - Scarlet by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev.
Scarlet seeks revenge against the local police department after a police officer falsely accuses her boyfriend of drug possession and kills him. - Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgal.
Anya, embarrassed by her Russian immigrant family and self-conscious about her body, has given up on fitting in at school but falling down a well and making friends with the ghost there just may be worse. - The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld.
The cohost of NPR’s “On the Media” narrates, in cartoon form, two millennia of history of the influence of the media on the populace, from newspapers in Caesar’s Rome to the penny press of the American Revolution to today. - Thor: The Mighty Avenger V. 1. and Thor: The Mighty Avenger V. 2. by Roger Langridge, Chris Samnee, et al.
Banished from his home and stripped of his power, Thor arrives on Earth in search of the legendary hammer that will return his power to him–and finds it in a museum under the care of Jane Foster. - Infinite Kung Fu by Kagan McLeod.
In a future where overcrowding in the afterlife has led to a sudden surge of zombies, kung fu students Lei Kung and Moog Joogular are tasked with stopping the evil Emperor’s ghost and his new army, led by former students of the Immortals. - A Bride’s Story V. 1 and A Bride’s Story V.2 by Kaoru Mori.
As she and her husband adjust to their arranged marriage, Amir strives to find her role as she settles into a new life and a new home in a society quick to define that role for her. - Axe Cop V. 1. by Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle.
Created by five-year-old Malachai Nicolle and illustrated by his older brother, the cartoonist Ethan Nicolle, Axe Cop Volume 1 collects the entire original run of the hit webcomic that has captured the world’s attention with its insanely imaginative adventures. - Daybreak by Brian Ralph.
Told through the perspectives of a silent observer, a one-armed companion guides the reader through a post-apocalyptic world with a zombie-infested landscape. - Wandering Son V. 1. and Wandering Son V. 2 by Takako Shimura.
Shuichi, a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino, a girl who wants to be a boy, become friends in junior high school, where they tackle problems such as gender identity, love, social acceptance, and puberty.
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