Not a deep dive but a starting point for difficult conversations.
Through a graphic medium, a 16-year-old girl recounts her experience with cyberbullying.
In seventh grade, 12-year-old blonde-haired Lexi receives her first smartphone. Initially, she is elated, but after a fight with twin girls following a volleyball game, her life soon descends into agony when they start cyberbullying her. Lexi explains how on Post Ghost (a fictional, anonymous social media gossip site) the twins would barrage her with insults about her appearance and threaten to beat up anyone who spoke to her; even their mother participated in the abuse. With a clear and concise voice, Lexi explains her feelings of isolation and hurt, although she manages to keep her readers buoyed with reminders of perseverance. Darker themes, such as eating disorders and suicidality, are hinted at but are breezily bypassed. While this volume has full-color photorealistic illustrations, the art is unfortunately disjointed. Every character is depicted as thin and athletic; there is little variance in height or weight. Certain close-ups of junior-high–aged Lexi look alarmingly adult, and oddly scattered manga-inspired renderings insert unnecessary levity to a serious subject. Cavils aside, this first in a series of teen-authored graphic nonfiction tackles timely issues and should interest a wide audience from tweens to reluctant teen readers. Lexi and most of the other characters are white and seemingly middle-class, with scant diversity throughout.
Not a deep dive but a starting point for difficult conversations. (Graphic memoir. 10-14)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947378-04-9
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Zuiker Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
A powerful resource for young people itching for change.
Soccer star and activist Wambach adapts Wolfpack (2019), her New York Times bestseller for adults, for a middle-grade audience.
“YOU. ARE. THE. WOLVES.” That rallying cry, each word proudly occupying its own line on the page, neatly sums up the fierce determination Wambach demands of her audience. The original Wolfpack was an adaptation of the viral 2018 commencement speech she gave at Barnard College; in her own words, it was “a directive to unleash [the graduates’] individuality, unite the collective, and change the world.” This new adaption takes the themes of the original and recasts them in kid-friendly terms, the call to action feeling more relevant now than ever. With the exception of the introduction and closing remarks, each short chapter presents a new leadership philosophy, dishing out such timeless advice as “Be grateful and ambitious”; “Make failure your fuel”; “Champion each other”; and “Find your pack.” Chapters utilize “rules” as a framing device. The first page of each presents a generalized “old” and “new” rule pertaining to that chapter’s guiding principle, and each chapter closes with a “Call to the Wolfpack” that sums up those principles in more specific terms. Some parts of the book come across as somewhat quixotic or buzzword-heavy, but Wambach deftly mitigates much of the preachiness with a bluff, congenial tone and refreshing dashes of self-deprecating humor. Personal anecdotes help ground each of the philosophies in applicability, and myriad heavy issues are respectfully, yet simply broached.
A powerful resource for young people itching for change. (Nonfiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-76686-1
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
A rich and deeply felt slice of life.
Crafting fantasy worlds offers a budding middle school author relief and distraction from the real one in this graphic memoir debut.
Everyone in Tori’s life shows realistic mixes of vulnerability and self-knowledge while, equally realistically, seeming to be making it up as they go. At least, as she shuttles between angrily divorced parents—dad becoming steadily harder to reach, overstressed mom spectacularly incapable of reading her offspring—or drifts through one wearingly dull class after another, she has both vivacious bestie Taylor Lee and, promisingly, new classmate Nick as well as the (all-girl) heroic fantasy, complete with portals, crystal amulets, and evil enchantments, taking shape in her mind and on paper. The flow of school projects, sleepovers, heart-to-heart conversations with Taylor, and like incidents (including a scene involving Tori’s older brother, who is having a rough adolescence, that could be seen as domestic violence) turns to a tide of change as eighth grade winds down and brings unwelcome revelations about friends. At least the story remains as solace and, at the close, a sense that there are still chapters to come in both worlds. Working in a simple, expressive cartoon style reminiscent of Raina Telgemeier’s, Sharp captures facial and body language with easy naturalism. Most people in the spacious, tidily arranged panels are White; Taylor appears East Asian, and there is diversity in background characters.
A rich and deeply felt slice of life. (afterword, design notes) (Graphic memoir. 10-13)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-53889-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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