An entertaining sendup of campus life.
Students launch a crusade to keep their campus from being strip-mined in Justus and Sturges’ graphic novel.
When gold is discovered beneath Rhode Island’s Halcyon Burke University, the greedy Board of Regents immediately resolves to bulldoze the campus so as to mine the trove more expeditiously. Standing in the way is the interim student government—they’re in office only over winter break—consisting of the president, Parker Myles, an idealistic coed; Malakai Lux, the nerdy secretary; Jean Genie, the nonbinary treasurer who finances the group with poker winnings; and nice-guy Vice President Hutch Hamlin. Their opposition to the university’s destruction gets a boost from an obscure provision in HBU’s charter: If the student government thinks the school is violating its principles, they can declare a “state of emergency” and call a referendum that could block the board’s plan. Their scheme is challenged when the permanent student government returns to campus and declares their support for bulldozing the campus. They’re headed by president Braden Carlock, a rich jerk whose dad is a regent, and Vice President Josh Garner, a rich dimwit whose only talent is improvising drinking games. (“I deal out two cards. Whatever they add up to, that’s how many drinks you take.”) Up against the wealth and cunning of the rich kids and the regents, Parker and her underdog posse seem so overmatched that even her mom tells her to give up. The story frames a broad satire of a college culture that, as in all campus comedies, is split between party animals, earnest misfits, and haughty hierarchs. The plot is full of cartoonish contrivances and the characters are stereotypes, but the stereotypes are sharply drawn and the gags are often funny and spot-on about the ridiculousness of academic folkways. (“Is it true that you once single-handedly dispersed a Nazi rally in Leeds with a flame-thrower?” gushes a starry-eyed Parker to her anarchist punk professor.) Joe Eisma’s well-executed art captures a wealth of expressive detail—pinched scowls, vapid smirks—that makes the characters more vibrant.
An entertaining sendup of campus life.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781545816103
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Maverick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 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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