A Graphic Novel Becomes a Graphic Novel

Octavia Butler's Kindred: a Graphic Novel Adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
New York : Abrams Comicarts, 2017.
vi, 240 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 25 cm.

Almost two years ago, I read Butler's novel Kindred for the first time, and as I noted then, I loved it.   Therefore, about a year ago, I was excited to learn that two comics artists [Damian Duffy who lives in Urbana and John Jennings who used to live here] were in the middle of creating a graphic novel version of Butler's classic.  

If you are unfamiliar with Butler's novel, its hero is a black woman in the 1970s who finds herself suddenly dragged back in time to the antebellum enslaved world of Maryland - where she becomes tangled up with slaves and enslavers that are family connections from the past.  It is a brutal and dangerous world which she quickly has to figure out as she bounces back and forth from present to past.

Duffy and Jennings faced great challenges converting the novel to a graphic novel format, but they really have outdone themselves - and the reception to their work has been extremely positive - landing them on the NYT bestseller list.  With shifting uses of color and skilled condensing of narrative, they have preserved the power of Butler's work, while opening it up to a new generation of readers and fans of graphic novels.

The publisher Abrams has a nice page web page for the novel - allowing you to see samples of the gorgeous artwork of Duffy and Jennings.

This is a work that I will definitely be recommending.

Just Kids in a Lost City

Just Kids by Patti Smith
New York : Ecco, c2010.
xii, 278 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Have you ever wished you could travel back in time to New York City in the late 60s or early 70s? Wouldn't it be something to hang out with struggling artists around the Chelsea Hotel, or to meet with some of the successful artists of the time, such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Allen Ginsburg or Andy Warhol?

You can take just such a magic trip with renowned punk/rock/poet Patti Smith.  In her National Book Award winning memoir, Just Kids, she takes you with her when she was an unknown hopeful writer moving to the city from New Jersey

Her memoir is as much about her growth as an artist as it is about her rich relationship - as lover, collaborator, friend and confidant - with the late and famous photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe.

I would definitely recommend this autobiography to any student interested in the artistic life, in Rock and Roll, in the 60s and 70s, in women's history, in LGBT history, or in NYC.  I'd also recommend this book to any reader who enjoys a well written memoir.

Spirits Will Haunt You

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
New York : Atria Paperback, 2015.
481 p. ; 21 cm.     

I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to read The House of the Spirits.  I've been aware of it for years and have seen Isabel Allende interviewed on TV, but it's just one of those books that it took me far too long to get around to, but I'm glad I finally read it.

It was odd to me that I found it took me a long time to lose myself in this book, but once I did it really was a rewarding experience.  In some ways for me the book really builds to a crescendo when the candidate becomes President of Chile.  The candidate is, of course, the fictional version of the real hero of Chile, Salvador Allende - who was brutally overthrown by the United States and Chilean military, ushering in a period of savage repression under the fascist dictatorship of General Pinochet.

But the novel is not so much about the coup, though that is the tragic climax of the novel.  Instead it is very much about the forces of love, greed, pride, ambition, politics, & art - all framed within a world of sensuous and magical forces.

Allende has a lot to say about the potential loveliness of the human spirit, but also its potential for smallness, sadness, and depravity.

When I finished the novel, I was surprised to see that it was first published back in 1982, just 9 years after the horrendous events of the coup of 1973 and while Chile was still in the grip of the dictatorship.  The novel holds up well and feels as timely as ever.

An Inside the Park Home Run

One Shot at Forever by Chris Ballard
New York : Hyperion, [2012]
viii, 255 p. : ill., map ; 25 cm.

I added this book to our high school library last April after seeing that it was a 2016 Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee, and that it won a 2013 Alex Award (given to books for adults that have great young adult appeal).

After reading it, I wish it had won the Lincoln Award; it's that good!  It's a great book with so much to recommend it: a great baseball tale, an underdog story with heart, an homage to the counterculture of the 60s & 70s, a nostalgic coming-of-age saga, and a local setting!

