But It's Mostly Just Pictures!

Yesterday one of our voracious readers eagerly came in to pick up the new entry in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. The new book is called Welcome to the Jungle, and is a graphic novel, or as some like to call them, cartoons. There is a debate about how cartoons and graphic novels differ, if at all, but that is fodder for another blog post. Anyhow, our fan of the Dresden Files was crushed at what he saw. At first glance he didn't realize it was in comic format, he was mainly concerned about the length--it was less than half the size of the other 10 novels in the series. You know how it is when you are looking forward to reading the latest offering by your favorite author--you might have to have your name in the queue to get it and it finally arrives. Book nerds I know, but fun none the less. I felt for this man. He flipped through the book and kept repeating "But it's mostly just pictures!" To make matters worse he had requested we purchase this book. He dejectedly handed back the novel, not interested. Graphic novels are immensely popular in our library, but I'm not sure how crossing between two formats will fare with readers. How would you feel about reading 10 novels in a series and having the next one be in graphic format? To be fair this is apparently a prequel so it can stand alone as a graphic novel. There are many angry reader comments on Amazon's review section for the book. Apparently our fan was not the only one caught out by this.