An excellent, important debut.
Damian has come up with a foolproof way to go unnoticed at his new school.
He was bullied at his previous school. As seventh grade starts, he decides that if he doesn’t speak at his new school, no one will notice him or have anything to bully him about. At home with his loving grandmother and his older brother, he speaks; at school, he’s silent even when kids are nice to him. The account of Damian’s seventh grade year is interspersed with flashbacks. He had friends, mostly girls until fourth grade, when his girl friends learned they shouldn’t sit with a boy. He had a few friends that were boys after that, mostly via video games, but he was always hesitant to open up because he felt so different inside and because of his mother’s murder when he was an infant, which has always set him apart. His no-talking plan backfires. He’s placed in remedial classes and forced to see a therapist at school. Opening up is not easy, especially when he begins to think that he might actually like some boys. Newcomer Alexander delves into his past to craft a sweet, touching, and at-times scary memoir of grief and loss and coming out (mostly to himself). He situates his younger self in bright cartoon panels, a White boy in fairly diverse classrooms. LGBTQ+ tweens will see their struggles and rejoice in his progression toward self-acceptance.
An excellent, important debut. (author's note, resources) (Graphic memoir. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-22282-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
PROFILES
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf