The construction of the anode materials with high-rate and long-life performance for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) still remains a great challenge due to their poor electronic conductivity and drastic volume changes during the lithiation and delithiation processes. Herein, we report nitrogen-doped carbon-coated MnO nanoparticles anchored on the interconnected graphene ribbons (IGR-MnO-C) as a anode for LIBs. As a result, the IGR-MnO-C exhibits a high reversible capacity (1055 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1), excellent rate capability (547 mAh g−1 at 2 A g−1) and stable cycling performance (550 cycles with 113% capacity retention at 0.5 A g−1). The strategy proposed in this work can be further extended to other transition metal oxides for the applications in supercapacitors, sodium-ion batteries and fuel cell.