Nightlights by Lorena Alvarez

I love graphic novels!  Whenever I come across one that is perfectly suited for my classroom, I just smile.  Nightlights by Lorena Alvarez has produced an absolute gem!

Sandy is a special girl. An amazing artist that just happen to come to life at night.  Although she is a bit of a loner at school, her time at school takes a turn for the better when a mysterious new girl, Morfie, notices her.

Never fear, this isn’t a boring story about school life.  Due to her talent to create anything at night, Sandy comes to the attention of a ‘demon’ – a strangely familiar figure.  This is when the tale takes a twist towards a more scary tone. Think ‘Stranger Things’ for kids.

Lorena Alvarez is an amazing artist with an imagination that is astounding. This makes Sandy’s creations fantastically inventive and eye-catching that stucks in the reader visually.

Now for the teacher bit. As a piece of narrative this story does a clever trick of hiding the way to defeat the villain in a throwaway panel.  It is similar to how Arthur (Arthur and the Golden Rope) is set-up to overcome the beast.  This is an excellent example to share with children to allow them to know how to use earlier sections of a story to allow for solutions that are required latter.  Children often want to do this, but we never explictly share a model of how to do it.  For me, this is a upper KS2 book.  Not because of any inappropriate content, more as the language and storytelling methods are for a mature reader.

An amazing graphic novel – end of.