For the Graphic Novel Making Contest, we want you to create your own story. However, many mainstream stories—from classics to memoirs, to nonfiction and classic works of literature--have had a graphic novel adaptation to bring the works to a broader audience.
Why adapt a popular existing work? One main reason is to popularize it further. When a book hasn’t been adapted to the silver screen, or if the movie adaptation has not met your expectations of the novel itself, then a graphic novel is the next best thing to bring that work to life. A graphic novel can fill in details an author can’t. It can depict color, movement and background in a way that mere words simply can’t do justice to, no matter how skilled the author who wrote it. It gives the original work a three-dimensional aspect so that either the readers of the original book will want to see the adaptation, or the people reading the graphic novel may want to read the book. Either way, an adapted graphic novel allows the book to reach a broader audience. And it can be a great way to be introduced to classic literature!
There is, of course, a tradeoff here. Just because you’ve read the graphic novel doesn’t mean you’ve read the book. The book may be the inspiration for the graphic novel, but as with “Cliff Notes”, it gives you the idea of the book, and not the reading experience itself. Each may compliment one another, but neither has all the possible ingredients. When one of my favorite books, “Watership Down” was recently made into a graphic novel, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It added to the original story, but it did not replace my reading experience.
So, if you’ve ever been curious about a novel or classic, pick up the graphic novel version of it at the library. Maybe you’ll find afterwards that the book may be worth reading after all!
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