Zodiac

In this deeply philosophical graphic memoir, legendary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei explores the connection between artistic expression and intellectual freedom through the lens of the Chinese zodiac. 

The publisher's summary:

As a child living in exile during the Cultural Revolution, Ai Weiwei often found himself with nothing to read but government-approved comic books. Although they were restricted by the confines of political propaganda, Ai Weiwei was struck by the artists’ ability to express their thoughts on art and humanity through graphic storytelling. Now, decades later, Ai Weiwei and Italian comic artist Gianluca Costantini present Zodiac, Ai Weiwei’s first graphic memoir.

Inspired by the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and their associated human characteristics, Ai Weiwei masterfully interweaves ancient Chinese folklore with stories of his life, family, and career. The narrative shifts back and forth through the years—at once in the past, present, and future—mirroring memory and our relationship to time. As readers delve deeper into the beautifully illustrated pages of Zodiac, they will find not only a personal history of Ai Weiwei and an examination of the sociopolitical climate in which he makes his art, but a philosophical exploration of what it means to find oneself through art and freedom of expression.

Contemplative and political, Zodiac will inspire readers to return again and again to Ai Weiwei’s musings on the relationship between art, time, and our shared humanity.

I am not as enamored with the book as are other reviewers. There were several dialogues that I just didn't understand even though there are explanations of some of them. A major question for me was why Ai is a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) when he grew up in a rural area with his exiled father. He has been purged more than once and says he believes in free speech and human rights. Why the CCP membership?

Ai's life story is told as each animal of the zodiac is explained. In the chapter on the snake he wrote about Mao. Ai knew Mao personally but says that Mao is a snake, as all politicians are. Ai Weiwei believes that to be an artist you must be also be an activist. If you're not an activist then you are a dead artist 

The black and white drawings, though detailed, did not help me enjoy the book. They are drawn in comic book panels and are rather detailed but the dialogue was more interesting than the drawings.

I had high expectations for this memoir but it fell short. 3 out of 5 stars.

Ginseng Roots: A Memoir

It's always a pleasure to find hard cover copies of graphic novels by my favorite cartoonists. Two weeks ago I found Craig Thompson's newest graphic novel at an odd place: my local hospital's bookshop. Thompson is the author of the world renowned comic "Blankets" so I had high expectations for this read.

The publisher's summary:

Ginseng Roots follows Craig and his siblings, who spent the summers of their youth weeding and harvesting rows of coveted American ginseng on rural Wisconsin farms for one dollar an hour. In his trademark breathtaking pen-and-ink work, Craig interweaves this lost youth with the 300-year-old history of the global ginseng trade and the many lives it has tied together—from ginseng hunters in ancient China, to industrial farmers and migrant harvesters in the American Midwest, to his own family still grappling with the aftershocks of the bitter past.

Stretching from Marathon, Wisconsin, to Northeast China, Ginseng Roots charts the rise of industrial agriculture, the decline of American labor, and the search for a sense of home in a rapidly changing world.

To describe this memoir with one word I would say it is poignant. It is also funny and a visual masterpiece. Thompson gives the story of his life from age seven to the present. His parents were overly strict evangelical Christians and made him work every summer in local ginseng farms alongside his family for twelve to sixteen hours per day. He never had free time the way most American kids have. Thompson grew up in the rural town of Marathon, Wisconsin which is where most of the world's ginseng is grown. When his brother was old enough to join the toil, they worked next to each other telling tall tales and making games out of their labors. The activities included pulling weeds, gathering rocks out of the fields and at the end of summer, harvesting berries. It seemed abusive to me but farm families probably still operate this way. However, I felt sorry for him and his siblings not to be allowed to enjoy in the fun of summer days. Both Craig and his brother left Marathon as soon as they could seeking an easier life. They found it. Craig was lucky to work as a cartoonist, his dream job. 

The story gives the reader all the information you could ever want on how to grow and harvest ginseng. When Hmong laborers joined work on a nearby farm, Thompson tells their story from living in Laos, leaving, and starting over in America. After Thompson developed an immune system disorder, his hands were in alot of pain, affecting his ability to draw. We read about his progress with a Chinese medicine practitioner and the difficulty he dealt with in creating this wonderful book.

