Kirkus Star
THE KIRKUS STAR
Awarded to Books of Exceptional Merit

BROWSE BOOK REVIEWS




Graphic Novels


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Cover art for DEAR CREATURE
FICTION
Released: Oct. 1, 2011

"A funny, bizarre, unexpected pleasure that gives a creature from the depths heart and soul as well as a happy ending."
A mutant submariner pines for a surface girl trapped in a prison of her own making. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2011
FICTION
Released: Oct. 4, 2011
edited by Alison Bechdel

"The state of an art that has yet to reach stasis."
Another annual cornucopia of graphic narrative (and comic strips). Read full book review >
Cover art for TINA'S MOUTH
FICTION
Released: Jan. 3, 2012
by Keshni Kashyap, illustrated by Mari Araki

"A charming, hip, illustrated coming-of-age tale."
Indian-American high-school student with a thing for Jean Paul Sartre struggles with existential angst in this graphic-novel debut. Read full book review >
Cover art for MY FRIEND DAHMER
NONFICTION
Released: March 1, 2012
by Derf Backderf, illustrated by Derf Backderf

"An exemplary demonstration of the transformative possibilities of graphic narrative."
A powerful, unsettling use of the graphic medium to share a profoundly disturbing story. Read full book review >
Cover art for BYE BYE BABYLON
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2012
by Lamia Ziadé, illustrated by Lamia Ziadé, translated by Olivia Snaije

"Stunning in both the art and the audacity."
Visually arresting and emotionally devastating, this graphic memoir of war and childhood feels like an art book and explodes like a car bomb. Read full book review >
Cover art for JOE GOLEM AND THE DROWNING CITY
FICTION
Released: April 3, 2012

"Mignola's affectionate, Kirby-esque portraits compliment Golden's imaginative, YA-friendly prose. "
An adolescent orphan navigates a subterranean world of magic and technology with the help of an aged detective and his mysterious square-jawed protector. Read full book review >
Cover art for UNTERZAKHN
FICTION
Released: April 3, 2012
by Leela Corman, illustrated by Leela Corman

"Both a work of social realism and a fable with a moral."
The graphic novel as feminist parable, concerning twin sisters who learn the brutal facts of life, set in New York in the early 1900s. Read full book review >
Cover art for TANGLES
NONFICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
by Sarah Leavitt, illustrated by Sarah Leavitt

"Not simply the story of a disease, but of the flawed, complex, intelligent people whose lives it transformed."
The power of this graphic memoir is not that its story about a family dealing with Alzheimer's is so extraordinary, but that it has become so ordinary. Read full book review >
Cover art for ARE YOU MY MOTHER?
NONFICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
by Alison Bechdel, illustrated by Alison Bechdel

"Subtitled "A Comic Drama," the narrative provides even fewer laughs than its predecessor but deeper introspection."
A psychologically complex, ambitious, illuminating successor to the author's graphic-memoir masterpiece. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE GRAPHIC CANON
FICTION
Released: May 22, 2012
edited by Russ Kick

"If artists, as British sculptor Anish Kapoor famously said, make mythologies, then this volume is genuinely a marriage of equals."
Classic literature gets desterilized with the help of the modern world's most daring graphic artists. Read full book review >
Cover art for TRINITY
NONFICTION
Released: June 12, 2012

"Succeeds as both a graphic primer and a philosophical meditation."
Powerfully understated in both text and art, this matter-of-fact account of the atom bomb's development renders scientific complexity intelligible. Read full book review >