Hey, I’m Carlos Menendez, still chasing that magic moment when a kid who “hates reading” suddenly can’t stop turning pages.
That moment almost always happens with a graphic novel.
Early on, I discovered something wild: give a reluctant reader a great graphic novel, and they’ll often circle back and tackle the original prose version nobody thought they’d touch. It’s like the art hands them the confidence and context they need to storm the castle of the classic.
Here are five classic novels that have killer graphic novel adaptations I’ve used to flip the switch for hundreds of readers:
1. **The Man in the Iron Mask** – Alexandre Dumas
The swashbuckling finale of the Musketeers saga. The graphic version (I love the one illustrated by Alexandre Tefenkgi) keeps every sword fight, betrayal, and twin-brother twist intact, but the panels make the court intrigue crystal-clear. Last year, some readers finished it in two days—then begged for the prose Three Musketeers books.
2. **Robinson Crusoe** – Daniel Defoe
The Campfire Classics adaptation is lean, gorgeous, and doesn’t talk down to anyone. Shipwreck, survival, Friday, the whole deal. Readers who groaned at the idea of Defoe’s 18th-century sentences devoured this and came back asking, “So what happens if I try the real one now?”
3. **The Odyssey** – Gareth Hinds
Hands-down my desert-island pick. Epic battles, monsters, gods, and storms explode off the page. I’ve had freshmen who couldn’t spell “Homer” finish this and then crush the actual Robert Fagles translation because they finally got why everyone still talks about it 3,000 years later.
4. **A Tale of Two Cities** – Dickens
The Graphic Universe version turns “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” into something visual and urgent. Revolution, guillotines, sacrifice—kids feel the weight instead of drowning in Dickens’s sentences. Half my class voluntarily read the prose after.
5. **Treasure Island** – Robert Louis Stevenson
Tim Hamilton’s adaptation is pure pirate adrenaline. Long John Silver leaps off the page like the sly bastard he is. Every year, at least one kid who claimed “books are boring” finishes it, yells “Yo ho ho!”, and immediately checks out the original.
The point is: these graphic versions aren’t cheating. They’re the Trojan horse that sneaks the classics past the defenses and plants the flag inside the kid’s imagination. Once they’re in, they usually stay—and go deeper than any of us expected.
So if you’ve got a student (or your own kid) dodging the canon, start with one of these five. Watch what happens.
What classic-turned-graphic-novel cracked the code for your toughest reader? Drop it below—I read every comment. And if you want my complete battle-tested list of 30 graphic novels (classics + modern) with the exact lesson plans I use, send me a note, and I will send it to you.
Here are three more bulletproof classic-novel graphic adaptations that I’ve used dozens of times with readers who swore they’d never touch the original. They all work like gangbusters:
1. **The Jungle** – Upton Sinclair (adapted and illustrated by Kristina Gehrmann)
A brutal, gorgeous gut-punch. Immigrant slaughterhouse horrors in early 1900s Chicago hit way harder in panels than in Sinclair’s prose for most teens. I’ve had kids finish this in two sittings, then immediately ask for the original because they “needed to see how much worse the real book gets.”
2. **Frankenstein** – Mary Shelley (Gris Grimly’s edition or the gorgeous one by Marion Mousse)
Grimly’s version looks like a Tim Burton fever dream—perfect for hooking kids who think classics are dusty. Suddenly, they’re arguing about what it means to be human, and half the class checks out the prose version on their own.
3. **Poe’s Short Stories** – Edgar Allan Poe (especially the collection by Gareth Hinds: “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” etc.)
One story = 15–20 pages of pure dread and beauty. I use these as gateway drugs every October. Kids who claim they hate reading beg to keep the book overnight, then come back wanting the collected tales in prose because “the pictures made me brave enough.”
Throw any of these at a reluctant reader and stand back. Same pattern every time: they finish the graphic version, feel like badasses, and start eyeing the thick “real” book on the shelf.
See you in the panels.
Carlos