The artwork is striking. It has been drawn in vermilion ink with intricate details. The red color is what initially drew me to the book. The reason this color was chosen is explained at the end of the story: because he was told it should never be used.

I cannot say how much this book touched me. I am rating it 5 out of 5 stars.

Feeding Ghosts

Feeding Ghosts is a graphic memoir of three generations of Chinese women. It was published last year and has won many awards. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir and was a winner of the National Books Critics Circle. Also, the book won the Libby Award For Best Graphic Novel and was a Kirkus Nonfiction Prize finalist. This awesome memoir was also named a Best Book Of the Year by Time, Forbes, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and my library, the Chicago Public Library. It is a chunkster as it is over 400 pages long.

The publisher's summary:

In her acclaimed graphic memoir debut, Tessa Hulls traces the reverberations of Chinese history across three generations of women in her family. Tessa’s grandmother, Sun Yi, was a Shanghai journalist swept up by the turmoil of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong, she wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival—then promptly had a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Growing up with Sun Yi, Tessa watches both her mother and grandmother struggle beneath the weight of unexamined trauma and mental illness, and bolts to the most remote corners of the globe. But once she turns thirty, roaming begins to feel less like freedom and more like running away. Feeding Ghosts is Tessa’s homecoming, a vivid, heartbreaking journey into history that exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, andthe love that holds them together.

The story is told in black and white comic strip panels. The dialogue is densely packed into the strips so it is a slow read. However, it's well worth reading. With over 400 pages the book is definitely a chunkster. 

I was fascinated by Tessa's retelling of her mother and grandmother escaping from China and heading to the United States. She explains that there was inter-generational trauma that affected her. How she was raised and her relationships with her family was based upon her mother and grandmother's stunted emotions. Tessa inherited this. When she traveled to China with her mother, her mother was freed from her trauma and acted like she was at home. Mom was at peace from seeing the family she left behind. I wondered whether it would have been better to have stayed behind in Maoist China.

This is a memoir to cherish. I loved the story and learned alot about the immigrant experience. 5 out of 5 stars.

Dumb

Dumb is the true account of cartoonist Georgia Webber's experience with a temporary but lengthy loss of her voice. This is an unusual disability, one I have never heard of before. Certainly there are those who have been born with speech impediments but an experience like Webber's is new to me.

The publisher's summary:

This graphic memoir is about how the author copes with her loss of voice due to a severe injury. Part memoir, part medical cautionary tale, Dumb tells the story of how an urban twentysomething copes with the everyday challenges that come with voicelessness. Webber adroitly uses the comics medium to convey the practical hurdles she faced as well as the fear and dread that accompanied her increasingly lonely journey to regain her life. Her raw cartooning style, occasionally devolving into chaotic scribbles, splotches of ink, and overlapping montages, perfectly captures her frustration and anxiety. But her ordeal ultimately becomes a hopeful story. Throughout, she learns to lean on the support of her close friends, finds self-expression in creating comics, and comes to understand and appreciate how deeply her voice and identity are intertwined.

Georgia has a difficult time getting her point across to her friends in everyday life. Alot of the drawings have no dialogue but you can see what is happening as she tries to communicate with others. She decides not to go to loud places and mainly uses writing to converse with friends. Georgia still meets friends at bars but gets stressed because it takes alot of effort to communicate. It is tiring. Friends begin to view her as someone who needs to be helped constantly. Many of them, though, find her silence attractive. I love that she began wearing red lipstick to make it easier for people to read her lips. 

The memoir reads fast. It's 178 pages are filled with drawings that are actually scribbles in black and red that are not always legible. However, they match the storyline concerning  communication problems.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this graphic memoir and am rating it 5 out of 5 stars.

Displacement

Displacement is a graphic novel about the internment of the Japanese in America during WWII.  I have read 2 other comics on this subject and they all gave the same information. In this story our heroine Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco where her family is from. The displacements begin when she magically finds herself transported back to the 1940s when her grandmother Ernestina was forced to relocate to an internment camp. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive.

What separates this account of the tragedy from others is the illustration. I like that the comic strips were larger, with 4 to a page. It made the dialogue much larger for me to be able to read on a cell phone. When reading other comics on my phone, I have to enlarge the page in order to be able to read. Then I have to reduce the page in order to turn the page. Author Kiku Hughes drew all the illustrations. This is her first graphic novel and I am very impressed with both her ability to tell a story and her drawing skill.

