With strengths outweighing flaws, this is a dark yet digestible visual delight with an endearing investigative trio.
A visually refreshing treat from South Korea, Ly and Park’s debut graphic novel features Suee Lee, a 12-year-old girl with sharp intelligence, a world-weary view, and a pointy hairdo.
Suee Lee is not pleased that she has been transferred from Bustle Elementary on Bustle Street to Outskirts Elementary in Outskirtsville. She chooses to keep to herself rather than try to befriend either “queen bee,” “jerk,” “dim bulb,” or “loser” but gets tangled up in trouble when a strange voice beckons her into the eerie exhibit room at school. Suee wakes up in the nurse’s office, and soon after, her shadow begins to speak, taunting Suee and threatening her classmates. While Suee Lee verbally spars with her own shadow, the creepy vice principal expands his disturbing after-school classes for “zeros.” When students begin to act like zombies and lose their shadows, Suee reluctantly befriends the shy and bullied Haeun as well as the confident and handsome Hyunwoo. The unlikely threesome launch the Zero Detective Club to investigate. The graphics are simultaneously menacing and exquisitely clean, superbly honed in a shiny palette of jet, ash, and crimson. It’s to the author’s credit that readers will be unsure about whom to root for until the very end. The wry writing deftly captures preteen angst, but the story meanders, at times devolving into awkward dialogue, and the embedded moral to the story is tediously corny.
With strengths outweighing flaws, this is a dark yet digestible visual delight with an endearing investigative trio. (Graphic horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2563-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel.
Sandy and his family, Japanese Canadians, experience hatred and incarceration during World War II.
Sandy Saito loves baseball, and the Vancouver Asahi ballplayers are his heroes. But when they lose in the 1941 semifinals, Sandy’s dad calls it a bad omen. Sure enough, in December 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in the U.S. The Canadian government begins to ban Japanese people from certain areas, moving them to “dormitories” and setting a curfew. Sandy wants to spend time with his father, but as a doctor, his dad is busy, often sneaking out past curfew to work. One night Papa is taken to “where he [is] needed most,” and the family is forced into an internment camp. Life at the camp isn’t easy, and even with some of the Asahi players playing ball there, it just isn’t the same. Trying to understand and find joy again, Sandy struggles with his new reality and relationship with his father. Based on the true experiences of Japanese Canadians and the Vancouver Asahi team, this graphic novel is a glimpse of how their lives were affected by WWII. The end is a bit abrupt, but it’s still an inspiring and sweet look at how baseball helped them through hardship. The illustrations are all in a sepia tone, giving it an antique look and conveying the emotions and struggles. None of the illustrations of their experiences are overly graphic, making it a good introduction to this upsetting topic for middle-grade readers.
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel. (afterword, further resources) (Graphic historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0334-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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