Surely there are more nuanced female characters than this.
While her teen angst is universal, diarist Amy feels like she is from another world.
Fourteen-year-old Amy, who has a generous smattering of freckles and sprightly ginger hair, dutifully records many familiar teen trials and tribulations: crushes, unrelenting embarrassment, and social squabbles. Her best friend, Kat, dithers between ignoring her for a boy and demanding Amy’s full attention when her relationship falters. Amy is in a tenuous relationship with Nick, a cute skater boy with whom she likes to kiss but finds herself tongue-tied when they actually talk. Her father died five years ago; now Amy struggles less with grief and more with her mother’s beginning to date. While Amy’s problems may seem familiar, they are never explored with any real depth. Throughout her narrative, there is little personal growth; the only things that change with any regularity are her sartorial selections. Every time Amy finds herself in a difficult situation, she runs from it, wearing thin any awkward charm. Even her space-alien feelings seem flimsy and perfunctory. Told in a diary format alongside full-color comic panels, this graphic novel was originally published in French in 2015 as an adaptation of a novel published nearly a decade earlier; this version contains scenes that read off these days, such as an unfunny joke about hamster rape and an unnecessarily awkward moment surrounding a dropped tampon. Amy’s world seems to be a white, middle-class one.
Surely there are more nuanced female characters than this. (Graphic fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5458-0215-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Papercutz
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Three true tales of adventure as grand and admirable in the telling as they were in the doing.
With uncommon perception and a flair for visual drama, Phelan tracks three intrepid souls’ solo journeys around the world.
In 1884, Thomas Stevens rode a bicycle from San Francisco to Boston, and then decided to extend the outing—to Yokohama. Journalist Nellie Bly set out in 1889 to beat the 80-day schedule suggested in Jules Verne’s novel (meeting the encouraging author along the way and bettering the novel’s time by two days). Mariner Joshua Slocum took the most circuitous route, sailing over 46,000 miles between 1895 and 1898 accompanied only by poignant memories of his first wife. Adding brief bridging captions or snatches of dialogue to quoted comments from their subsequent memoirs, Phelan highlights the experiences and reflections of each in cinematic sequences of delicately drawn panels. By focusing on the travelers’ faces, he captures their distinct characters (and shared rock-steady determination) with such force and clarity that readers can’t help but be swept along by Stevens’ aggressive mustache, Bly’s steely glare at male doubters and nay-sayers, the aching heart visible behind Slocum’s tough, grizzled countenance. The author rounds off each account with an epilogue, then closes with a thoughtful note and a source list.
Three true tales of adventure as grand and admirable in the telling as they were in the doing. (Graphic nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7636-3619-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers will definitely want to have, know or be Maggie’s brothers—but she herself proves to be no slouch when it comes to...
Nervous, home-schooled by her absent and much-missed mom and saddled with three adored older brothers—and a ghost—Maggie starts high school.
Largely but not entirely left by her doting upper-grade sibs (who had “first days” of their own) to sink or swim, Maggie starts off in lonely isolation but quickly finds two great friends in Mohawk-wearing, multiply pierced, exuberantly logorrheic classmate Lucy and her quieter (but also Mohawk-topped) brother Alistair. Simmering complications soon reach a boil as Maggie discovers that Alistair and her own oldest brother Daniel have some sort of bad history, and on a more eldritch note, a woman’s ghost that Maggie had occasionally seen in the nearby graveyard takes to floating into her house and right up to her face. Filling monochrome ink-and-wash panels with wonderfully mobile faces, expressively posed bodies, wordless conversations in meaningful glances, funny banter and easy-to-read visual sequences ranging from hilarious to violent, Hicks crafts an upbeat, uncommonly engaging tale rich in humor, suspense, and smart, complex characters.
Readers will definitely want to have, know or be Maggie’s brothers—but she herself proves to be no slouch when it comes to coping with change and taking on challenges. (Graphic fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59643-556-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: First Second/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
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