Hughes makes many insightful quotes in her book. One of them is:  "I think sometimes a community's experience is so traumatic, it stays rooted in us even generations later. And the later generations continue to rediscover that experience, since it's still shaping us in ways we might not realize. Like losing the ability to speak Japanese, losing connection to Japanese culture, they're all lasting impacts of the camps that travel down the generations." I never realized before that the generation who suffered through the internment experience would raise their children to be American, not Japanese. They felt it would make successive generations safer from the government. They made sure their descendants did not know how to speak Japanese or cook Japanese food. It was a strategy that the entire generation followed.

Displacement gives an honest history of the internment camps run by the U. S. government during WWII. While it is a sad story, it is one we all should know about. 5 out of 5 stars.

Family Style

Thien Pham's debut graphic novel is a moving young adult memoir about his search for belonging in America. Thien left his native Vietnam at age five and together with his family emigrated to the U. S. His family spent several years in a refugee camp in Thailand before getting permission to travel to America. The family struggled both in the camp and in California where they began their new lives. 

Thien's first memory isn't a sight or a sound. It's the sweetness of watermelon and the saltiness of fish. It's the taste of the foods he ate while adrift at sea as his family fled Vietnam. Through each chapter of their lives, food takes on a new meaning. Strawberries come to signify struggle as Thien's mom and dad look for work. Potato chips are an indulgence that bring Thien so much joy that they become a necessity. Behind every cut of steak and inside every croissant lies a story. And for Thien Pham, that story is about a search - for belonging, for happiness, for the American dream. The story ends on a happy note with a fortysomething Thien becoming a U. S. citizen and registering to vote. 

The author originally published this memoir serially to Instagram. His artwork is done in traditional six-panel comic strip panels and he used Procreate to do the drawings on an iPad. The drawings are colored with a muted brown palette. If you loved Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese and Thi Bui's The Best We Could Do you will want to read Family Style.

5 out of 5 stars.

I'm Still Alive

I'm Still Alive is a graphic memoir of author Roberto Saviano's life in police protective custody after writing an expose of the mafia in his native country Italy. Saviano grew up in Casal di Principe where the Camorra clans dominate society. Trained as a journalist, Saviano decided to expose the clans by writing a fiction book that was 100% based on fact.  The clans didn't take it well. His life was threatened on many occasions but ultimately he would have become more powerful if he was dead. His life, on the other hand, was stunted. He was unable to do ordinary chores for himself, such as grocery shopping, and longed for the freedom to be able to do simple things for himself. Eventually, Saviano had to leave Italy for his safety. His life, however, was not any different. He was still in protective custody as he has been since 2006.

While this comic has a serious topic, it is a fast read. I was hooked from the first page and read it in one sitting. At 130 pages that doesn't sound like much a feat, but some graphic memoirs I have read were so dull that reading them was a chore.  The illustrations by Asaf Hanuka helped to tell the story. Hanuka basically used black and white drawings with limited muted colors on each page. The comic strip panels gave the book a lighter feel.

I'm Still Alive is a fantastic comic on the realities of organized crime.  I am rating it 5 out of 5 stars.

Ducks

Ducks is a graphic memoir by Kate Beaton. Inside the pages of this hardcover book we read about the two years of her life spent working in Canada's oilfields. When Kate graduated from college, she had a hefty student loan to repay. Knowing that she would never make enough money from working in her chosen field to pay it off, Kate took a job in Alberta's oil sands where she worked as a laborer and then in the crib shop where she handed out tools to workers. She took a few months off after the first year and paid off half her student loans. Kate then worked in a museum but couldn't make her minimum loan payments on that salary. She returned to the oil sands for another year. Her student loans were then paid off and she decided to work as a cartoonist. The rest, they say, is history.

I was impressed with her concern for paying off her student loan debt. Kate delayed beginning her career until the debt was paid. Many residents of the Cape Breton island that she grew up on traveled to the oil sands so they could support their families. I was astonished by the amount of sexual harassment that she had to endure while working there. It doesn't say much for Canadian men and I am surprised by the conduct because I have always heard that Canadians were more group oriented than individualistic. So why the Ducks title? During her second year hundreds of ducks died from getting caught in the sands. This received alot of media attention at the time.

