The Art of Family Reading: Adapting Mary Shelley's ‘The Mortal Immortal’ (1833) Into a Graphic Novel

ABSTRACT The popularity of children's graphic novels reflects a rising interest in multimodal literature, and the academic benefits of reading graphic novels have been widely documented. However, little research exists on the possibilities afforded by creating graphic novels. This study explores engagement with classic literature, in particular a Mary Shelley short story, through the adaptation of narrative text into the graphic novel format. The research focuses on a pilot project in an English primary school in which pupils and their families were given guidance and materials to adapt a Mary Shelley story into a graphic novel. The paper suggests that this kind of creative adaptation work can offer a powerful means to engage young readers, strengthen comprehension and interpretation skills and develop positive experiences of both independent and shared reading. The paper ultimately argues that graphic novel production can be used as a creative and collaborative tool to build school and family cultures of ‘reading for pleasure’, and to promote engagement with classic literature. While this study centres on family reading and adaptation of a Mary Shelley short story, the model offers a flexible framework that can be applied across age groups, literary genres and educational contexts, both in the United Kingdom and internationally, to support engagement with a wide range of texts.