Meeting Wrap-Up: Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys

The Book Buddies Book Club met yesterday to discuss graphic novels, specifically the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries. It was a great meeting and we had our biggest group yet - 11 kids!

We began by discussion graphic novels and what distinguishes graphic novels from comic books. We talked about what graphic novels we've read (favorites included Spiderman and Spidergirl, Babymouse, Magic Pickle and Bone) and how reading graphic novels is different from reading regular narrative books. A lot of club members prefer reading graphic novels; others like both equally. Some of the things we didn't like about reading graphic novels are that it's easy to get confused about which panel to read next and you can accidentally skip ahead in the story. One club member also mentioned that sometimes the fonts can be hard to read. We all agreed that Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were stories that translated well to the graphic novel format. We were divided about whether or not anything could be made into a graphic novel. We thought about all of our past book club books and decided that some of them would not make good graphic novels (Me and the Pumpkin especially) and that the best graphic novels are ones with a lot of action.

Following that, we individually discussed the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, The Demon of River Heights and The Ocean of Osyria. Overall, we liked the Hardy Boys mystery better than the Nancy Drew mystery because some members were confused as to what exactly the mystery was in The Demon of River Heights. We talked about plot in both books and the artistic style - Hardy Boys is drawn in the manga style (japanese animation characterized by exaggerated eyes, simplified features and simple outlines). Most club members like the manga style and felt it worked well for the Hardy Boys.

For our craft, we worked on creating our own graphic novels. Everyone had a lot of great ideas - there is a ton of creativity in our book club! I found blank comic pages online at the Enchanted Learning website. I've linked it up so you can print the pages and make your own graphic novel as well!

It was a great meeting and I want to thank so many club members for coming! We had a really interesting discussion and I'm looking forward to next month!