The story itself is well written with an obvious beginning, middle and end. There were twists and turns during her employment which gave it a mystery flare. The drawings were done in black and white in comic book strip format. At over 400 pages it is a hefty book but is also a fast read. I am looking forward to reading more from this young cartoonist.

5 out of 5 stars.

Welcome to St. Hell

Welcome to St. Hell is a groundbreaking memoir about being a trans teen. Lois/Lewis has a few things to say to his younger teen self. He knows she hates her body. He knows she's confused about who to snog. He knows she's really a he and will ultimately realize this... but she's going to go through a whole lot of mess (some of it funny, some of it not funny at all) to get to that point. Lewis is trying to tell her this... but she's refusing to listen.

In Welcome to St. Hell, author-illustrator Lewis Hancox takes readers on the hilarious, heartbreaking, and healing path he took to make it past trauma, confusion, hurt, and dubious fashion choices in order to become the man he was meant to be. 

When I began reading I wondered whether the comic would be preachy. It isn't. The author kept his hometown anonymous by calling is St. Hell in the comic and the high school he attended was called St. Hell High School. I felt so bad for him when he was taunted by his classmates. Young kids can be way too critical. However, he did find friends that accepted him and some of them came out publicly with different sexual orientations after high school. 

The artwork created the humor in the novel. We see Lois/Lewis trying several actions to hide her feminine body shape. He works out in order to get rid of his curves and diets heavily that he has to be treated for anorexia. He finally admits to his mother that he is trying to get rid of his feminine shape because he feels like a boy. The author is lucky that his mother accepted him when he came out and, in fact, encouraged some of his behaviors because, inside, she knew that he was different.

I don't know that I would have purchased this book if I didn't have a trans friend. We have had many great conversations about life in general and I see and accept her as a normal person. Without knowing her, I probably would have had a hands off approach to anyone talking about being trans. It is too different from my life. While it is risky for a trans person to come out publicly, it was helpful for me to know someone who experienced this. 

This is a thoughtful memoir that taught me alot about the struggle of trans people.  5 out of 5 stars.

World Record Holders

I had high hopes for this long anticipated graphic novel. However, it did not interest me. The comic was written by one of my favorite cartoonist's, Guy Delisle. The comic showcases a collection of his work from the beginning of his career to the present. There are 12 stories contained within the book that range from wistful childhood nostalgia to chagrined post-fame encounters. In one story we see Delisle visiting an exhibition of his work in another country and being confronted by an angry spouse who blames him for destroying her marriage. A juvenile game of Bows and Arrows turns menacing as arrows shot straight up in the air turn into barely visible missiles of death. A coded message from space creates different reactions from different people―debates, dance festivals, gallery shows. 

DeLisle's artistic style is not one that I particularly care for, but it worked well in his prior comics. However, with the stories in World Record Holders not making much sense, the illustration style becomes even more important. DeLisle has written several travelogues and autobiograhies that were fantastic so I am very disappointed with this graphic novel. In fact, I cannot even give it a rating. Only the most devoted DeLisle fans are going to want to read this book.

A Visit to Moscow

A Visit to Moscow is a graphic memoir of Rabbi Rafael Grossman's trip to the Soviet Union in 1965.  He went there with a group of American rabbis from the Rabbinical Council of America. Rabbi Grossman led a congregation in Long Branch, NJ and was chosen for the trip because of his Eastern European ancestry. 

The story itself is quite short, 63 pages. 12 more pages follow with explanations about the trip, a saga about Soviet Jews, a Note from the author and the Illustrator's Sketchbook. This is not a memoir with alot of action. Grossman probably spent less than an hour with the Jewish man he wanted to see. Meyer Gurwitz was the brother of one of Grossman's acquaintances, Meyer's sister Bela.  She had not heard from her brother in over ten years and was worried about him. After feigning a headache at the Moscow hotel where Grossman was staying, he got in a taxi and traveled to Meyer's home. There Grossman found out that Meyer had a ten year old son who had never left the one room home he had been born in. Meyer explained that if he let his son outside that the KGB would force him into a Soviet school where he would lose his Jewish heritage or worse, be killed.

