This paper details the visual responses created by a group of preservice teachers reading a series of contemporary graphic novels about adolescence. Visual response is here understood as an interpretive methodology of transmediation, informed by theorists of multimodal literacies as well as particular forms of psychoanalytic inquiry related to creative symbolization. Over the course of 5 months, six readers collaboratively interpreted four novels, each of which took a unique glance at the emotional and developmental challenges of adolescence: Tamaki and Tamaki's "This One Summer," Barry's "My Perfect Life," DeForge's "Big Kids," and Yang's "American Born Chinese." Responding in visual form, readers were able to reacquaint themselves with the emotional value of adolescence, a value that is often unavailable to strictly linguistic modes of expression.