I won't spoil the ending, but the book, with the subtitle A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season, recounts the unlikely successes of a very small town high school baseball team during the 1970 and 1971 seasons.  I was surprised to find out that in the 70s, Illinois high schools (at least in baseball) competed for state playoffs against schools large and small.  There were no classes and divisions, so a little school of 300 students might play a Chicago, powerhouse school of 5000 students.  This uneven competition is part of what makes the story so compelling.  Also, at the heart of the narrative is an iconoclast teacher/coach who - because of his big heart and unconventional notions - brings out the best in students and players.

I will highly recommend this book to students and teachers.  Some of the events of the story take place right here in Champaign-Urbana, and just 70 miles away in Macon, Illinois.  Also, the sports writing is crisp and interesting, but what really makes this book wonderful is the great passion and love that shines in the retelling of the Macon Ironmen "Mod Squad."  It is a lovely tale of some of the best aspects of teaching, coaching, and playing sports for the love of the game.

Less Loathing Please

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
New York : Modern Library, 1996, c1971.
vii, 283 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

I've seen Matt Taibbi referred to as an "heir" to Hunter Thompson's Gonzo journalism. I like Matt Taibbi and so I figured I'd take a stab at Thompson's Fear and Loathing. I also have had students interested in this book, and so I gave it a go. 

I probably read about 2/3 of the book and found it ok, but honestly a bit too hyper-masculine for my taste.  A lot of it reads like an extended brag about what an out-there, iconoclastic, mega-drug-abusing, cynical, passionate and alienated journalist Thompson is.  He loves both being immersed in US pop and consumer (and tourist) culture, all the while holding it in contempt and disdain.  It's good for a while, but maybe I just don't feel terribly moved by it.  I also think some of the power of Thompson was its shock value in the early 1970s and its rather gritty nastiness being a reflection of the even more obscene official business of the United States political system both in Vietnam and at home under the Nixon illegality.

Read it?  Sure, if you want a sampling of the 1970s tough guy anti-establishment journalism of the day.  Recommend it?  I probably won't, unless someone is looking for it.

Ahead of Her Time

Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies by Nell Beram and Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky
New York : Amulet Books, 2013.
177 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 27 cm.

I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did - and additionally, I learned a lot from reading it.

This is the second biography of a woman artist I've read this year, having read - and quite enjoyed - the biography of Georgia O'Keefe back in October.  In Collector of Skies, I really enjoyed discovering what an avant garde artist Yoko Ono was.  She really was a pioneer in the areas of conceptual and performance art.  The book has really nice reproductions of several of her installations, along with great archival photos from her work in the 1960s and 1970s (along with more recent photos).

Beram and Boriss-Krimsky's biography does a great job of detailing the interesting love, artistic and antiwar collaboration between Yoko and the mega-famous John Lennon while keeping the focus squarely on Yoko Ono's life and accomplishments. 

To me, the great strength of this book, is that not only do the authors provide a great deal of information about the life of Ono - her artistic, political and intellectual growth, and her personal life - but they manage to make it a very moving story, too.  I found myself lost in the joy and liberation that Yoko felt on meeting Lennon and realizing that he was someone who truly understood her work.  I also found myself near to tears reading about the murder of John in December of 1980, outside their Central Park apartment.

This book is a great introduction to the life and times of an important artist and pop figure.  I will definitely recommend it to students who might be interested.

A Slave to Time Traveling

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Boston : Beacon Press, [2004], c1979.
287 p. ; 21 cm.

Kindred is a great novel.  I had to state that before saying anything else about Butler's novel, such as how it is  very creative science-fiction, well thought-out historical fiction, and an exciting read.  It really is a wonderful book.

The premise of the plot involves an African-American woman in the 1970s who is suddenly and involuntarily thrown back into the early 1800s where she has to navigate the incredibly dangerous world of antebellum slavery in Maryland.  She bounces back and forth several times, usually against her will, and the duration of time is very different in the past and present dimensions. I don't want to give away much more since many of the details of the time-travel are tightly woven into the plot of the novel.

It was serendipitous that I picked this book right after reading Twelve Years a Slave - they make perfect reading companions.  The book, though written in the 1970s, is very timely with it's deep exploration of US slavery - exploring its effects on society, family, the psyche, ethics, and relationships.