While the story was interesting, it could hardly be described as scintillating reading. I enjoyed the artwork by Yevgenia Nayberg. Nayberg watched Soviet noir films and reviewed photos from the 1960s to obtain a visual direction. She used subdued blue, green and yellow colors in the drawings. 

3 out of 5 stars.

Parenthesis

Parenthesis is Elodie Durand's debut graphic novel. It is a memoir of five years of her life suffering from tumor induced epilepsy. The author changes her name, calling herself Judith, but it is her story and she wrote it ten years after it occurred. After finishing all her classes for a master's degree, Elodie only had her thesis to write. She began having momentary spells that continued to be spells of several minutes. Soon she was having multiple seizures daily that increased in length as well as period of recovery. She moved back in with her parents who eventually even had to dress her. Elodie had severe memory loss that lasted weeks. Her neurologist recommended her for gamma knife brain surgery which she underwent a few months later. However, she continued to get worse. There is a recovery but in my mind getting there was worse than the descent into darkness. Elodie had to deal with cerebral edema that comes with this type of surgery. 

The author does a great job of describing what life was like when she was barely conscious. I felt as though as I was there with her, something that I have not felt when reading stories of those who are dealing with cancer or paralysis. Her drawings also show the darkness of her memories from when she was barely awake. It is interesting that there was an awareness of something going on but she couldn't put her finger on what is was.  Elodie's story is moving, scary and gripping all at the same time. The choice of a title for the book is perfect: her normal life was interrupted by the opening of a parenthesis that she was not sure would ever close.  

5 out of 5 stars.

Run

The beginning of John Lewis's political career is the subject of Run, Book One. However, he passed away before the book was finished. 90% of the book was completed and approved by him before his death. I am presuming that there will not be a Book Two since he has died.  

To John Lewis, the civil rights movement came to an end with the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. By that time he had served for more than 5 years as a leader of the movement.  He led sit-ins, marches and was an original Freedom Rider.  Lewis also served as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for several years, spoke at MLK's March on Washington and co-lead a march from Selma to Montgomery on Bloody Sunday.  Run begins where March 3 ends. Lewis recounts the highs and lows of fighting to harness the legal protections that are now law. However, the Vietnam War presents a challenge for an electorate that becomes consumed by the images on their TV screens and soon forgets about the civil rights movement.

The artwork is amazing.  Nate Powell had to draw his scenes from the reference of thousands of newspaper and magazine photographs. However, he had to make them historically accurate while also needing to change the angle of the drawings to fit the comic format. In addition, he had to comb through online listings of objects that he was not familiar with, such as period appropriate typewriters, so he would know what the looked like. Powell also researched how people dressed in the 1960s so that the characters' age, occupation and socioeconomic status was accurate for the time period. This sounds like a monumental task for someone who did not live through this era.  

The boldness of John Lewis' story captured this reader's attention. Everything written into the comic was so serious that sometimes it felt like information overload, even though the information was necessary to tell this true story. His vision regarding what was important enough to be included in the book is probably what makes all of his comics such good reading.  Lewis was so good at this that I believe he missed a calling as an author too late in his life. 

Run is another fantastic comic detailing events in the civil rights movement.  I wish that these comics would not end with Run because they tell this story in vivid detail.  5 out of 5 stars.

Let's Not Talk Anymore

Let's Not Talk Anymore portrays 5 generations of women from the author's family in a graphic memoir. Their stories are told from when they were all fifteen years old. In 1902 the author's great-grandmother Kuan's life is told. In 1947 her grandmother Mei's story is told and in 1972 her mother Bing is portrayed. In 1998 author Pixin’s own life is shown and in 2032 the author's imaginary daughter Rita's life is given. These stories alternate back and forth in time and span a century. 

Weng Pixin's lineage is full of sorrow. Great-grandmother Kuan is sent away from her family in China to Singapore, grandmother Mei's mother allowed her to be adopted by a neighbor to help with the housework, Bing's father left the family home, while Pixin feels isolated from her mother. Through these generational traumas, fractured relationships are passed down from mother to daughter every generation. It all seemed sad to me. These ladies were miserable but tried to hide their feelings. I am not sure why but I wonder if this is a way for the Chinese to save face? 

