Very Memoir

Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe

[Saint Louis, Mo.] : The Lion Forge, LLC, 2019.

239 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 21 cm. 

There's a lot to like and admire about Genderqueer.  This graphic novel memoir reveals with great honesty Kobabe's life of coming to terms with eir (Kobabe uses e/em/eir pronouns) gender identity. Assigned female gender at birth, this graphic novel follows Kobabe's intensely personal (often painful) struggle to figure out what eir gender/sexuality/identity is. 

The thing I like so much about this memoir is that it really opens up to the reader how intense and real the gender struggle can be for someone who does not fit into the more "normative" categories of gender and sexuality. Kobabe, a very sensitive person, is often tormented as e figures out what e thinks/feels about dating, coming out, pronoun use, clothing use, appearance, family dynamics, friendship, seeing the doctor, etc. A reader can learn so much about how many obstacles to self-realization exist in our society. However, the book is ultimately hopeful as Kobabe gets closer and closer to figuring out and embracing eir true self.

My only hesitancy about the book, is it's intense preoccupation with self. Of course, it's a memoir, but there were times when I just wanted the author to look beyond eirself and reflect on the lives of others who are in similar or even worse situations - but that's probably just me!

      

Misrule of Law

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei [also Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott ; art by Harmony Becker]

Marietta, GA : Top Shelf Productions, [2019]

204 p. : chiefly ill. ; 23 cm.

This graphic novel is a super addition to books on the internment/incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.  As most people know, Pres. Roosevelt (FDR) ordered the seizure and imprisonment of Japanese Americans shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which officially launched the US into the Second World War.  This act was clearly racist, unconstitutional and immoral - though it took about 40 years for the US government to admit it was wrong and pay restitution to survivors.  It took even longer for the Supreme Court to condemn (in 2018) its complicity in this crime (re the Korematsu ruling of 1944).  All this is covered in the book, but the heart of the book is in Takei retelling the story from the viewpoint of a child experiencing his family's ordeal of being arrested, transported and imprisoned in two different internment camps.

The child's viewpoint is in fact Takei's. He was about 5 years old when his family was ordered out of their Los Angeles home and deported by train to Arkansas.  He captures the innocence of a young child taking in much of the experience as a grand adventure though being confused at the crying and hushed whispers of the adults. The book is also strengthened by the life of George Takei who was one of the original stars of Star Trek and who is currently a significant online personality with millions of followers on Facebook and Twitter.   

I learned a lot in this book.  It was especially painful to see how parents tried to figure out what was best to keep their families safe - as when loyalty oaths were offered to the detainees and some out of conscience refused to sign them.  He also gives kudos to both the young Japaneses American men who chose to enlist and fight in the war and to those who refused and were imprisoned at Leavenworth. 

I thought the book was really tight up until the very end. It felt a little jumpy and didactic in the last 20 pages or so as Takei keeps trying to hold up the successes of the US system of government when it finally confronts this injustice.  That being said, it is a powerful and moving book and I would highly recommend it.

     

13 in 13

Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio by Derf Backderf 

New York : Abrams ComicArts, 2020.

279 p. : chiefly ill., maps ; 27 cm.

Meticulously researched and passionately drawn and retold, this graphic novel account of the Kent State Massacre of May 4, 1970 is superb.  This is a great book for bringing a tragic history alive.  Having known about the Kent State killings for decades, I was surprised by how much I learned and by the emotional power of Backderf's storytelling.      

In Backderf's graphic novel about the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer he centers it around his actually being a high school "friend" of Dahmer.  In Kent State, Backderf opens the book with a personal touch: his childhood memories of Ohio National Guard troops being used near his hometown to crush a Teamster's strike in the days before they were sent on to the Kent State campus where they wounded and killed 13 people in just 13 seconds. 

In this retelling Backderf manages to recreate the personal lives of significant figures in the Kent State tragedy.  We learn about student life on campus, radical activists, the peace movement, the culture of the college town, and the utter incompetence and immorality of political and military leadership at the time - leadership that was willing to kill, lie, and cover-up.  In the aftermath of the massacre, leaders lie about the protesters, the culpability of the men who fired on the students, and the leaders who gave the orders (one officer, Capt. Ronald J. Snyder even lied under oath about finding a gun on one of the students killed).  

I would highly recommend this book to any adult or young adult.  There is a lot to think about and learn from this terrible event of 1970.  In addition to the carefully structured story and illustrations, Backderf also includes copious notes at the back of the book that fill out information and indicate the pages in the novel that they refer to. 

