Technically Novels, but Mostly Pictures?

[[deleted user]]

Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf: A Year Told Through Stuff, if you haven't read it, has teenage-oriented themes like delinquency and parent death and remarriage, but it's more like a scrapbook--there's some text, but not enough to make the book count as a "novel". I'm not doing a good job describing this. Do you know any other books like this?

[Cheryl has hopes her life will calm down soonish, Newbery Club host]

Hmm. Not quite graphic novel?

Maybe:

Wonderstruck
Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
The Adventures of Captain Underpants
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Happy Birthday, Bad Kitty (Some of these are just plain picturebooks, but some are chapter books, and I *think* this is one of the latter.)

Am I on the right track to understanding your idea?

Would books that are words, but still not novels, fit under this umbrella - like Love That Dog, which is told through poems a kid writes for an assignment?

[[deleted user]]

I think you're pretty accurate. I liked Diary of a Wimpy Kid and (though I'm ashamed to admit this) the Captain Underpants Series, and I want to read Flora and Ulysses. And I guess the poetry/verse novels could count. :)

[Cheryl has hopes her life will calm down soonish, Newbery Club host]

No apology necessary for liking Captain Underpants. They're creative, and funny, and important to a lot of beginning readers. My son loved them and I tried hard to read a few back when he was reading them.

So, ok, I'm sure there are other books that tell much of the story through pictures & other artifacts, like emails or grocery lists or whatever. I just remembered one for sure, about a kid but not written for kids... let me check my books....

[Cheryl has hopes her life will calm down soonish, Newbery Club host]

Bad Kitty vs Uncle Murray
and Bad Kitty Meets the Baby
are actually the books that I was thinking of.

Still haven't found the other that I'm thinking about.

Griffin and Sabine would also count, but again, it's written for adults (though I don't think there's any mature content, just not necessarily interesting to children).

[Cheryl has hopes her life will calm down soonish, Newbery Club host]

Found it! I didn't enjoy it a heck of lot, but others have... and it's probably fine for ages 13 up.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet