Graphic novels were a lifeline for my kids during a year in Central America

Washington

When my eldest son was a toddler, he constantly propositioned people with his favourite phrase: “Book-on-a-couch?” He was so passionate about books that when his injured grandmother had to babysit him for an entire work day, she spent eight hours reading him one book-on-a-couch after another. The kid was in heaven.

Now almost 10, Liam still craves good stories, as does his younger brother, Reid. We make regular family trips to our small-town Maine library, often coming home with a haul that overflows two tote bags. We appreciate moderation in other realms, but when it comes to books, we indulge.

So when we decided to spend an academic year in Central America, my biggest worry wasn’t Zika or typhoid, but a dearth of picture books. We limited ourselves to a single duffel bag of possessions per person, for the year. Liam could get by with digital novels, but Reid, 6, was just on the cusp of learning to read. It seemed to me we had a choice. We could forgo binoculars, rain jackets and hiking shoes to fill one of our four bags with a scant 40 picture books to be reread dozens of times throughout the year, or we could force Reid to go cold turkey on books.

Feeling like a bad parent, I chose the latter.

Last August, we settled into our home in Monteverde, a small village on the Continental Divide in Costa Rica. Unlike most towns there, the village does have a library. It’s never locked, allowing for 24-hour, self-service checkout. There are more than 20,000 books. There is just one disappointment: The picture books. The yellow spine of a dog-eared 1969 edition of Curious George Rides a Bike, originally donated to a school in Colorado, is the sort of book that stands out.

For a while, Reid got by on the materials his teacher sent home to practice reading — three easy-reader books per week, including two in Spanish and one in English. But these simple storylines were no substitute for our many favourites at home, such as Harry and Horsie, The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County or the zany, numerically-themed tale of Zero the Hero.

Our lifeline came in a monthly care package of graphic novels from my parents. Words per pound, graphic novels pack a punch, while also providing the kids with the illustrations they craved. Often exhausted at the end of the school day, Liam and Reid happily escaped into their graphic novels. They devoured Red’s Planet, featuring a kid who travels to a stunning planet and becomes a high-top-wearing alien; Mighty Jack, set in a magical — and sometimes hostile — garden; and Hilda and the Midnight Giant, depicting a spunky protagonist in a Scandinavian wonderland. These characters’ attempts to make sense of their awesome and sometimes frustratingly unfamiliar surroundings were cathartic as my kids navigated new norms around language, bullying and friendship.

Their favourite books depicted the seemingly bipolar drives of young children: Wanting to throw on a cape — or to grab a gun, frankly, regardless of their parents’ pacifist proclivities — to take on the bad guys, or their need to cuddle and coo over a fluffy, big-eyed stuffed animal. As we prepared to return to Maine, I wistfully eyed our prized collection of graphic novels, which we donated to the Monteverde library. I’ll miss our family knowing a set of books so well that each character and illustration is a shared reference.

—Washington Post