Could pack more of a punch, but Natalie’s straightforward, heartfelt story will still resonate.
Cartoonist Scrivan’s debut graphic novel explores friendship breakups and coming in to one’s own.
Bespectacled Natalie and her best friend, Lily, used to be “two peas in a pod.” But after Lily moves, even though they both start at the same middle school, nothing is the same. Mean and dismissive, Lily has clearly dropped Natalie for their middle school’s cool girl, but Natalie is desperate to win her back no matter what. Convinced she’s “not enough” as she is, she tries everything from a new hat to suppressing her creativity. While she faces mild bullying from Lily and another classmate, a few newfound friends work unwaveringly to support Natalie in her journey to rebuild her self-esteem: “I’ve spent so much time thinking about what I’m not good at…that I never think about what I amgood at.” Both the illustration style and slice-of-life pacing have an early-2000s feel—think Amelia’s Notebook rather than Raina Telgemeier. Natalie’s first-person narration is so self-focused that secondary characters are exclusively there to contribute to her character development. Readers learn next to nothing about the internal lives of Natalie’s kind new friend Zoe or her crush, Derek, both kids of color. (Both Natalie and Lily are white.) While this isn’t unfitting—the premise is that this is Natalie’s sketchbook—it makes for underwhelming representation.
Could pack more of a punch, but Natalie’s straightforward, heartfelt story will still resonate. (Graphic fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-53821-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Kibuishi gives his epic tale a hefty nudge toward its long-building climax while giving readers plenty of reasons to stick...
Stonekeeper Emily frees the elves from their monstrous masked ruler and sets out to rejoin her brother and mother in the series’ penultimate episode.
The multistranded storyline picks up with Emily’s return to the world of Alledia. Now a fiery, destructive phoenix struggling to regain control of her actions, Emily goes on to follow her brother Navin and allies as they battle invading shadows on the nearby world of Typhon, then switches back to human form for a climactic confrontation with the Elf King—in the course of which Emily rips off his mask to a chorus of “ERGH!! NO!!! GRAH! RRGH!! AAAGH!” to expose a rousingly hideous face. Cute animal heads on many figures (the result of a curse) and a scene with benevolent-looking trees provide at least a bit of relief from the grim expressions that all the human and humanoid elven characters almost invariably wear. But along with emphatic sound effects, the battle and action scenes in the cleanly drawn, if sometimes cramped, panels feature huge blasts of fire or energy, intricately detailed giant robots, weirdly eyeless monsters, and wild escapades aplenty to keep the pace’s pedal to the metal. Aliens and AIs in the cast come in a variety of hues, elves are a uniform gray, and except for a brief encounter between Emily and a slightly darker lad, the (uncursed) humans default to white.
Kibuishi gives his epic tale a hefty nudge toward its long-building climax while giving readers plenty of reasons to stick around for it. (Graphic fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-545-85002-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
A beautifully rendered setting enfolds a disappointing plot.
In sixth grade, Izzy Mancini’s cozy, loving world falls apart.
She and her family have moved out of the cottage she grew up in. Her mother has spent the summer on Block Island instead of at home with Izzy. Her father has recently returned from military service in Afghanistan partially paralyzed and traumatized. The only people she can count on are Zelda and Piper, her best friends since kindergarten—that is, until the Haidary family moves into the upstairs apartment. At first, Izzy resents the new guests from Afghanistan even though she knows she should be grateful that Dr. Haidary saved her father’s life. But despite her initial resistance (which manifests at times as racism), as Izzy gets to know Sitara, the Haidarys’ daughter, she starts to question whether Zelda and Piper really are her friends for forever—and whether she has the courage to stand up for Sitara against the people she loves. Ferruolo weaves a rich setting, fully immersing readers in the largely white, coastal town of Seabury, Rhode Island. Disappointingly, the story resolves when Izzy convinces her classmates to accept Sitara by revealing the Haidarys’ past as American allies, a position that put them in so much danger that they had to leave home. The idea that Sitara should be embraced only because her family supported America, rather than simply because she is a human being, significantly undermines the purported message of tolerance for all.
A beautifully rendered setting enfolds a disappointing plot. (Fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-30909-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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