My eight-year-old niece loves graphic novels.  She ingests them voraciously, and when I saw her during the winter holidays, ninety percent of that time she was reading.  Truth be told, I didn’t actually see her all that much – I just saw her fingers and the top of her head.  That’s her in the photo below reading through dinner at a local restaurant.

Watching her that particular night as she tuned out everyone else at the table, I was reminded of myself at that age, hunkered down, hidden behind the newspaper and magazine rack at my dad’s pharmacy with a stack of Richie Rich and Archie comics in my lap.  Watching my niece tear through Raina Telgemeier’s Smile, I remembered how I would sit legs-crossed, shoulders hunched forward, my lower back pressed against that green wooden rack as I poured over each new volume, imaging what it might be…