A warm hug of a tale.
Four friends grapple with everyday challenges.
For Hazelton High juniors Sasha, Christine, Abby, and Brit, the new school year brings new trials. Sasha struggles to balance her love life and academic aspirations. Scholastically minded Brit finds herself in a love triangle between a good-hearted grump and a handsome playboy. Abby feels anxiety about her once-popular blog and putting a label on her sexual orientation when confusing new feelings emerge. Christine fears coming out to Abby (although she is out to Brit and Sasha), on whom she’s harbored a long and tortuous crush that she worries will destroy their friendship. The girls navigate timely and important issues like establishing and communicating boundaries, defining one’s sexual orientation, righting miscommunications, and (staying in the vein of its predecessor, 2020’s Go With the Flow) menstrual equity. Williams and Schneemann’s warm and engaging graphic novel is a welcome return to this world, with vibrant art; short, episodic chapters; fast pacing; and the right blend of tension and sweetness. The group’s dynamics and communication skills as they work through their issues are commendable, modeling openness and honesty and leaving aside cattiness and drama. The main cast is diverse and inclusive, showing a range of skin tones, body sizes, and sexual orientations.
A warm hug of a tale. (authors’ note) (Graphic fiction. 11-16)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781250834102
Page Count: 336
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Imaginative and dazzlingly theatrical at the end, though on the long and wandering side.
A traumatized family heals most of its cracks as it bumbles from Meanyopolis to Truphoria.
It’s been more than six decades since Feiffer illustrated Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, but he’s still sending young people into metaphorical fantasy realms to meet quirky residents and bumble along on personal quests toward self-actualization. Here, the horrifying prospect of getting a new dad, home, and siblings propels quarrelsome Pearlie and contrary little brother Curly into the Lost Dimension of Ephemera. They’re followed by older sister Shirley with her hunky but dimwitted fiance, Earl, and finally their indecisive mom, who sings the titular song (“I cried, I sighed, / alone, I’d moan, / ’twas grapes / that set me free”). Mommy, in a protracted search for her true identity, becomes the real protagonist. Or at least, by the end, she sends her children on their ways and evinces the most change among the characters. Accompanied by a dog/cat named Kelly and a wildly mutable monster representing doubt (or something like it), various members of the clan encounter locals, from the Feary (“rhymes with scary”) Queen to an attacking troupe of dapper, dancing, deadly Elegantics. The story culminates in a wedding and a last reprise of the theme song. In the art dialogue balloons, bright colors and scribbly lines feature more prominently than the human figures, who are posed with balletic grace. Main characters present white.
Imaginative and dazzlingly theatrical at the end, though on the long and wandering side. (Graphic fantasy. 11-16)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780062963833
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Michael di Capua/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
IN THE NEWS
At best, a poor substitute for Cliffs Notes and like slacker fare. (Graphic novel. 11-14)
A labored retelling of the classic survival tale in graphic format, heavily glossed and capped with multiple value-added mini-essays.
Along with capturing neither the original’s melodrama nor the stranded Crusoe’s MacGyver-esque ingenuity in making do, Graham’s version quickly waxes tedious thanks to forced inclusion of minor details and paraphrased rather than directly quoted dialogue in an artificially antiquated style (“You Friday. Me Master”). Frequent superscript numbers lead to often-superfluous footnotes: “Crusoe, a European, assumes that he is superior to other races. This attitude was usual at the time when the story was written.” Shoehorned into monotonous rows of small panels, the art battles for real estate with both dialogue balloons and boxed present-tense descriptions of what’s going on (the pictures themselves being rarely self-explanatory). Seven pages of closing matter cover topics from Defoe’s checkered career to stage and film versions of his masterpiece—and even feature an index for the convenience of assignment-driven readers.
At best, a poor substitute for Cliffs Notes and like slacker fare. (Graphic novel. 11-14)Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7641-4451-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Barron's
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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