THE FIELD

A child’s summer of freedom a half-century ago.

This graphic memoir, set in the 1970s, examines Lapp’s experiences as an early adolescent over the course of a summer vacation. Largely left on his own, Dave, as he is referred to in the text, spends much of his time exploring a field on the edge of town with his friends, collecting and scrutinizing small animals and making other discoveries about the inevitability of change and the human potential for cruelty. Adults make periodic appearances, most commonly to discipline the children for misbehavior or to reveal, through glimpses of dysfunction, their nagging unhappiness and frustration. Lapp moves the narrative briskly and sometimes abruptly from one episode to another, but he steadily builds momentum as he develops themes of unexpected discovery and lurking danger. Dave’s interactions with his rather reckless and aggressive friend Ed are key, and we come to understand how they prompt a reckoning, or at least the beginnings of one, with his own developing moral coordinates. The book’s illustrations are particularly fitting for this material; they seem poised between a juvenile simplicity and a more mature sophistication of form, as if youthful innocence has been blended with and is now gradually yielding to an awareness of new complexities. One of the most intriguing features of the book is Lapp’s representation of a time that, though not that far in the past, seems so because of the way children were allowed to roam through their communities without supervision. Beyond that historical difference, much of the material presents, with consistent sensitivity and insight, conflicts and challenges that have a timeless aura. Ultimately, Lapp succeeds in providing a memorable perspective on the wonder, cruelty, confusion, misery, and joy of a childhood spent largely independently.

Revealing and moving storytelling about growing up in the 1970s.