A stunningly rendered graphic adaptation that will introduce new readers to this important chapter in history.
A graphic novel treatment of Sepetys’ acclaimed Between Shades of Gray (2011) illuminates the story of a teenage Lithuanian girl’s imprisonment in a Siberian labor camp.
In 1941, 15-year-old Lina is deported, along with her mother and young brother, by the Soviet forces occupying her home country of Lithuania. They endure a grueling six-week train journey, unaware of their destination or the whereabouts of Lina’s father, who disappeared prior to their arrest. Once they reach Siberia, they are sold into a sentence of 25 years of hard labor and forced to sign a document saying that they committed crimes against the Soviet Union. The harsh struggles that Lina and her fellow countrymen face as Soviet prisoners are poignantly depicted in the graphic novel format, which utilizes spare, poetic language to throw into stark relief the images depicting the physical and emotional abuses they are forced to endure. Throughout these hardships, Lina holds onto hope that she and her family will survive to be reunited with her father; in the meantime, she documents her heartbreaking experiences through her drawing. Like Lina’s art, the stirring, watercolorlike illustrations serve as an evocative medium for relaying both the horrors of her experience and the sublime resilience of the human spirit.
A stunningly rendered graphic adaptation that will introduce new readers to this important chapter in history. (author's note) (Graphic historical fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-20416-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions.
A teenage girl refuses a medical procedure to remove her heart and her emotions.
June lives in a future in which a reclusive Scientist has pioneered a procedure to remove hearts, thus eliminating all “sadness, anxiety, and anger.” The downside is that it numbs pleasurable feelings, too. Most people around June have had the procedure done; for young people, in part because doing so helps them become more focused and successful. Before long, June is the only one among her peers who still has her heart. When her parents decide it’s time for her to have the procedure so she can become more focused in school, June hatches a plan to pretend to go through with it. She also investigates a way to restore her beloved sister’s heart, joining forces with Max, a classmate who’s also researching the Scientist because he has started to feel again despite having had his heart removed. The pair’s journey is somewhat rushed and improbable, as is the resolution they achieve. However, the story’s message feels relevant and relatable to teens, and the artwork effectively sets the scene, with bursts of color popping throughout an otherwise black-and-white landscape, reflecting the monochromatic, heartless reality of June’s world. There are no ethnic or cultural markers in the text; June has paper-white skin and dark hair, and Max has dark skin and curly black hair.
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions. (Graphic speculative fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780063116214
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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