graphic novel – Page 2 – Reading for you

Life in communists Poland via the eyes of a child

Little Carp by Marzena Sowa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To children, life is normal, because that is all they have ever known.

And for Marzi, in the 1980s communist Poland, all the things that go on around her are normal. Be it waiting in line for products, such a toilet paper or meat, so having no place to play in Winter, and having to do so in the halls of her apartment block.

Though her parents know what life was like “before”, this is the only life she has ever known, and so this memoir, written after Marzi is a grown woman, is told from the sever-year-olds point of view.

Wonderful slice of life, when life was hard.

I look forward to reading the rest of the stories in this series.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review

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Sarah Scribbles strikes again, herding cats

Herding Cats by Sarah Andersen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oh, wow, another Sarah Scribbles. I am well pleased. 🙂

If you have been following Sarah’s cartoons, you know what you are in for, and you should buy this book to have them all collected in one place. If you are not aware of her cartoons, here are my favorite ones in this volume:

And, even if you have been reading her online, she has bonus material in this book, about creativity, and not giving up, and enjoying your art, and good pep talk for future or current artists.

And her final words? “Go Make Stuff”.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

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What is a proper job

When Are You Going to Get a Proper Job?: Parenting and the Creative Muse by Richy K. Chandler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I almost passed this book by. The thought of another self-help book, telling how to raise your kids. Please, I am so over that, and besides, my kid is grown and out the door.

But then, I read the description, that this was a graphic novel take on it, and then I read the book itself, and fell in love with Tariq and is little fiery muse.

This story is so close to how it is for any freelancer, who wants to do some sort of art for their own pleasure. As someone who writes, it is hard to find the time to do the art form you enjoy while raising kids. The voices that discuss this, and the actions that happen to Tariq in the book, reflect all the different ways to solve this problem.

I like the solutions demonstrated, and enjoyed reading the story as well. Well done.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

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Roll on roller girl

Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is so cool.

This graphic novel reminds me of the best of the middle-school graphic novels, such as Smile, which are very much about making friends, and keeping friends, and growing up and apart.

Astrid, the main character, goes with her best friend, Nicole, to see a Roller Derby show, and falls in love with it. Astrid hopes that her friend will share her desire to take a Roller Derby summer camp, but Nicole wants to do Ballet Summer Camp.

And so, Astrid gets to learn how hard it is to really skate, make new friends, and be a derby-girl.

Very realistic dialogue, normal reactions to life, and I loved it. This is one of those stories I thought I would just glance at, when I really should be working, and ended up reading it instead of doing my work.

This book is for people who have had to try to learn something hard, for people who have had to make new friends, for people who do something that might not fit into what other people think they should do.

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Life as a hostage

Hostage by Guy Delisle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What is it they say about good actors? That they would read the telephone book and you would still be inthralled. That is how Guy Delisle is. He could draw someone reading the phone book, and you would be intrhalled.

Hostage is the story, told from the kidnapped person’s point of view, of what it was like, locked away for four months, locked away in a room, by himself, only getting food and toilet, and nothing else. How do you entertain yourself? As Christophe says in the story, at least if he was in jail, he would k now when he is getting out, but he has no way of knowing. He does not speak Russian. He has no idea what they are saying in the next room, or what they are saying to him. (Although at one point they offer him vodka, and he says he does know that word.)

And though it is excruciating, day after day, it is a book I could not put down. Even though I knew that somehow he escapes his captivity, it is grueling to find all that he went through to get there.

Guy has done an excellent job of telling his story.

Go, now, and buy this book. Go, then, and buy all the other books that Guy has written. They are amazing stories of his life traveling both with his wife’s with Doctors Without Borders, as well as his trips working in animation, including a time in North Korea.

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White people and black friends

Your Black Friend by Ben Passmore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

OK, not the easiest book for a white person to read, but a good one, just the same.

Your Black Friend is a short comic, not more than eleven pages, but filled with the thoughts of racism and having white people want to be taught about being black.

Although I am not black, I run into this with some people who want to know about lesbianism and Wiccan. As though I was an exhibit at the museam, and that I know how every lesbian is, and what all wiccans do.

This is that book, but for white people from a black person. Well written, short, and pointed. We are sometimes so clueless. We do not have a friend so we can educate them about ourselves. We do not have to prove that we are who we are, and there is racism.

Go out and buy this. Go out and read this, and see if you get a little bit more about what “Your black friend” goes through every day.

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Amazing adoption of time travel in slave times

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Damian Duffy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Good books make you cry. Great books make you think. Fantastic books stay with you long after you read them, and haunt you with their story. This book, this book has all those factors. If the story is this good in graphic novel form, it makes me feels I should run right out and read the original.

I thought, when I got it, I would flip through a few pages, and then go back to work. Well, 200 something pages later, I had not gone back to work.

Very moving story of a young, black woman from 1976, going back in time to save an ancestor. This happens several time, each time, returning seconds, or hours after she left. She only knows it is happening when she gets dizzy. And the time she is send back to has to be one of the worse times to be black, as she finds herself on a plantation in pre-civil war Maryland. And the ancestor she has to save, is the son of the plantation owner.

Worse, then having to keep saving the white man, is that the woman who would be her great-great-great-something grandmother is black, and wants nothing to do with the son.

And in between, we see a non-whitewashed, so to speak, story of life as a slave. This graphic novel makes this book available to many more people, people who should read it. This should be offered in schools, in libraries, and anywhere people need to read this, and understand the history of the black people in the US. Very sad, very moving, and very compelling.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

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Twist on a graphic novel

Ladycastle by Delilah S. Dawson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I was growing up, as a young teen, I discovered Star Trek. Now Star Trek, the original series was very American, fighting, and punching people to “win” the day. Lasted, in college, I discovered Doctor Who. Very different. Brains, not brawn was what worked there.

I bring this up because LadyCastle is the Doctor Who to most graphic novels out there. The basic story is that all but one of the men have been eaten by a dragon, and so all the women have to take over the running of the castle, which they actually have been doing while the men were out on quests, so it isn’t all that much different for them.

The one man that remains is an old knight, and he thinks he is going to take over, and tell the women what to do, but they will have none of it. They are more interested in thinking of solutions than fighting. When they are attacked by flaming salamanders, they learn they don’t have to fight them, they can be friends with them. When they are attacked by werewolves, they just have to trap them long enough to make them change back to men, they don’t have to kill them. It is that sort of thing that makes me love this collection of the first five issues of this comic book, collected together.

In a nodd to Barbara Gordon, the librarian is a red-head in a wheel chair.

There are little gems like that through the book. There is a revision of the song of “I wonder what the king is doing tonight” from Camelot. There is a quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, revised to say “Listen, strang women lyin’ in ponds, distributing swords i a great basis for a system of government.”

Go seek this one out. The pictures are fun. The story is fun. The dialogue is fun. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

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