Touching on Painful

I Am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina
New York : Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books Inc., [2017]
167 p. : chiefly ill. ; 23 cm.

I'm not sure what I expected when I picked this up to read it, but it really hit me emotionally.  It's the story of a promising young high school student who is murdered by a department store security guard.  The guard is a police officer, too, and the student is African American - and so the story jumps right into the sad, terrible and ongoing narrative of law enforcement killing unarmed Black people.

I think the emotional power comes from the way this powerful graphic novel introduces us to the victim, first as a lively, smart sensitive young man who is an engaged student, a working bike messenger and an amateur historian of Harlem.  After he is killed while shopping for a suit we travel along with his ghost that joins up with other victims of police violence. He travels a ghost train with these victims as they revisit the past and as he visits people he loves in the present.

It takes a little getting used to the ghostly shifts, but once you do the story really hits home.  One of the most powerful and unexpected aspects of this story is the sharp light it throws on government and complicit media as they work to smear the reputation of the victim and burnish the reputation of the perpetrator. 

This graphic novel succeeds as a tale of injustice and as a history lesson of previous police violence cases. The ending of the book features a helpful list of the names, ages and locations of previous victims and short biographies of the victims featured in the book.

Super Tiny, Super Big

Smash! : Exploring the Mysteries of the Universe with the Large Hadron Collider by Sara Latta
Minneapolis : Graphic Universe, [2017]
72 p. : chiefly ill. ; 24 cm.

This little comic book is more of an hors d'oeuvre than an entree, but there's nothing wrong with that.  Weighing in at a mere 72 pages, and managing to convey the amazing science of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) without getting bogged down in its wild complexities, Latta has managed to create a work that should whet the reader's appetite to know more.   It did mine!

Though the story-line is a bit corny (a little youngish for high school) the science is admirable.  In one part of the book, in the space of just a couple pages she manages to cover most of the basics of the standard model: the six "flavors" of quarks,  six kinds of leptons, the four fundamental forces and the bosons associated with them - and, of course, the most famous triumph of the LHC, the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

It's nice to have a brief, very accessible book to recommend to a student who is not deep into advanced science, and yet wants to know about particle physics.  If you know such a student, Smash! might be just what they need.

Crazy as a Video Game

Tetris by Box Brown
New York : First Second, 2016.
253 p. : chiefly ill. ; 22 cm.

Is there anyone who has never seen or played Tetris?  I'm sure there are, but for the rest of us this book is a fascinating retelling of the story of Tetris' creation and eventual conquest of the world of handheld game devices.

Things that surprised me were the fact that the game was developed in the Soviet Union by a programmer who was especially interested in human behavior around gaming, that the inventor of Tetris never realized the income he deserved, and how corrupt and complicated the development and acquisition of rights to the game were in the West (including Japan).

The convoluted and competing and high stakes plays and theft of the game by the big game companies of the time is interesting.  Involved were Sega, Nintendo and Atari.

It was a fun book to read since I so vividly remember the first time I played Tetris was in the late 1980s and it was on a Gameboy device that a coworker had.  I recall that because, as this graphic novel so truthfully conveys - the game was irresistible once you started playing it.

It's a fun, fast read that I would definitely recommend to students, especially those interested in computer gaming and in programming.
    

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.

March Hits a Wall

March: Book one by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and [illustrated by] Nate Powell
Marietta, GA : Top Shelf Productions, [2013]
121 p. : chiefly ill. ; 24 cm.

I had not planned on reading March just yet, but then current events caught up with history in the strangest of ways, and I knew I had to read it.

March - a graphic novel - recounts the autobiography of the early years of civil rights icon and US Congressperson, John Lewis.  We see his boyhood years in Alabama in the 1950s and his growing awareness of the racist injustices that he wants to change.  By the end of this first book in the series (click links for more about book 2 and book 3), he is a key activist in the Civil Rights movement in Tennessee, has led lunch counter protests, desegregation marches, and met Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Turns out the Lewis' role in history is not over yet.  With the recent election of Donald Trump and his twitter attacks on John Lewis, the Lewis story and the struggle for racial justice are front and center once again.  The controversy has not hurt sales of the March.  Right after Trump's attacks on Lewis, sales of his book skyrocketed on Amazon.  Along with the many prizes that the books in the March series have won (including a National Book Award) the future of this book, at least, looks bright.      

Fists and Crosses

Saints by Gene Luen Yang
New York : First Second, 2013.
170 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 21 cm.  

After reading Boxers, I had to read this companion to it - which tells the same story, but from the point of view of a young Chinese, Christian convert who find herself on the opposite side of the violent Boxer Rebellion as the hero of Boxers.

