The Art of the Novel-Turned-Graphic-Novel

[This article originally appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Writer's Digest magazine.]

When Dr. Jewell Parker Rhodes originally published her middle-grade novel Ghost Boys in 2018, she knew then it would make for a great graphic novel. “When I was a little girl, I couldn’t afford books,” she says. “So, I used to turn in pop bottles, like the glass bottles, and I would take my nickels and buy comic books. For me as a child of poverty, the value of the comic book, which I think is a cousin to the graphic novel, was in my DNA. I never doubted that it could become something just as valuable.”  

Rhodes began her writing career writing for adults. “I’m glad actually that I started out writing for adults,” she says, “because what I find I’m doing is trying to bring all the layers of what I did as an adult writer to children’s books. I think the reason why a lot of my books work is because the children feel that I’m not patronizing them.” 

Ghost Boys is the story of 12-year-old Jerome, who is shot and killed by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real one. As a ghost, Jerome witnesses the fallout and devastation his murder has on his family, and he soon meets another ghost: Emmett Till. Emmett helps Jerome understand how historical racism and police brutality play a major role in what happened to him; Jerome also meets and is able to communicate with Sarah, the living daughter of the police officer, who is struggling with what her father has done. 

Upon its release, Ghost Boys won numerous awards—among them, the 2019 Kids’ Book Choice Award, and the 2019 Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature. It was also banned in some school districts for themes considered too mature for its target audience—a criticism that only highlights the novel’s necessary education: What’s deemed too mature for one child is the real, lived experience of another. 

Interest in re-publishing as a graphic novel started during the pandemic. “Andrea Colvin, who’s the graphic novel editor, said, ‘I think that this will be a great graphic novel.’ And I of course said, ‘I agree!’” A major factor in Rhodes’ enthusiasm for the project was her love for collaboration. “What was really just breathtaking to me was to see how another artist, a stranger to me, came to the material with the same passion, the same sort of drama. I really and truly feel as though there couldn't have been any better artist.” 

The artist responsible for bringing Rhodes’ prose to life was Ghanaian artist Setor Fiadzigbey, who adapted the novel with panels and sweeping, full-page illustrations that chronicle Jerome’s life and death, the preliminary legal trial, the weight of Jerome’s loss on his family, and the ultimate ascendance from Jerome’s physical and emotional pain. 

Through that love of collaboration, Rhodes feels like something wholly new was made. “It’s a companion to the original novel, but just as artistic and just as heartfelt and just as emotional,” she says. But finding the right illustrator came with the knowledge that for some, the emotional weight would be too much. “There were, in fact, illustrators who were not interested in the project because they thought that it was too sad. One of the things that I believe in is the power of art to serve as catharsis—to transform pain into something beautiful that allows empathy and understanding. So, to me, the book is actually quite hopeful. Everything was planned toward making it hopeful.” 

The decision they made was to use a lot of the original language from the 2018 novel, while also allowing Fiadzigbey to incorporate new narrative elements to bridge the two projects. “What I admire about Setor’s work is how the image, when you see the ghost boys, it’s the end of the chapter and it takes your breath away,” she says. “For me, having written the novel, I can see how visually he made similar narrative choices, that we weren’t that far apart—that sense of the cliffhanger, that image that grips you.” 

That sensibility of tension and release through the illustrations is how Rhodes describes the way she, too, writes, and notes that she has only positive things to say about the entire experience. “It was fascinating to me to see that as the visual artist, he was doing the exact same thing as me; not always picking the exact same moments that I’ve picked, but still using a strategy for how to get somebody to want to keep going on a novel that has such pain, while you need to know when to release it, when to add in other images that provide a kind of relief. You need to pace it, and then of course, build up to that tremendously hopeful ending.” 

Ghost Boys joins the ranks of many beloved stories adapted into graphic novels—The Giver, Tuck Everlasting, and Speak, to name a few—which follows the trend of young readers preferring and reaching for graphic novels in droves. “The statistics seem to suggest that a lot of children like to read graphic novels,” she says. “In terms of impact, it just completely widens the scope of my book, which I deeply appreciate, while also not taking away from the book itself, but rather enriching it.” 

Because of that increased reach, Rhodes hopes that this new edition continues to speak to and educate young readers the same way the original novel has for the last eight years. “I was in a school in Boston talking about Ghost Boys,” she shares. “After my talk, one boy came out into the hallway and he says, ‘You mean this is a pattern?’ (That idea that from slavery, there was a pattern of demonizing Black children.) And I said, ‘Yes, honey, it’s a pattern. Since time immemorial, it gave people an excuse to scapegoat Black youth and Black people in order to do the horrific things that they did.’ And you know what he said to me? He said, ‘I always thought it was me.’”