A beautifully melancholic, ultimately hopeful romance of a travelogue.
A graphic memoir of a monumental journey around the post-pandemic world.
Hatke, an Eisner Award–winning writer and illustrator, is probably best known for his Zita the Spacegirl trilogy for young readers. He trades in the sharp lines and cartoon facial features of his children’s books for rougher, sketch-like lines and impressionistic, nearly featureless faces, including his own, for the illustrations in this memoir of a trip he took in the summer of 2024. The trek from his home in the Shenandoah Valley, eastward across Europe and Asia, and back across the U.S. replicated the voyages of 19th-century travelers both real (journalist Nellie Bly) and fictional (Phileas Fogg of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days). It’s remarkable how rich an experience these drawings offer, particularly when coupled with Hatke’s sensitive and unpretentious prose describing his adventures as he travels by ocean liner, ferry, train, taxi, and bus across terrain and through cultures that become stranger and more challenging as he moves deeper into Eurasia. “I’ve coasted a long way on privilege and I know it,” he admits as he heads into parts of the world previously alien to him. “I know that in most of the places I’ve traveled, being a white male, athletic, and born by chance with features people tend to think of as ‘friendly and open’ has given me a lot of benefit of the doubt. I’ve coasted on the basic assumptions of strangers.” Haunting this story, along with ghosts of famous travelers of the past, is the knowledge of what Hatke shares just before the journey begins—that he lost his then-youngest daughter to an accident in 2019. You feel his vulnerability as his privilege begins to fail him just as he reaches the furthest points from home.
A beautifully melancholic, ultimately hopeful romance of a travelogue.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250370181
Page Count: 384
Publisher: 23rd St.
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A timeless story of marriage, well-grounded in queer history. An absolute triumph.
Chronicling same-sex love in early New England.
This graphic biography by award-winning graphic novelist Walden (Spinning, 2017, and On a Sunbeam, 2018) takes its inspiration from the artifacts and archives of two women who lived together in rural Vermont for nearly half a century. Walden’s presentation of their story firmly insists that the reader engage directly with the daily lives of women in the early 1800s. As the book begins, Charity arrives in Weybridge, Vermont, evading rumors and judgment back in Massachusetts. Sylvia, a large family’s youngest daughter, cares ceaselessly for nieces and nephews while quietly seeking her own life. Soon after meeting, Charity asks Sylvia to share her rented room above a gristmill, and the pair become inseparable. They build a tailoring business, rent land, and construct a home together. They attend church, share life with Sylvia’s family, and actively participate in their community. That they remained partnered in a world where homosexuality was essentially unimaginable is played with such subtlety as to sometimes blur into insignificance. Yet, that normalcy reveals the book’s beating heart—existing resolutely as themselves in a circumscribed world is a resounding affirmation of queer love. But even life-long love has an end. The specter of mortality haunts nearly every page—the pair endure a litany of family deaths and spend much of their old age managing ailments, awaiting what lies beyond while holding fast to each other. This unrelenting passage of time is communicated in uniformly 12-panel pages filled with conversation and daily work. When Walden pushes against this format’s restrictions, her looser, almost ethereal imagery proves breathtaking. Walden also employs her particular gift for drawing simple faces that express innocence, excitement, devastation, and devotion in a few pen strokes—she brings Charity and Sylvia to life with tremendous tenderness and grace.
A timeless story of marriage, well-grounded in queer history. An absolute triumph.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9781770468382
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
An accessible, informative journey through complex issues during turbulent times.
Immersion journalism in the form of a graphic narrative following a Syrian family on their immigration to America.
Originally published as a 22-part series in the New York Times that garnered a Pulitzer for editorial cartooning, the story of the Aldabaan family—first in exile in Jordan and then in New Haven, Connecticut—holds together well as a full-length book. Halpern and Sloan, who spent more than three years with the Aldabaans, movingly explore the family’s significant obstacles, paying special attention to teenage son Naji, whose desire for the ideal of the American dream was the strongest. While not minimizing the harshness of the repression that led them to journey to the U.S.—or the challenges they encountered after they arrived—the focus on the day-by-day adjustment of a typical teenager makes the narrative refreshingly tangible and free of political polemic. Still, the family arrived at New York’s JFK airport during extraordinarily political times: Nov. 8, 2016, the day that Donald Trump was elected. The plan had been for the entire extended family to move, but some had traveled while others awaited approval, a process that was hampered by Trump’s travel ban. The Aldabaans encountered the daunting odds that many immigrants face: find shelter and employment, become self-sustaining quickly, learn English, and adjust to a new culture and climate (Naji learned to shovel snow, which he had never seen). They also received anonymous death threats, and Naji wanted to buy a gun for protection. He asked himself, “Was this the great future you were talking about back in Jordan?” Yet with the assistance of selfless volunteers and a community of fellow immigrants, the Aldabaans persevered. The epilogue provides explanatory context and where-are-they-now accounts, and Sloan’s streamlined, uncluttered illustrations nicely complement the text, consistently emphasizing the humanity of each person.
An accessible, informative journey through complex issues during turbulent times.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-30559-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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