A fresh take on a coming-of-age story with uneven execution.
A teen drifts apart from her best friend and toward activism.
Dana Drucker is halfway through her senior year in Boca Bella, Florida, when one of her gory social media pranks with best friend Lily Villaseñor nearly gets them expelled. As punishment, the principal sends them to a community college film class to learn to channel their creativity more productively. Now Dana is balancing schoolwork, the college class, her strained relationship with her mom, and the possibility of losing Lily. As Lily finds her space as a natural cinematographer and starts dating Wye, their nonbinary classmate, Dana feels more and more lost. On top of that, the red tide caused by toxic algae that thrives in a warming ocean filled with pollutants is wreaking havoc. Wye suggests they create an eco-horror film about it, but as Dana struggles to find her role in the group, she becomes increasingly connected to Daphne Ocean, a self-entitled elemental witch, and the environmental group Daphne volunteers with. With a color palette reminiscent of old comics and an artistic style that will evoke strong reactions from readers, Dana’s friendship drama is one that teens will easily relate to, although the activism aspect of the story is lacking in depth. Dana appears white; Lily has brown skin, Wye reads Asian, and there is additional racial diversity in background characters.
A fresh take on a coming-of-age story with uneven execution. (Graphic fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781728430362
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Graphic Universe
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.
In this YA graphic novel, an alienated Métis girl learns about her people’s Canadian history.
Métis teenager Echo Desjardins finds herself living in a home away from her mother, attending a new school, and feeling completely lonely as a result. She daydreams in class and wanders the halls listening to a playlist of her mother’s old CDs. At home, she shuts herself up in her room. But when her history teacher begins to lecture about the Pemmican Wars of early 1800s Saskatchewan, Echo finds herself swept back to that time. She sees the Métis people following the bison with their mobile hunting camp, turning the animals’ meat into pemmican, which they sell to the Northwest Company in order to buy supplies for the winter. Echo meets a young girl named Marie, who introduces Echo to the rhythms of Métis life. She finally understands what her Métis heritage actually means. But the joys are short-lived, as conflicts between the Métis and their rivals in the Hudson Bay Company come to a bloody head. The tragic history of her people will help explain the difficulties of the Métis in Echo’s own time, including those of her mother and the teen herself. Accompanied by dazzling art by Henderson (A Blanket of Butterflies, 2017, etc.) and colorist Yaciuk (Fire Starters, 2016, etc.), this tale is a brilliant bit of time travel. Readers are swept back to 19th-century Saskatchewan as fully as Echo herself. Vermette’s (The Break, 2017, etc.) dialogue is sparse, offering a mostly visual, deeply contemplative juxtaposition of the present and the past. Echo’s eventual encounter with her mother (whose fate has been kept from readers up to that point) offers a powerful moment of connection that is both unexpected and affecting. “Are you…proud to be Métis?” Echo asks her, forcing her mother to admit, sheepishly: “I don’t really know much about it.” With this series opener, the author provides a bit more insight into what that means.
A sparse, beautifully drawn story about a teen discovering her heritage.Pub Date: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55379-678-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HighWater Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hinds adds another magnificent adaptation to his oeuvre (King Lear, 2009, etc.) with this stunning graphic retelling of Homer’s epic. Following Odysseus’s journey to return home to his beloved wife, Penelope, readers are transported into a world that easily combines the realistic and the fantastic. Gods mingle with the mortals, and not heeding their warnings could lead to quick danger; being mere men, Odysseus and his crew often make hasty errors in judgment and must face challenging consequences. Lush watercolors move with fluid lines throughout this reimagining. The artist’s use of color is especially striking: His battle scenes are ample, bloodily scarlet affairs, and Polyphemus’s cave is a stifling orange; he depicts the underworld as a colorless, mirthless void, domestic spaces in warm tans, the all-encircling sea in a light Mediterranean blue and some of the far-away islands in almost tangibly growing greens. Don’t confuse this hefty, respectful adaptation with some of the other recent ones; this one holds nothing back and is proudly, grittily realistic rather than cheerfully cartoonish. Big, bold, beautiful. (notes) (Graphic classic. YA)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4266-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
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