The artwork was drawn in colorful comic book panels. It was a little hard to tell the difference between the women given that they look alike. Weng Pixin changed the facial coloring and hair styles to distinguish them from one another. She used an interesting mixed media approach to the drawings by using poster paint, oil pastels and watercolors. The style of the drawings is simple, almost childlike. 

My main takeaway from the book is that the way in which each of us handle adversity comes from imitating the way our elders handled it. This is a depressing thought because it seems that we are all doomed to repeat mistakes from the past. I liked that the last nine pages were of butterflies ready for flight. Perhaps there is a silver lining in every family's story.

3 out of 5 stars.

Rebecca and Lucie

Rebecca & Lucie in the Case of the Missing Neighbor is a charming murder mystery in comic book format. Amateur sleuth Rebecca Girard is on maternity leave and breastfeeding her baby when she sees two men carrying something heavy into a white minivan. When she finds out that a man from her neighborhood, Eduardo Morales, has gone missing, Rebecca decides to look into the matter.  Eduardo had been working as a caregiver to an elderly man in Rebecca's neighborhood and many of her neighbors knew him. Rebecca's investigation is unique. She performs it while juggling to carry her 8 month old baby Lucie everywhere she goes.

As a murder mystery, this story has all of the features of a literary novel. We have a unique amateur sleuth, a crime, and several suspects. We also have several twists in the plot to confuse the reader. The suspension of belief surrounding Rebecca as a detective is not hard to fall into, mainly because this is a comic. However, I believe that the author came up with a creative idea for a sleuth. From the title "in the case of the missing neighbor" it appears that this story may end up being a series. I hope so as this was a fun read.

The book is advertised as a "maternity leave mystery complete with postpartum physiotherapy." How awesome is that! I loved reading this book and am rating it 5 out of 5 stars.

Factory Summers

Factory Summers is another great autobiography from cartoonist Guy Delisle. He has written several travelogues from following his wife to Jerusalem, Pyongyang, Shenzen and Burma while she worked with Medecins Sans Frontieres. Here, we have the story of Delisle's four summers as a teenager working for a pulp and paper factory in Quebec City where he grew up.

Factory Summers has alot of dry humor within its pages. Delisle describes his co-workers as sexist, telling dirty jokes on a daily basis. As a union employee myself, I can say they are typical union workers. LOL. If they can find a way to relax on the job, they do it. It's not that they are forgoing the hard work their jobs demand. These fellows work with huge machines that require constant cleaning up and fixing and the areas they are located in have no air conditioning. There is danger of getting hurt every day. The factory was built in 1927 and there had not been any changes to the building or the machinery over the years. This was an antiquated system that Delisle was dealing with. With 12 hours shifts required 6 days a week, I doubt that he would be allowed to work here as a youth if the factory was in the U.S. I thought it was a cruel job for a sixteen-year-old kid and cannot believe he did the work without questioning the rules. If it was me working there, I would have filed a complaint with OSHA for unsafe working conditions.

The story itself was well told. The monotony of the work days are shown by both dialogue and drawings. The only reprieve the author had was by drawing comics and making plans to attend animation school in Toronto. His relationship with his father, who got him the job, is also a part of the story. The book opens with Delisle having his annual visit with his father, divorced from his mother, and ends with his death. The relationship frames these summers working at the same plant his father worked at. 

I highly recommend this one. 5 out of 5 stars.

Idle Days

Idle Days is the story of Jerome Beauvais, a deserter from the Canadian Forces during WWII. After his defection his mother sends him to live with his grandfather in a remote house in the woods. Jerome is helping his grandfather renovate the house. After learning that the prior owner killed herself and set fire to the place, Jerome sets out to learn all that he can about the history of the home.  While Jerome works on the house, he feels more and more isolated. He has to remain hidden from the neighbors lest he be discovered. There are posters around town offering a cash reward for turning in deserters. Listening to the radio daily with his grandfather, Jerome's ghosts from combat appear and haunt his thoughts. 

Idle Days is an engaging story.  The reader can feel Jerome's pain but I could not help but dislike him. Because he was serving in WWII, a war much more important than Vietnam, Korea and some others, I did not like that he deserted his post. WWII was a war over the continuation of life as we knew it. No one should have declined to serve. Including women. That said, this is a well told story. Many of the comic book panels did not have dialogue and it was easy to "read" what was the meaning contained in them. The dialogue itself presented Jerome's inner thoughts ably. Although Jerome's conversation with his grandfather was stilted, I thought that the combination of their dialogue with the illustrations was executed skillfully.

