The Graphic Novel Graphic Wall

Not a book review but book-ish.

Working in a middle school library is wonderful. I spend a lot of my day looking over books in the library and online, making lists on what books to order next, and talking with the students about what books they enjoy reading and what books they would like to read.

I, along with my coworker, also answer a lot of the same questions over and over and over again. One of the questions asked a lot is about our graphic novels, mainly their location. Because of the size of our library we have to keep the graphic novels on the opposite side of the library, away from the rest of the books. We also don’t have a huge selection of graphic novels so they sit on smaller shelves than the other books as well. We are working on expanding our graphic novel section but that is another story.

Anyway, we had tried to put up signs to help the students see the graphic novels but it really did not help. I would end up having to walk the student over to books themselves. We needed a way to make the graphic novel section stand out for the students. Enter “The Graphic Novel Graphic Wall”, lengthy but effective.

We started with gathering old newspapers and cutting out the comics. If you are recreating this for your own school you may want to glance over some of the comics to make sure they are all school appropriate. We then laminated the comics so they would last longer and simply taped them up on the wall. We added some color by laminating some pages of a graphic novel that was on its way to the book graveyard. You could also use the Sunday comics but we don’t get the Sunday paper at school.

I think others have used this as a “renters wallpaper”. I think it would be nice to use pretty paper or even photos from magazines or calendars to create really pretty accent walls or a backsplash. I have seen in craft stores books of paper for scrapbooking that I think would also make some very pretty wallpaper. Using painter’s tape would also keep damages to your wall low when you have to take it down or when you want to change out your wall.