Butler's accomplishment is to create a thrilling, fascinating and deeply disturbing story that is hard to put down.  It's well-written, engaging, creative and...well, like I said, a great novel.

Slow Start, Awesome Finish

If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
New York, NY : Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013.
359 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. 

When friend and scholar (and author of the invaluable American Indians in Children's Literature [AICL] blog, Debbie Reese, told me at the end of the summer that I should read this YA novel by Eric Gansworth, I made a note to myself to do that.  Well, a lot has happened since the end of the summer and I have finally gotten around to reading If I Ever Get Out of Here, and I'm glad I did.  It's a great little treasure of a book about friendship, being poor, fitting in / not fitting in, bullying, racism, family ties, and the wonderful (and not so wonderful) moments of coming of age in junior high.

I have to confess that beginning the novel, I was a bit suspicious that this was going to be simply a rehash of Sherman Alexie's wonderful The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.  There are some striking echoes of that book in the beginning - a dorky (smart, scrawny, funny, likable) Indian kid who is in a school program of nearly all white kids and has to deal with the prejudices at school and the resentments and hassles from friends and family on the reservation. Fortunately the similarities are only that and Gansworth's novel stands on its own charms and strengths. 

I also have to say that the novel started out a bit slow for me, but shortly after the midpoint of the book, I was hooked and had a hard time putting it down. The coming together of several plot lines and dramatic events really makes the last third of the novel a wonderful read.

I can't say enough good things to convey the quality of this book.  The heart of the novel is the friendship between two middle school boys - Lewis, a Tuscarora Indian, and George, son of an Air Force Dad whose family lives on a base and is always threatened with having to up and move.  The boys first bond over their love of music - especially the Beatles and Paul McCartney (and so the picture at the top of this post), but soon learn how hard it is to really be truthful and steady in friendship.  I love that Gansworth manages to weave together several (many!) important strands with passion, grace, humor, intelligence and - dare I say - love.  Seriously, we have a book of two boys in junior high becoming friends in the deepest sense, of the frictions between minority and majority culture, of the love of making and listening to popular music, of military life, of the complicated good and bad bonds of family life, of bullies and their accomplices, or life in the 70s...wow! Additionally the book includes a playlist of all the songs touched on in the book - and you can access this playlist on the author's website.

Sometimes I read a YA book and it has such promise and then falters with what feels like gimmicks meant to make it more appealing to a teen audience.  I really didn't experience that in this fine novel.  I will definitely recommend this to any student who has enjoyed Diary of a Part-time Indian (it's in our school's curriculum) and will be sure it gets on the radar of teachers looking for another author who can lay down a good story, shine a light on what it's like to grow up Indian in the US, and keep it real.   

Profoundly Disturbing

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
New York : Abrams ComicArts, 2012
221 p. : chiefly ill. ; 25 cm. 

This is an excellent graphic novel - profound and disturbing.  It revisits one of the most lurid serial killer stories - that of  Jeffrey Dahmer - but manages to avoid being lurid or sensational at all.  Instead it is a compassionate telling of the middle and high school years of the young Jeff Dahmer, told by Derf Backderf, a classmate and erstwhile pal of Dahmer.

The book presents a very honest portrait of the lives of young people in an Ohio community in the mid 1970s.  Backderf is able to retell the rather low humor and insensitive world of high school guys he hangs out with - but with a deft and sensitive touch.  He is also able to subtly convey the outrageous ways in which all the adults of Bath, Ohio ignore the clear signs that Dahmer was an extremely troubled young man - especially his intense alcohol abuse during school hours.

To me the greatest strength of this graphic novel is Backderf's ability to have compassion for Dahmer, and yet not excuse or minimize the horrid crimes that he committed.  Within the telling of My Friend Dahmer, there is never a moment where one feels like Backderf is trying to forgive or excuse what Dahmer did.  However, he is able help the reader consider Dahmer as a human being - one with a history in a real time and a very real place - albeit, one who eventually became a merciless and grotesque killer of over a dozen young men.