A must-read graphic novel that is both heart-rending and beautifully hopeful.
A grandmother shares her story of survival as a Jew in France during World War II.
As part of a homework assignment, Julian (Auggie’s chief tormentor in Wonder, 2012) video chats with Grandmère, who finally relates her wartime story. Born Sara Blum to a comfortable French Jewish family, she is indulged by her parents, who remain in Vichy France after 1940. Then, in 1943, after the German occupation, soldiers come to Sara’s school to arrest her and the other Jewish students. Sara hides and is soon spirited away by “Tourteau,” a student that she and the others had teased because of his crablike, crutch-assisted walk after being stricken by polio. Nonetheless, Tourteau, whose real name is Julien, and his parents shelter Sara in their barn loft for the duration of the war, often at great peril but always with care and love. Palacio begins each part of her story with quotations: from Muriel Rukeyser’s poetry, Anne Frank, and George Santayana. Her digital drawings, inked by Czap, highlight facial close-ups that brilliantly depict emotions. The narrative thread, inspired by Palacio’s mother-in-law, is spellbinding. In the final pages, the titular bird, seen in previous illustrations, soars skyward and connects readers to today’s immigration tragedies. Extensive backmatter, including an afterword by Ruth Franklin, provides superb resources. Although the book is being marketed as middle-grade, the complexities of the Holocaust in Vichy France, the growing relationship between Sara and Julien, Julien’s fate, and the mutual mistrust among neighbors will be most readily appreciated by Wonder’s older graduates.
A must-read graphic novel that is both heart-rending and beautifully hopeful. (author’s note, glossary, suggested reading list, organizations and resources, bibliography, photographs) (Graphic historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-64553-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
It’s a slog to the dubiously upbeat resolution (Niko realizing where salvation lies on the one hand and vowing a bullying...
More unredeemed middle school monkeyshines and satire from the bully’s point of view in an occasionally humorous sequel.
Niko Kayler, fat, unhappy and addicted to causing pain and suffering wherever he goes, lasts only a day or two in his new Boulder school (the Organic School for Local Children) before he starts looking for a way to bully and not get caught. Refusing to take calming medication given him by his new psychiatrist—“I am not a Scientologist—I’m not necessarily against psychiatric medicine, but why alter what’s perfect?”—self-absorbed Niko nevertheless keeps a journal, as prescribed. He barters work at Radio Shack in exchange for cellphones (in a nod to Breaking Bad); he uses them to send terrorizing texts and then, well, as he is Niko, literally burns them. When he bumps up his game to Internet-based anonymous bullying, Niko’s shared discovery of techniques becomes a viral video recorded by Alex, his long-suffering sibling—once again heaping humiliation on Niko, hoist by his own petard. Katz’s manic narrative voice for Niko is mostly furious, arrogant and, yes, mildly funny, with occasional glimpses of the sad boy beneath it all, while the many line drawings accompanying his journal look authentically adolescent.
It’s a slog to the dubiously upbeat resolution (Niko realizing where salvation lies on the one hand and vowing a bullying comeback on the other), but that could be because, like Niko, his journal isn’t sure just what it wants to be. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-60658-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
“Is it possible to know something but not see what it is yet?” So writes Dean, the young narrator of this episodic graphic novel, as he records such slice-of-life episodes as playing “soldier” with a trio of new neighbors in a wooded patch near his home, losing a playground fight, meeting a mercurial homeless man and overhearing his parents worriedly discussing his bad attitude at school. Pyle designs his pages with a variety of large sequential and inset panels, using colors to signal both narrative divisions and general mood; the ordinary world is cast in a drab olive green, for instance, bursting into full, comics-style color for fantasized battles. In contrast to the simply drawn figures, which are sometimes hard to tell apart, the author tracks Dean’s groping progress—out of childhood and into something that’s not quite maturity but definitely headed that way—indirectly, with a subtlety that will engage more reflective readers. A coming-of-age tale of the more introspective sort. (Graphic fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8050-7998-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
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