A guide for families
What the ages on a graphic novel mean
The age on a graphic novel is one person's guess at who will enjoy it, not a test the reader has to pass. Dog Man is labelled 7+ by its publisher, and children well below and well above that age read it. Three different questions hide in that one number.
Start here: Dog Man · Checked
1. The publisher's age
Publishers print an age on the back cover or on their website: 7 and up, 8 to 12. It says who the book was written and sold for. The band is broad on purpose, and different pages for the same series often disagree, because each book is labelled on its own. When two labels disagree, Peabody says so on the series page rather than quietly picking one.
2. How hard the reading is
Reading level is a separate thing. A comic with short bubbles can be read by a younger child than its age says, and a long, wordy book can be hard for an older one. Peabody doesn't print reading-level scores. Each series page has one plain sentence instead, about what reading it is like. Two of them:
3. What is in the book
The third question is what happens in it: cartoon fights, gross-out jokes, a scary monster, a sad ending. None of that is in the age number. Each series page has a short note for grown-ups that says plainly what is in the books, with no verdict, so you can match it to your own child. A child who loves scary stories and a child who hates them can be the same age.
How Peabody says whose age it is
Every series page names where its age comes from. Of the 48 series on Peabody, 23 carry an age from a publisher's or bookseller's page we could read, and 25 carry Peabody's own estimate, said in those words, because the publisher's page gave none or would not open for us. The Bad Guys is one of the estimates.
The age pages work the same way. Graphic novels for 8-year-olds lists a series when 8 falls inside its range, and each card says whose range it is.
Using the number well
Treat the age as a starting point. Look at a page or two together, read the grown-ups' note, and watch your child's face. A book that is a little young is a comfortable, confident read. A book that is a little old can be read together. Both are good reading.
Ages also say nothing about how long a book is. A series for 8 to 12 can be fifty short pages or two hundred and fifty long ones, and a child who is happy with one may tire of the other. The series page's reading line and the number of books in the series help with that.
If your child wants a book above their age because a friend is reading it, the note on the series page tells you what is in it, and you can decide together. If they want one below their age, let them: an easy book read for fun still builds a reader.