All that I wrote in my review of Boxers below, applies to this book as well.  It's a great read and has the same captivating mix of history, supernatural, familial and social conflict, etc.

I'd definitely recommend reading Boxers first, it sets the stage well and makes it satisfying when the narrative exactly overlaps in several key scenes.

A Righteous and Harmonious Fist Bump

Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
New York : First Second, 2013.  
328 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 21 cm.

Yang's American Born Chinese continues to circulate well with readers at our high school, and I hope that Boxers will do the same. With both fiction and graphic novels, the challenge of having historical events as the subject is finding the heart and power of that event and translating it to the genre being used.  I think it is a difficult challenge for any author, but especially for author's of young adult readers - where the desire to get lost in a book is a powerful appeal for readers already surrounded by informational text.  But it can be done, and I think Boxers proves it!

One never forgets that the power of Yang's book is the story and the characters involved in it. There is romance, danger, humor, wistfulness, longing, justice and magic propelling the story forward.  The comic artwork is clear, powerful, and interesting to look at.  Not convinced?  Take a look at some sample pages provide by Macmillian Publishers.

I was struck, after reading Boxers, at how cleverly the story made me want to know more about the actual history - and - at how pathetically little I know of Chinese history.  I had heard of the Boxer Rebellion, but knew little about it.  Furthermore, in reading some of the history that preceded it, I came across references to the Taiping Rebellion - a 14 year civil war that killed an estimate 20 million people!   And this is history that I knew nothing about.

So do I recommend this book? Absolutely.  It is a wonderful work of literary and visual art, and for teachers who might want to include it in a history class, there is even an extensive online teacher's guide to accompany the book.

Pow! Graphic Girl Power

Fight Like a Girl by David Pinckney, illus. by Soo Lee
[U.S.] : Action Lab, [2015]
1 v. (unpaged) : chiefly col. ill. ; 26 cm.

This graphic novel [compilation of issues #1-4 of Fight Like a Girl] was recommended by Kat Kan in VOYA's October 2015 issue.  She commented on the positive diversity of the main character (and authors) and - validating her judgment - the first student to check it out, loved it and recommended I read it.

I liked it, but thought it could have been much better.  The art is pretty good, the story of a girl having to fight life or death challenges set by a panel of gods held promise, but the plotting just seemed jumpy and weak.

I especially found it distracting how the one weapon she takes in is just a baseball bat - but one that can miraculously turn into a vicious chainsaw and even a robot-killing, giant super-blaster. So what's the big danger of her challenges?

Oh well, I just like a little tighter logic within the sci-fi/fantasy genre.  I guess that's why I'm not a big fan of the Star Wars movies.  But other people love it, and the racial diversity, hipness, and strong female protagonist are factors that weigh in for recommending this comic book.

 

The Sculptor is Like The Sculptor

The Sculptor by Scott McCloud
New York : First Second, 2015.
487 p. : chiefly ill. ; 23 cm.

It's hard not to like this book.  McCloud has obviously poured his heart into the work - it is a passionate work about art, fame, despair, love, and death.  He says it "took five years to write and draw and I used every minute to make it the best reading experience I could."  

The book captures the desperate hopes, passions, and frustrations of a young artist, but I wish it were not so overwrought at times.  I felt like the strongest parts were the lovely portrayals of NYC as in this page from the novel:

The narrative is a bit choppy at times and a little confusing, but criticisms aside, there is a lot to think about, and a lot to like about this graphic novel by Scott McCloud. 

Hi Tech Guilt

A version of Think Tank 1's cover from the Top Cow Website

Think Tank 1 by Matt Hawkins
Los Angeles : Top Cow Productions, Inc., 2013
1 v. (unpaged) : chiefly ill. ; 26 cm.

David Loren has a guilty conscience.  He is the main character of this new graphic novel series from Matt Hawkins and Rashan Ekedal, and he's begun to question his role as a super-intelligent weapons developer for a Pentagon think tank that recruited him with a full scholarship to Cal Tech when he was just 14.  

In the 10 years since that time he has begun to question the value of what he is doing (reflecting on the human toll that his lethal creations have) and he wants out.  Unfortunately for David, he's pretty much a prisoner on the high-security base where he lives and works.  But given his technical wizardry, he decides he's going to escape - one way or another.

The story is fast-paced, exciting, interesting and ends with a dramatic twist that sets the reader up for the next installment of Think Tank.  Not bad for a debut graphic novel.

