We are delighted to welcome award-winning  Aoife Dooley to the blog to talk about graphic novels, the formative role they are able to play in children’s reading, in developing empathy and understanding, representation and to introduce her fantastically fun new series Squid Squad.

I’m Aoife Dooley and I’m an illustrator and Writer from Dublin Ireland. My main focus is creating graphic novels and stories for kids age 5-14 and doing workshops on how to create your own stories.

Over the past couple of years Graphic Novels have come a long way and have begun to boom in popularity particularly in the UK and Ireland. Kids and teens are being introduced to a new way of storytelling and reading. For some, it’s the first book they’ve ever read and maybe the one that will give them the confidence to continue to read more.

Graphic novels are magic!

When I was younger, I felt like reading wasn’t for me. I tried over and over again to read novels and keep up with my class but the words just went in the front of my brain and back out the other side. I found it hard to follow a story without pictures. All the words squeezed together on a page. It doesn’t really look appealing to me, especially when I can read a book with pictures. With pictures my brain can follow a story easier and I’m more likely to remember it, because I learn visually. This is something I only realised much later in life as I discovered I am autistic. But back then reading was hard and learning was hard too.

This was in the 90’s and 00’s and graphic novels at the time weren’t considered books. I had never seen a comic before until one day I decided to read the local newspaper in my grandparents’ house. Something on the front cover caught my attention and I decided to look through. I came across a section with drawings and stories. These stories where in little boxes and short. There were three different stories and the excitement I felt when I realised that there was a new one every day. My grandad would be looking for the newspaper to read the sports section and I would be hiding in the bathroom reading the comics. Later I was introduced to Calvin and Hobbes by my aunty. I was 11 and we were shopping in London and she showed me this book. It was like the comics from the newspaper but in a giant book (almost bigger than me at the time). At this point I don’t think I had read a book and being able to read this gave me the confidence to read more books like Jaqueline Wilson for example.

How graphic novels can make a difference

I noticed over the years how books are changing and there’s more and more representation, I also noticed that more teachers and librarians are getting behind graphic novels and I think this is amazing and here is why- when I was younger, I never found any characters like me, someone I could relate to, someone who felt familiar.

This would have been a massive help when I was a kid to feel seen, because I didn’t for a long time like many other kids and I felt lost. Now there are an array of different graphic novels around many topics. I have seen the power of this personally from doing workshops with kids and how being able to relate to someone fictional or not can make you feel seen and not alone, how it can build community and friendships. I think this is so important now more than ever with social media. It’s already hard growing up. Introducing kids to books and things or people you think they will relate to can open up a whole world that’s yet to be discovered.

Graphic novels also give the opportunity for kids who learn visually to follow with everyone else and not get lost easily and feel like reading is not for them. Reading graphic novels as part of a group setting can open up discussions and bring up topics that are important to learn while growing up Including how to treat people and learning about people, differences and breaking down stereotypes.

Squid Squad

Creating Squid Squad was super fun and a completely different experience. Drawing people (oh I don’t think I’ll ever be able to draw the perfect hand, after 10 years that is still the hardest thing) but drawing sea creatures? It gave me some more freedom for movement and whacky posture and I enjoyed this a lot. This is also true for creating a fictional world and this was something new to me as a lot of the things I’ve done in the past have been based or loosely based on real places.

You can see this in my previous book Frankie’s World and if you’re from Dublin or know Dublin you will spot a few things. The book is set in the deep see in a town called ‘nowhere’ - which is literally in the middle of nowhere. Ollie and Zing are the main characters and live in a trailer together just outside the town with their pet sea anemone Barney. Ollie is a vampire Squid and Zing is a type of Sea slug (aka sea bunny) because he has little bunny ears. These are based on some deep sea creatures and I’ve included more throughout the book including an angler fish.

I also created some fun ‘undiscovered’ characters like Snakey Unicorn Thing who has yet to be spotted by humans. The book is split into 4 short stories or episodes following the characters from the town, the mysteries they solve and the bonds that they make. Friendship is a big theme in the book and being true to yourself (like Zing, Zing is my spirit animal, we all need to be more like Zing).

A huge thank you to Aoife for the blog and to Scholastic for the opportunity.