Poignant, bittersweet, and delightful.
A boy finds that looking to the past helps alleviate his loneliness.
In this graphic memoir, white-presenting gay boy Damian and his older brother live with their grandmother Nanny; their mother died when they were toddlers. Nanny cared for the boys, trying “really hard to fill the mom-shaped hole” in their lives and to “be the mother who had never been there for her.” Now in eighth grade, Damian recounts how he still feels like an outsider. Whenever these feelings overwhelm him, his imagination takes him into the past, sometimes to Nanny’s childhood with her two sisters in foster care, a time that inspires many of the stories she tells. Sometimes he tries to imagine what his mother’s life was like when she was his age, a more difficult endeavor since Damian’s connection to her exists through photographs and stories “gathered over time from anyone who knew her.” In the muted artwork that features many close-ups of people’s faces, Alexander expertly captures small moments of worry. The story’s movement through different time periods (distinguished by different color palettes) offers glimpses into the interlocking lives of a family separated by tragedy. Like real life, the book doesn’t have a neat resolution, but it does offer a sense of closure as Damian realizes how positive Nanny’s influences have been and how the concept of a mother is broader than he originally believed. The author’s note includes photos along with more information about Alexander’s family.
Poignant, bittersweet, and delightful. (Graphic memoir. 9-12)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250860200
Page Count: 224
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share.
A multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.
Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah’s Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe’s Stevieand Langston Hughes’ poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that “[W]ords are my brilliance.” Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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