I really appreciated the author's scientific and ethical depth.  The novel ends with a section that explains some of the terms and references found in the story (e.g. DARPA, Einstein quotes, etc.) and contains references to some of the real-world hi-tech weaponry currently being developed by the Pentagon and its private contractors.  A good read for the tech-savvy, current-events aware fan of graphic novels.

For more insight into Think Tank take a look at this interview with Matt Hawkins, or this review of Think Tank 1.

To Boneville - Finally!

Graphic is from Out of Boneville and comes from the Comic Book Legal Defense fund's article about a school library challenge being defeated.

Bone: out from Boneville by Jeff Smith
New York : Graphix, 2005.
1st Scholastic Ed.
138 p. : col. ill. ; 24 cm. 

I've been meaning to read Bone for a long time.  Too long!  When I first started in school librarianship over 10 years ago, and was looking for graphic novel recommendations, Jeff Smith's Bone consistently appeared in many graphic novel "Best" lists.  Bone has had great publishing and critical success.

I enjoyed Bone a lot, though I'm a little surprised (and pleased!) at how popular it is in the high school library.  I think I am surprised because it is so good-natured, likable, and lacking violence, sexual situations, and obscenities and even makes references to Moby Dick! It is a comic book series that continues to circulate frequently at my library.  Perhaps this is due to the fact that there is a lot of humor, likable characters, action, adventure and ambitious (dare one say epic?) plotting to the Bone tale.
I don't think I'll be reading all of the Bone books (we currently have numbers 1-8), but I can recommend the book and say that it does not disappoint. Fans of Bone might want to visit the author's lively web page.

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.

Another Great Graphic Novel

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
232 p. : chiefly ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Alison Bechdel has been creating comics for many years for her syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For which has a small but significant following.  Her book Fun Home, which had both popular and critical success is likely to bring her work to a much wider audience - something she apparently was not prepared for.

The praise for this work - which calls to mind another standout graphic novel Stitches - is well deserved.  It is a rich memoir/graphic novel which is subtle and nuanced as it tells the story of Bechdel's complex, rich, and troubled family of origin - led by parents whose frustrated dreams and repressed sexuality created an intense environment of simmering anger and emotional detachment.

The amazing thing about Fun Home is that in addition to illustrating the conflicts and tensions in her home,  Bechdel is able to convey what a rich and tangled upbringing she had.  Her father and mother were both aspiring intellectuals/artists and much of the power of her work lies in her ambivalence toward the legacy of her family - and her refusal to either condemn or condone the shortcomings of her parents.  Her memoir also deserves praise the ways in which it circles around themes and events the story instead of following a singular straightforward narrative and the ways in which she finds echos of her upbringing in film, myths and novels.

I would highly recommend this graphic novel to students who are interested in a multi-layered, complex coming of age stories and family stories dealing with secrets, conflict and even death - since her father's apparent suicide (possibly an accident) is at the heart of this fine work.  The novel does deal with some mature emotional and sexual issues, so it might not be suitable for immature readers.

More Darwin, Yes!

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: a Graphic Adaptation
Michael Keller, illus. by Nicolle Rager Fuller
New York: Rodale, 2009.
192 p.

I think I fell for Darwin after reading his Voyage of the Beagle about 15 years ago. (BTW, it's a great adventure read.) That prompted me to read several biographies of Darwin, and these only improved my admiration for him. He was a ridiculously rigorous scientist and a very humane person. I remember being especially impressed by his rather progressive attitudes toward parenting and by his generous decision to share the discovery of natural selection with Alfred Wallace - even though Darwin had arrived at his theory (though unpublished) many years before Wallace. Finally - which brings me to the book I'm highlighting here - I tried (but failed) to read all of Darwin's Origin of Species. Well, let's just say that it is not an easy read - it's labored and technical at times; after all Darwin, was trying to cross all his t's and dot all his i's - knowing how controversial his theory would be. So it was with interest that I found this "graphic novel" adaptation of the Origin of Species.

I'd recommend this book with a few qualifications. The book is an excellent introduction to Darwin's theory of natural selection. I especially appreciate how it follows the organizing structure of Darwin's work and distills its main points of evidence and argument in a clear and understandable way. The book is also colorfully illustrated and lovely to look at (that's why I've included a picture of its cover). My only complaints are that it is nearly impossible to tell what are exact quotes from the Origin of Species, quotes from Darwin's letters, or the authors own retelling. I would have appreciated some kind of key to this such as all excerpts from the letters in quotes, while excerpts from Origin in italics, or some such format. At times it was also a little confusing to tell what findings were modern contributions vs. those contemporaneous with Darwin. These complaints aside, this book is a wonderful contribution to popularizing Darwin's stunning discoveries and insights.