Two Must-Read Graphic Novels for Young Readers

At the beginning of the school year, middle school librarians across Illinois look forward to the release of the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Award list. This is a list of twenty outstanding books that have been nominated by teachers, librarians, and children across the state of Illinois and was established in honor of Rebecca Caudill, a teacher and children’s book author who lived in Urbana, Illinois. You can find this year’s list by clicking here: https://www.rebeccacaudill.org/images/2025/2025CaudillAuthorList1.pdf.

Today I’d like to write about two books on the list that really captured my attention: Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice and Muhammad Najem, War Reporter, both of which are memoirs in graphic novel form, or "graphic memoirs."

Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice tells the true-life story of Tommie Smith, the man who won the gold medal in the 200-meter sprint at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. He was also one of the two men (John Carlos was the other) who raised their black-gloved fists in the air to protest the unfair treatment of African-Americans in the United States. The photo of this captured moment has since become iconic. 

I’ll be honest: While I had seen this photo before, I knew nothing about Tommie Smith, the man in it. What I learned was that he grew up in rural Texas, the seventh of twelve children. His father was a sharecropper who was constantly working to provide for his large family. His father's strength and incredible work ethic were two qualities that really inspired Tommie Smith in his own quest for greatness. 

From the beginning, Smith was a talented athlete. He played many sports–really well–but he finally decided to focus his energies on track, which he excelled at. While attending San Jose State College, he was a member of the track team and broke many sprint records; it was also there that he met and befriended many civil rights activists, whose thinking began to shape his own. 

While many people know of the controversial Black Power salute of the 1968 Olympics, fewer know about the extreme fallout that Tommie Smith and John Carlos experienced as a result of their political protest. (I did not until reading this eye-opening book.) Both Smith and Carlos were condemned by the International Olympic Committee, suspended from the U.S. team, and sent home. And that was just the beginning of it! Once back in the United States, these Olympic medalists were dragged through the mud by the press and banned from participating in national and international competitions. They found it hard to find gainful employment and they received multiple death threats--all for daring to use their world stage to shed a light on the unfair treatment of African-Americans in America. 

Smith’s story is an inspirational one–not only how he rose to greatness but how he persevered in life, despite the extreme backlash against him. Derrick Barnes’s writing does Smith’s story justice, as do the incredible black-and-white illustrations of Dawud Anyabwile (who also illustrated James Patterson’s Becoming Muhammad Ali and the graphic novel editions of Kwame Alexander’s Crossover series). Movement has to be one of the most difficult things for an artist to portray, but Anyabwile does it so successfully in this book. (Take a look for yourself!)

Victory. Stand! has already been named a National Book Award Finalist, YALSA-ALA Winner, and Coretta Scott King Honor Book, and it is not hard to understand why; the book is DYNAMITE! A must-read, not just for middle schoolers, but adults wanting to know more about this time in history, as well. 

Another noteworthy graphic memoir, Muhammad Najem, War Reporter, tells the true story of a young Syrian boy and his family when the civil war in Syria breaks out. In the 2010s, life under the authoritarian Assad regime becomes increasingly dangerous. You have to be careful who you talk to because anyone could be a spy hired by the president. Muhammad and his family frequently have to leave their home and seek out safe houses due to bombings nearby. They lose friends, and the worst happens when Muhammad is only 13 years old: his father, the head of the family, is killed while praying at the mosque. The family reels from this huge loss, but their love for each other keeps them limping forward.   

Over time, Muhammad grows frustrated at always needing to hide and run away from Assad’s missile attacks, so, at 15 years old, he begins to report on what is happening in his country, despite it being incredibly dangerous to do so. Assisted by his older brother Fira, a photojournalist, and his older sister Hiba, a teacher, Muhammad starts to make videos in English and upload them to YouTube. He believes that if people around the world could see what was happening in Syria–to kids!--then they would have to care. 

(Interestingly, the person who came up with the idea for this book was Nora Neus, the CNN producer who “discovered” the young reporter in 2018 and made him a worldwide sensation. Today, in 2024, Muhammad lives in Turkey, but he continues to report on what is happening in Syria.)

As a librarian, what I love about the genre of the graphic memoir is that it allows some of our more reluctant readers, those kids who will always choose a graphic novel over a novel, to learn so much about history, current events, and inspirational figures such as Tommie Smith and Muhammad Najem--in a format they like best. I definitely think that this is a genre that publishers should lean into.

Muhammad Najem reporting