A Beginner’s Guide to Gene Luen Yang

I discovered graphic novels last year. I realize that I am behind the curve on that one but I have an addictive personality and because of that when I found one author that I thought was cool, I proceeded to find as many things as I could by him and binge them!

I feel like I have now gorged myself on enough of this one particular author’s material to tell you how to best navigate through them…let’s begin this journey!

I actually accidentally stumbled across Gene Luen Yang when I was on a shopping spree…well one of my shopping sprees. I was having this moment where I felt like I had to buy a graphic novel so my first one by him was the first book in his Secret Coders Series

I wouldn’t suggest anyone begin there because while it was entertaining it was more of an entertaining middle grade instruction book of how to code. I found it so entertaining I have since purchased the rest of the series as they release.
Then I looked him up and found out he was an author of some of the Avatar: The Last Air Bender series and I did not read those because it was far too late for me. I had already completed the series on television…twice.
Instead, I went ahead and purchased his other books to see what a wonderful author he was because he has to be…he wrote books in the Avatar series! I picked up



I listed them in the order I read them because the previous book just made me crave the next book. The Eternal Smile was my least favorite but Boxers and Saints was fantastic! If you have never read a graphic novel before I think Gene Luen Yang should be a fantastic introduction to them, he is a wonderful story teller and does an awesome job of teaching you about history and adulting.

What is your favorite graphic novel? Have you ever read anything by Gene Luen Yang?

Ciao Book Monsters!