March: Book Two by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illus. by Nate Powell Middle School, High School Top Shelf Productions 192 pp. 1/15 978-1-60309-400-9 $19.95 g Lewis and Aydin begin this second volume of the graphic memoir trilogy in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2009 (President Obama’s first inauguration), then they move back in time […]
Review of Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir
February 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince; illus. by the author Middle School, High School Zest Books 256 pp. 9/14 Paper ed. 978-1-936976-55-3 $15.99 e-book ed. 978-1-936976-56-0 $15.99 “When you don’t look or act like what everyone has been told is the norm, you get proverbially barfed on a lot.” In an often funny, sometimes […]
Graphic-novel memoirs
January 12, 2015 by 1 Comment
The creators of these graphic-novel memoirs use words and pictures to revisit experiences from their youth. Their work relates sometimes-difficult, sometimes-comical stories with poignancy, bittersweet humor, and expressive art. At the age of four, in 1975, Cece Bell contracted meningitis, leaving her severely to profoundly deaf. In her characterful, often amusing graphic-novel memoir El Deafo, […]
Cece Bell on El Deafo
November 12, 2014 by 1 Comment
In the November/December 2014 Horn Book Magazine, reviewer Deirdre Baker asked Cece Bell about her graphic novel memoir El Deafo — which is told entirely with anthropomorphic bunnies. Read the starred review here; see more grrl-power graphic novels here. Deirdre F. Baker: Why did you choose to tell your autobiography with bunny characters? Cece Bell: […]
Review of El Deafo
November 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment
El Deafo by Cece Bell; illus. by the author; color by David Lasky Intermediate, Middle School Amulet/Abrams 242 pp. 9/14 978-1-4197-1020-9 $21.95 Paper ed. 978-1-4197-1217-3 $10.95 At the age of four, in 1975, Bell contracted meningitis, leaving her severely to profoundly deaf. In this characterful, vivid, often amusing graphic-novel memoir she recaptures the experiences of […]
Memoir
October 27, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Earl, Esther This Star Won’t Go Out: The Life & Words of Esther Grace Earl Middle school, high school 240 pp. Dutton With Lori Earl and Wayne Earl. John Green dedicated The Fault in Our Stars to Esther Earl, who, in her own words, “went through a life changing experience known as Thyroid Cancer.” This posthumous collection (with […]
Mini-trend: Grrrl power grrraphic novels
October 22, 2014 by 2 Comments
We’ve noticed a welcome trend lately: excellent graphic novel memoirs (or fiction that feels an awful lot like) written by women about their adolescence. Here are a few to enjoy. (Thanks, Marjane Satrapi, for breaking ground with Persepolis, and to the Tamaki cousins for Skim and This One Summer! Also Katie’s girl-crush Lucy Knisley, who […]
El Deafo
September 30, 2014 by 2 Comments
This week, I was lucky enough to have a thirty-minute window when I could pop into my favorite independent bookstore in Los Angeles. They have a large children’s section on the second floor that I love perusing because they do an excellent job at getting new books. On one of their displays sat El Deafo […]
What Makes a Good Middle-Grade Memoir?
September 1, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Memoir is a genre that often gets subsumed under the big banner of biography. While biographies and autobiographies provide a broad overview of a subject’s life, the memoir is a repository of discrete moments and events that have crystallized into long-lasting recollections. Because they are generally told in the first person and can frequently be […]
Review of Leaving China: An Artist Paints His World War II Childhood
June 11, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Leaving China: An Artist Paints His World War II Childhood by James McMullan; illus. by the author Middle School, High School Algonquin 113 pp. 3/14 978-1-61620-255-2 $19.95 McMullan was born in Tsingtao, North China, in 1934 to an Irish-English missionary family. His privileged childhood was disrupted by the 1937 Japanese occupation; by 1941, he and […]
