BLINDSPOT

“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)