The artwork was drawn in comic book panels and colored in deep dark oranges, reds and browns. I presume that  illustrator Simon Leclerc used this pallette to enhance the sense of isolation that Jerome was feeling. Even when Jerome was walking in the open forest, he felt the confinement of the darkness in the forest during the rare evenings when he left the cabin.  

  

Idle Days is a fantastic graphic novel.  I highly recommend it to comic book fans. 5 out of 5 stars.

Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones is Lucy Knisley's newest graphic novel. It is the story of Jen, her mother and new boyfriend Walter who have moved to a farm in the country. Jen is unhappy there and wants to live with her father in the city.  However, her mother wants her to stay and become acclimated to this new environment. Jen is given enough chores to keep her busy all day while her mother and boyfriend always have excuses to bow out of the hardest work. A few weeks later, to make matters worse, Walter's two snobby daughters arrive for the summer. 

I felt sorry for Jen. She seemed to be used as a work horse. She was also mistreated by Walter who wouldn't even call her by her correct name. His daughters likewise mistreated her, calling her names and ridiculing her country clothes.  Over the summer they became friends though. The author's note at the conclusion of the book acknowledges that Jen is really Lucy Knisley who grew up on her mother's farm. I wondered about this when I began reading because the drawings of Jen are the same as drawings of Lucy in earlier books.  

The artistry was a little different than prior graphic novels by Knisley. The introduction to all of the chapters was done with a kid's handwriting on those old composition book pages. It didn't work for me but since Jen was a child, this approach matched the story. The remainder of the drawings were consistent with the author's style, colorful panels drawn in a primitive fashion.

4 out of 5 stars.

Something New

I have read all of Lucy Knisley's graphic  memoirs but missed this one. Something New: Tales of a Makeshift Bride is about Knisley's engagement and marriage to her long time boyfriend John.  It is a humorous look into the world of all things bridal, illustrated with colorful comic strips by Knisley herself.  

As an artist Knisley wanted a DIY wedding that reflected her and John's personality. Her mother is a retired caterer who insisted that she not only get married at home but that her mother would build a barn to hold the festivities in. Knisley and her mother had built many things together before and both of them thought the barn would be easy to accomplish.  It wasn't. Nor were all of the decisions that needed to be made on items such as linens, dresses, decor, and music.  Mom basically got her way though.  

Something New is a fabulous graphic memoir and I enjoyed the author's journey to adulthood. Especially recommended for the newly engaged woman. 5 out of 5 stars.

Cub

Cub is a humorous graphic memoir about growing up in the 1970s.  One of the reasons that I loved this book is that I too came of age in the 1970s and had the same experiences that our heroine Cindy had.  It was a walk down memory lane.

The publisher's summary:

"Twelve-year-old Cindy has just dipped a toe into seventh grade drama - with its complicated friendships, bullies and cute boys - when she earns an internship as a cub reporter at a local newspaper in the early 1970s. A rare, young female reporter takes Cindy under her wing, and Cindy soon learns not only how to write a lede, but also how to respectfully question authority, how to assert herself in a world run by men, and - as the Watergate scandal unfolds, how brave reporting and writing can topple a corrupt world leader. Searching for her own scoops, Cindy doesn't always get it right, on paper or in real life. Whether she's writing features about ghost hunter's, falling off her bike and into her first crush, or navigating shifting friendships, Cindy grows wiser and more confident through every awkward and hilarious mistake."

I also was a cub reporter in the early 1970s. I wrote a weekly column for 3 years on high school activities for the Hammond Times newspaper. Reading about Cindy's joy over getting the job and her pursuit of stories to tell was enjoyable. She had a reporter for a mentor while I did not. Her journalism class experiences mirrored my own and I began to miss my former classmates. We had a good time together. Watergate was the big news story of the day. Cindy was lucky to get involved in reporting that story.

Cindy was not popular in school and when her best friend left her for the clique of desirables she was devastated. I also had the same experience and the remembrance was sobering. My life story is so similar to Cindy's that it felt like I was reading my own biography. Similarities aside, this was a fun, quick read.

5 out of 5 stars.