“A box of colored pencils is as close as you can get to owning a piece of the rainbow.”

Meet Henrietta, a girl with a boundless imagination and, today, a new deluxe set of colored pencils. Immediately, of course, she begins to draw and write her own story while narrating her creative thought process to her cat, Fellini. Her adventure “book” is delightfully amateur and her internal dialogue wonderfully natural and childlike.

I hope that young readers in grades 1-3 will find this and other clever stories in our Graphic Novel section, where, I worry, they get lost among the superheroes and other pop culture stuff. Young creative types will relate to Henrietta’s simple delight in making it up as she goes along, being surprised by her own ideas and, of course, writing herself into the action.

Parents and teachers: Please read “How to Read Comics with Kids” in the back of the book and take a look at the wealth of engaging resources at toon-books.com (including read-along books that can be “read” or subtitled in many languages).