THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Monday, August 19, 2019 |A
in 1992, convinced many that the
medium could count as literature. In
the early 2000s, imports of Japa-
nese comics called manga helped
touch off a graphic-novel renais-
sance. After seeing children spend-
ing hours absorbed by visual story-
telling, publishers launched graphic-
novel imprints. In 2005, Scholastic
started Graphix and Macmillan Pub-
lishers began First Second Books.
Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born
Chinese,” published in 2006, was the
first graphic novel to be nominated
for the American Book Award.
Now some authors and illustra-
tors who previously worked only on
traditional books are trying their
hand at graphic novels. Rainbowwhen it’s illustrated. You get more
feeling from art,” Ms. Rowell says.
While graphic novels’ popularity
has been building for years, some
publishers were initially wary, as
full-color books can be costly and
time-consuming to produce, says
Calista Brill, editorial director of
First Second Books.
“There’s something just so entic-
ing and satisfying” about graphic
novels, says Cecilia McGowan, who
spent 35 years as a librarian and re-
cently retired from the King County
Library System in Washington. In
fact, some children love the books
so much they don’t return them,
Ms. McGowan says: “It’s hard to
keep things on the shelf.”The War on
Sugar Hits the
Juice Box
Stores sell watered-down alternatives as
health concerns grow. But will kids drink them?
BYANNEMARIECHAKER
LIFE & ARTS
books, which depict how she dealt
with braces, sibling rivalries and
other issues. “We’re living in a real
golden age right now,” she says.
“Guts,” in which she chronicles her
girlhood struggles with anxiety, will
be published Sept. 17 and has a first
printing of one million copies.
“I get a lot of thank you letters
from kids who are reassured that
there’s someone else who feels like
them,” she says. Graphic novels can
help build lifelong readers, espe-
cially among children who learn
better through pictures than words,
just as she did, Ms. Telgemeier said.
Some parents have taken issue
with graphic novels that have
themes they consider inappropriate
for young children. For example,
Ms. Telgemeier’s graphic novel
“Drama” came under criticism for
its LGBT themes. The author said
graphic novels allow children to en-
counter new ideas, which she hopes
parents might discuss with them.
While many in the industry use
the terms graphic novel and comic
book interchangeably, a graphic
novel is often defined as a com-
plete story in a traditional binding
as opposed to a comic-book serial
with stapled pages. Most graphic
novels for children cost $10 to $15,
with prices rising for those aimed
at older readers.
When comics became popular in
the 1930s, parents and librarians
often discouraged children from
reading them, says Leonard Mar-
cus, a historian of children’s litera-
ture: “Comic books were the un-
derbelly of literature that kids
loved and critics hated.”
“Maus,” a graphic novel about the
Holocaust that won a Pulitzer PrizeGRAPHIC NOVELSaimed at
younger readers are skipping the
superheroes and taking on serious
subjects like mental health and
body image, setting off a boom that
is bolstering the children’s publish-
ing industry.
These graphic novels are reso-
nating with children and young
adults and making readers out of
some youngsters who had ditched
books for their cellphones. Pub-
lishers including Penguin Random
House and HarperCollins, a unit of
Wall Street Journal parent News
Corp., are launching graphic-novel
lines aimed at those ages 13 to 18,
as well as the juvenile market of
readers 7 to 12 years old.
“I like a few novels, but I like
graphic novels the best. They re-
ally entertain me,” says 9-year-old
Clive Webster, a fourth-grader in
Petoskey, Mich. Clive’s father, Tim
Webster, says he wasn’t much of a
reader as a boy, and is pleased that
his son is reading, whether graphic
novels or traditional books.
In the U.S. and Canada, sales of
graphic novels for readers of all
ages—but not comic books—were
nearly $640 million last year, up
from around $400 million in 2014,
according to a report by industry
website ICv2 and Comichron com-
ics-research site. Graphic novels
for juvenile readers drove most of
that growth, according to the mag-
azine Publishers Weekly.
Much of the momentum came
from a handful of titles, such as
Raina Telgemeier’s series of mem-
oirs about her childhood. Ms. Telge-
meier writes and illustrates the
BYFLEMINGSMITH
Graphic Novels Take Off
With Young Readers
limited amounts for older children.
Food consultants say adults’ con-
cerns about sugar for their own
health are trickling down to how
they feed their children. “Every-
where we look, the parents of chil-
dren are getting messages about re-
ducing their own sugar,” says Kara
Nielsen, vice president of trends
and marketing at CCD Innovation,
an Emeryville, Calif.-based food
consultancy. Trends in grown-up
beverages such as flavored spar-
kling water and unsweetened cof-
fees and teas reflect this, she says.
For kids, companies have made
efforts at reformulations without
giving up on juice flavor with
varying degrees of success. Sales
of Capri Sun’s Roarin’ Waters, a
line of 30-calorie flavored-water
pouches that launched in 2011,
were up 3.1% for the year ending
Aug. 3, says Kraft Heinz.
Two years ago, Washington, D.C.-
based Rethink Brands launched Re-
think Kids Water, flavored with the
“essence” of fruits, from their oils
and peels. But the company soon
found that flavored water was too
much of a jump for kids who have
already been drinking juice.
“We came out aggressively. Zero
calories, zero sugar. We were hope-
ful we could drive them all the way
to zero in an afternoon, but the re-
ality is you can’t,” says Rethink
president Todd Fletcher. Repeat
purchases were low, he says.
One portent was the reaction ofW
hen the juice
boxes are served
at children’s
birthday parties,
Gabrielle Gard
hands her son his own box—of fla-
vored water.
