Quirky choices, but readers will be left knowing these iconic figures better.
In graphic format, profiles of six illustrators that focus on their words, groundbreaking works, and early influences.
Following up on her Before They Were Authors (2019), Haidle pays tribute to another worthy and diverse set of creative talents: Wanda Gág, Tove Jansson, Hiyao Miyazaki, Yuyi Morales, Maurice Sendak, and Jerry Pinkney. As children’s-book illustrators go, animator Miyazaki is really an outlier here, but the author wedges him into the general scheme by analyzing his character types and his views on visual art in general. Sticking to her own low-key, chromatically restrained figures and visual style (to the point that even the iconic covers of favorites like Where the Wild Things Are and Millions of Cats are unrecognizably altered), she takes each of her subjects from childhood to well-launched career, pointing to the effects of family situations and tracing the development of artistic aspirations. Their later years are rushed, but she includes nods to significant personal as well as professional contacts, such as Jansson’s same-sex partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, and Sendak’s relationships with both his life companion, Eugene Glynn, and his editor Ursula Nordstrom. Direct quotes, printed in red, make up major portions of the narrative, placed in and around the neatly arranged geometric panels, so even though young audiences may struggle to find any visual evocation of these illustrators’ distinctive spirits and styles, some impression at least of their voices and approaches to art do, in the end, come through.
Quirky choices, but readers will be left knowing these iconic figures better. (timelines, endnotes, further reading) (Graphic collective biography. 8-12)Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-328-80154-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Etch/HMH
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
A painful and painfully recognizable tale of one girl’s struggle to make and keep “one good friend.” (author’s note)...
A truth-telling graphic memoir whose theme song could be Johnny Lee’s old country song “Lookin’ for Love in all the Wrong Places.”
Shannon, depicted in Pham’s clear, appealing panels as a redheaded white girl, starts kindergarten in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1979, and her story ends just before sixth grade. Desperately longing to be in “the group” at school, Shannon suffers persistent bullying, particularly from a mean girl, Jenny, which leads to chronic stomachaches, missing school, and doctor visits. Contemporary readers will recognize behaviors indicative of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but the doctor calls it anxiety and tells Shannon to stop worrying. Instead of being a place of solace, home adds to Shannon’s stress. The middle child of five, she suffers abuse from her oldest sibling, Wendy, whom Pham often portrays as a fierce, gigantic bear and whom readers see their mother worrying about from the beginning. The protagonist’s faith (presented as generically Christian) surfaces overtly a few times but mostly seems to provide a moral compass for Shannon as she negotiates these complicated relationships. This episodic story sometimes sticks too close to the truth for comfort, but readers will appreciate Shannon’s fantastic imagination that lightens her tough journey toward courage and self-acceptance.
A painful and painfully recognizable tale of one girl’s struggle to make and keep “one good friend.” (author’s note) (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-416-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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