Perhaps not for everyone but an honest exploration of a personal subject.
Fourteen-year-old Recca details her experience of her parents’ divorce through a graphic medium.
Growing up middle class in Las Vegas, brown-haired Sophia had what looked like the perfect family. However, when she was 8, after loud and violent fights, her parents made an announcement of their imminent divorce. Sophia was heartbroken and candidly portrays her feelings both through her own words and illustrations by Kim and Leach (Click, 2018, etc.). Earlier praise from a teacher for her caring nature guides Sophia to patch her parents’ fractured relationship, and the outcome is exceptional: Her mother and father seemingly put their issues behind them and focus on successful co-parenting. Although the portrayal is authentically voiced, Sophia’s circumstance is unusual; not all young readers will be able to bridge the dissolution of their parents’ relationship so easily, potentially giving them false hope. The full-color art has moments of idiosyncrasy, with Sophia drawn to look disturbingly mature in close-up shots. Other panels show Sophia literally bisected by a line; even younger readers will be able to glean meaning from this. There is a quiet but continuous undercurrent of Christian faith throughout. Like Sophia’s family, nearly all persons depicted are white; the few scenes with any persons of color exist only in what appears to be a social services office.
Perhaps not for everyone but an honest exploration of a personal subject. (Graphic memoir. 7-12)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947378-00-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Zuiker Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2018
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Though a bit loose around the edges, a charmer nevertheless.
Tales of a fourth grade ne’er-do-well.
It seems that young Jordan is stuck in a never-ending string of bad luck. Sure, no one’s perfect (except maybe goody-two-shoes William Feranek), but Jordan can’t seem to keep his attention focused on the task at hand. Try as he may, things always go a bit sideways, much to his educators’ chagrin. But Jordan promises himself that fourth grade will be different. As the year unfolds, it does prove to be different, but in a way Jordan couldn’t possibly have predicted. This humorous memoir perfectly captures the square-peg-in-a-round-hole feeling many kids feel and effectively heightens that feeling with comic situations and a splendid villain. Jordan’s teacher, Mrs. Fisher, makes an excellent foil, and the book’s 1970s setting allows for her cruelty to go beyond anything most contemporary readers could expect. Unfortunately, the story begins to run out of steam once Mrs. Fisher exits. Recollections spiral, losing their focus and leading to a more “then this happened” and less cause-and-effect structure. The anecdotes are all amusing and Jordan is an endearing protagonist, but the book comes dangerously close to wearing out its welcome with sheer repetitiveness. Thankfully, it ends on a high note, one pleasant and hopeful enough that readers will overlook some of the shabbier qualities. Jordan is White and Jewish while there is some diversity among his classmates; Mrs. Fisher is White.
Though a bit loose around the edges, a charmer nevertheless. (Memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-64723-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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