A riff on classic teen tropes with a poignant emotional arc and vivid, fantastical illustrations.
Hawkins’ supernatural graphic novel follows a teenager facing a difficult choice between family expectations and what’s right.
Rising high school basketball star Cam Banter can’t even miss one pass without igniting the fiery anger of his gruff father Julien, who is determined to raise his son to win at all costs—both on and off the court. At the same time, the new coach, Damien Castle, is trying to instill a sense of morals and team cohesion into his players (“We are a team and no one should turn on the other just because they had a bad game”). Damien butts heads with Julien immediately, creating a tension that puts Cam in an awkward position. Cam also has trouble containing his volatile outbursts. His anger is the result of more than regular hormones—Cam and his father are werewolves and members of a vicious pack that use their powers to get ahead. Coach Damien himself is also a “shifter” with the ability to turn into a panther; he recognizes Cam’s potential and hopes to steer him toward a path of using his powers responsibly. As the wolf in Cam starts to rear its furry head, he has to choose between his father’s unrelenting aggression and his coach’s calmer wisdom. As Cam bounces back and forth between these two competing visions of adulthood, Di Meglio’s illustrations call back to classic comic strips with vibrant colors and a vintage style of square-jawed, all-American jocks. The artwork becomes even more fun when the supernatural elements come into play, allowing Di Meglio to create some great panels of half-men/half-wolves dunking shots and growling at each other. Hawkins’ use of shapeshifting as a coming-of-age metaphor does not feel like anything new—the basic setup will call to mind classic high school films like Teen Wolf—but Cam’s uneasy choice between his father’s brutality and his coach’s emphasis on responsibility and duty creates a rich dynamic to drive the entire story. Fans of supernatural high school stories will appreciate that this wild fantasy shoots for a story grounded in real emotions.
A riff on classic teen tropes with a poignant emotional arc and vivid, fantastical illustrations.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781545815991
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Maverick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions.
A teenage girl refuses a medical procedure to remove her heart and her emotions.
June lives in a future in which a reclusive Scientist has pioneered a procedure to remove hearts, thus eliminating all “sadness, anxiety, and anger.” The downside is that it numbs pleasurable feelings, too. Most people around June have had the procedure done; for young people, in part because doing so helps them become more focused and successful. Before long, June is the only one among her peers who still has her heart. When her parents decide it’s time for her to have the procedure so she can become more focused in school, June hatches a plan to pretend to go through with it. She also investigates a way to restore her beloved sister’s heart, joining forces with Max, a classmate who’s also researching the Scientist because he has started to feel again despite having had his heart removed. The pair’s journey is somewhat rushed and improbable, as is the resolution they achieve. However, the story’s message feels relevant and relatable to teens, and the artwork effectively sets the scene, with bursts of color popping throughout an otherwise black-and-white landscape, reflecting the monochromatic, heartless reality of June’s world. There are no ethnic or cultural markers in the text; June has paper-white skin and dark hair, and Max has dark skin and curly black hair.
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions. (Graphic speculative fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780063116214
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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