This July marks Booklist’s third annual “Graphic Novels in Libraries Month,” and we want you to join us in celebrating! Whether it is your very first time reading a graphic novel, or you know more about the genre than library staff, here are a few new staff picks from our collection of graphic novels you are sure to enjoy:

This graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 sci-fi novel Parable of the Sower was adapted by the award-winning team of Damian Duffy and John Jennings. The year is 2024 and the country is suffering from massive climate disasters, economic and social inequalities, and corporate greed. Amidst the chaos, a preacher’s daughter living in a gated community in Los Angeles is faced with a series of horrors that force her into a fight for survival.

Rebecca Burgess’ 2020 memoir about growing up asexual was selected as a 2020 LGBTQIA+ Graphic Novel for Young Readers by Publishers Weekly. Growing up, Rebecca just assumes that sex is something they will “grow into,” but as they continue to be baffled by the sex obsessed teenagers around them, they learn to understand and embrace their own asexuality. Burgess’ charming and funny insights into their asexuality and asexual relationships empowers readers to embrace their own identities. “Like every other sexuality, asexuality is just a simple, shorthand label to help someone express their much more individual and unique experience!”

Looking for a little supernatural romance involving a 300-year-old vampire and a werewolf? Filled with humor and puns and really fun illustrations, Sarah Andersen’s graphic novel Fangs is a Too Good to Miss title that might be just your blood type. (ha ha ha)

Rounding out my list of recent graphic novel recommendations is I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Mannie Murphy. What starts as a reminiscence about the author’s infatuation with River Phoenix morphs into a history of white supremacy in the Pacific Northwest. Murphy deftly weaves alternative culture icons, including William S. Burroughs, Keanu Reeves, Phoenix, and Gus Van Sant, with local history about the Whitman Massacre of 1847, the Ku Klux Klan’s involvement in Portland’s city planning, and the “Rose City” street kids who made their way onto the screen in some of Van Sant’s films.