An evocative, tender, character-driven coming-of-age story.
Four social outcasts turn their love of anime into fast cash at the price of their identities and boundaries in this ode to the early 2000s.
Brooke Imafidon's, Melissa Cho's, Kelly Nahas', and Maggie Hilcot’s lives change when they purchase a bootleg anime DVD. Initial shock over the feature’s sexual elements turns to fascination and entrepreneurism as they sell burned copies to classmates at their Christian boarding school. Sales success brings money as well as attention and interpersonal drama, complicated by a love triangle among the four girls. The story takes place in Forest Hills, California, a small town with a repressive, toxic culture. Bullies, cliques, and homophobic teachers represent some of the influences pushing the protagonists and others to alienation and quiet yearning. Skillful, detailed art reminiscent of the girls’ beloved genre brings the cast to life through expressive body language as well as paneling that changes in scale and perspective. One-page asides flesh out each protagonist’s backstory as well as those of background characters who have their own rich inner lives. Names and physical appearances—while somewhat obscured by the green, black, and white palette—cue ethnic diversity in the main cast, but, contrasting with the treatment of sexuality and faith, this element is not developed in any depth. This is a witty and absorbing examination of a community’s painful experiences with loneliness, queer romance, and strangely bewitching anime.
An evocative, tender, character-driven coming-of-age story. (Graphic fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6949-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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
Fluffy and not particularly memorable.
A teen finds himself sharing a room with the boy who broke his heart.
Charlie von Hevringprinz has achieved his dreams of transitioning and attending Valentine Academy for Boys, located in Au Sable Forks, a tiny town in “middle-of-nowhere upstate New York.” When he arrives, he’s appalled to find that even though he requested and paid for a single room, he was assigned a roommate: Jasper Grimes, the handsome poet who broke Charlie’s heart when they were at Shakespeare camp before his transition. Charlie comes off as intellectually snobby and frustratingly lacking in self-awareness; meanwhile, Jasper’s terrible boundaries do nothing to subvert the first impression of him as an entitled rich boy. Unfortunately, their character development doesn’t do enough to add vulnerability or depth to these initial impressions, making it hard for readers to feel butterflies over their romantic drama. The Saint Valentine–themed private boarding school setting is a classic of the genre, however, and as a backdrop, it contributes to an enjoyably campy vibe. The writing is pleasantly readable, but the plot is reminiscent of clichés from internet fandom, something reinforced by the title, which references an old meme. If fans of queer young adult romance make it to the second half, they’ll find that the story does become more interesting, ultimately ending on a sweet, romantic note. Charlie and Jasper read white, while the supporting cast contains racial diversity.
Fluffy and not particularly memorable. (map) (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781250347657
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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