The Best Graphic Novels for 10 Year Olds

Sisters Gigi and Lucy haven’t seen eye to eye since their father died. Their mother is worn out by her grief and her demanding job and doesn’t have the capacity to deal with their constant bickering. Now Lucy is a new 6th grader at the school where Gigi is the 8th grade Queen Bee, and on Lucy’s first day, the girls get into an altercation that ends with Lucy challenging her sister (and school fencing champion) to a duel. What follows are chapters alternating between each girl’s first-person narration as they go between the past and present, exploring their relationship and where it went wrong and planning their fencing duel. There’s sports, friendship, sisterhood, family, grief, and even a grandparent relationship in this story, lending it some major kid and adult appeal! 

12-year-old Cici moves from Taiwan to the US with her parents, leaving behind her beloved A-ma (her grandmother). Thankfully, the adjustment period isn’t too hard on her. Although Cici and her parents want to bring her grandmother over for a visit at least, they can’t afford to yet. Cici misses her A-ma with whom she used to go to the market and cook. So when she stumbles upon a kid cooking contest, it feels like the perfect opportunity to earn $1000. The only problem is that Cici can only cook Taiwanese dishes. Fortunately, she’s paired up with an Italian-American girl, Miranda, whose father runs a restaurant (and who practically grew up working in a restaurant). Halfway through the contest, though, each contestant has to compete alone. This is an excellent feel-good, coming-of-age story that pays homage to the love between a granddaughter and her grandmother. 

Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade. As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds—and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?

Still adjusting to a move from Florida to Milwaukee, Aliya is excited to start playing basketball at her new Islamic school, but the girls’ team is well known for losing all their games. With a new coach and renewed team spirit, the girls find something better than high scores in this soaring, sporty graphic novel.

Lori Block is dedicated to her fourth-grade basketball team despite being relegated to an extra period before the real game starts, known as the fifth quarter, where the not-so-good kids play and the points don’t count. That doesn’t matter to Lori, though, because working on her skills gives her hints of self-confidence, which is a nice break from feeling awkward and out of place in her daily life. This is a fast-paced basketball series about perseverance, friendship, and love for the sport.

Something terrible is happening in the skies! Rats are eating the MOON!There’s only ONE hero for the job, a bold and fearsome beast bioengineered in a secret lab to be the moon’s savior and Earth’s last hope! And that hero is . . . a cat. A cat who will be blasted into space!Accompanied by the imperious Moon Queen and LOZ 4000, a toenail clipping robot, the First Cat in Space journeys across a fantastic lunar landscape to save the world. Will these unlikely heroes save the moon in time? Can a toenail-clipping robot find its purpose in the vast universe? And will the First Cat in Space ever eat some pizza? This is a silly graphic novel with plenty of action and wacky humor. 

I loved the premise and setup of this story about a boy who falls into a mirror world where everything goes his way until he discovers an evil conspiracy. It’s the first in a series and ends on a cliffhanger with a small preview of the next book in the series. I also liked that it’s under 200 pages. This a great graphic novel for kids who love spooky stories without magic or horror.

When two new 5th graders determined to “be themselves” get mistaken for class clown and brainiac (the opposite of what they each are), they band together to help each other succeed in the vein of Cisneros’s Falling Short, but in graphic novel format with animal characters a la Mr. Wolf’s Class. This is a clever (sometimes a teeny bit didactic) story that is funny and relatable about friendship, being yourself, and staying open to possibilities. Fans of quirky graphic novels with a dash of humor will enjoy this.