The 28-year-old accountant in
Lakeland, Fla., doesn’t want her
son Asa, almost 2, drinking real
juice. To help limit sugar, she digs
into her bag for a juice-box alter-
native: Hint brand “fruity water,”
whose label promises it has “no
juice, no sugar” but is “fun, deli-
cious, parent-approved.”
“He pulls out the little straw—
it’s like the little boxes he would
enjoy anywhere else,” she says.
The war on sugar has come to
the juice box. As
pediatricians
warn of the
health risks of
juice and parents
worry about sug-
ary beverages,
more substitutes
are hitting gro-
cery-store
shelves. While
they still come in
the same box-
with-straw con-
tainers, the
drinks are typi-
cally watered-
down formula-
tions with
smaller amounts
of juice or a non-
sugar flavoring.
In April, Har-
vest Hill Bever-
age Co.’s Juicy
Juice brand launched Juicy Wa-
ters, a flavored water. Lassonde
Pappas and Co.’s Apple & Eve
launched Cool Waters this spring,
sweetened with “a touch of or-
ganic real fruit juice,” the company
says. Hint water is now appearing
in the juice box aisle, with its new
lunchbox size fruity waters.
Whether kids will go for it is
another question. Desiree Tang-
uma, a 37-year-old revenue man-
ager for a hotel chain in Forney,
Texas, says her sons Maddox and
Marcus, ages 6 and 9, favor Capri
Sun pouches in flavors such as
tropical or lemonade. She has tried
watered-down versions of juice
boxes, but the boys protested.
“They can taste the difference,”
she says.
Juice was once considered a
healthy part of growing up, but
parents and other consumers have
increasingly soured on it as health
concerns have grown. Consump-
tion of juice, measured in gallons
sold, declined 10% in 2018 from
five years earlier, according to
New York-based Beverage Market-
ing Corp.
Sixty percent of parents with
children ages 3 to 11 said they are
actively trying to reduce sugar in
their households, according to a
survey conducted this month of
about 2,000 parents by Pittsburgh-
based polling
firm Civic-
Science. Thirty-
eight percent
said they are
buying less juice
than last year,
and only 22%
said they still
pack some type
of fruit juice in
their children’s
school lunches.
Juice has a
long history in
the annals of par-
enting—with
moms and dads
who served
glasses of OJ at
breakfast or to
combat colds,
says Jean A.
Welsh, a profes-
sor of pediatrics
at Emory University. “It was a way
of taking an orange and making it
more readily available and easy to
consume,” she says.
Now, doctors worry “it’s a gate-
way drink,” she says. Children’s pal-
ates can get used to the sweet-
ness—and then they want more, she
says. The sugar in juice can cause a
spike in blood sugar, often followed
by a crash, she adds. In 2017, the
American Academy of Pediatrics ex-
panded its warning on fruit juice,
recommending none be served to
children under 1 year of age, andto attract more health-conscious
consumers, “then you need to have
products like mine,” she says. Now
Hint Kids boxes are in 7,
stores, including chains such as
Albertsons and Harris Teeter.
Eight-packs with pictures of black-
berries and watermelons on them
sell for around $7.
Harvest Hill’s Juicy Juice has
been experimenting with ways to
dilute juice for several years. Last
year, it introduced Splashers Or-
ganic, a reduced-sugar juice with 9
grams of sugar per pouch. Its
Juicy Waters, which launched this
spring and comes in a traditional
6.75-ounce box, represents the
other end of the spectrum—mainly
water with a touch of lemon juice
concentrate and flavoring. “You
can’t get any more watery,” says
chief marketing officer Ilene Ber-
genfeld.
Lassonde’s Apple & Eve tested
its water-based concept last year,
using different formulations, be-
fore settling on the final formula
with 20 calories or less. “A lot of
thought went into making sure
parents were happy and that kids
would approve and drink Cool Wa-
ters,” says senior director of inno-
vation Jamie Bradford.
“The thought here was never
that it was going to replace 100%
juice,” says Ms. Bradford. Still,
“sometimes [plain] water doesn’t
cut it. This gives them a little more
taste and deliciousness.”Mr. Fletcher’s own children, 10-
year-old Quinn and 8-year-old
Lane. “They liked ‘daddy’s water,’
but they liked it most when they
were genuinely thirsty,” he says.
So the company this spring
launched Juice Splash—a 5-calorie
beverage formulated with juice
concentrate and sweetened with
monk fruit—as a “bridge product,”he says. It’s aimed at kids older
than 4 who have already gotten
used to juice boxes and aren’t
ready to transition to flavored wa-
ter. The company still offers Kids
Water, but says it works best for
children under 4 whose parents
don’t already give them juice.
Hint launched its flavored wa-
ters in a juice-box format this
spring. Founder Kara Goldin is bet-
ting that parents have already
been purchasing Hint for them-
selves—and serving it to their chil-
dren at home. Ms. Goldin says it
was a challenge to convince gro-
cery stores to stock her product
next to the mainstream brands.
She told them that if they wantedLeft: Asa Gard, whose mom is trying to limit sugar, with a Hint water. Above, Lane Fletcher, 8, sips a flavored water.FROM TOP: TODD FLETCHER; GABRIELLE GARD60
Percent of parents in a survey who
were actively trying to reduce sugarRowell, an author of best-selling
young-adult fiction, teamed up with
illustrator and writer Faith Erin
Hicks on “Pumpkinheads,” about two
high-school seniors on the threshold
of adulthood, coming Aug. 27.
“You get a different type of storyComing graphic novels for younger readers that
address real-life issues include ‘Pumpkinheads,’
above. At right, ‘Guts’ by Raina Telgemeier
(pictured) chronicles struggles with anxiety.
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: FAITH ERIN HICKS/FIRST SECOND; RAINA TELGEMEIER/GRAPHIX/SCHOLASTIC; JOSEPH FANVU PHOTOGRAPHY