A moving portrayal of a family processing fraught, messy changes.
A San Francisco sixth grader grapples with the burden of keeping a heavy family secret.
In this debut graphic novel inspired by the author’s own life, Taiwanese American Cindy lives with Ma and older sisters Jess, a Yale-bound senior, and Em, a student at Stanford. Bàba lived with them, too—until he moved back to Taiwan four years ago, ostensibly for work. Their father’s absence is a confusing situation the girls have been instructed to keep secret. When the teacher of avid, talented artist Cindy encourages her to enter a contest with the theme “What Family Means to Me,” she’s torn between revealing the uncomfortable, murky truth and wanting to depict a “perfect” family; she harbors secret hopes that winning with an idealized portrait might encourage Bàba to come home. During a sudden family trip to Taiwan to attend their paternal grandmother’s funeral, the sisters learn why Bàba really left. Will Cindy be able to express her feelings and portray her family’s complicated truth? The appealing cartoon-style illustrations have soft, saturated tones, emphasizing the characters’ facial expressions and making their complex, shifting, and overlapping emotions ring true. The panels and perspectives are creatively varied, and interspersed pages from Cindy’s journal highlight her inner thoughts. Chang makes the emotional strain that emerges from secrecy clear, and the book refreshingly and bracingly addresses the topic of non-nuclear Asian American family configurations.
A moving portrayal of a family processing fraught, messy changes. (Graphic fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780358659655
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Allida/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
PROFILES
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel.
Sandy and his family, Japanese Canadians, experience hatred and incarceration during World War II.
Sandy Saito loves baseball, and the Vancouver Asahi ballplayers are his heroes. But when they lose in the 1941 semifinals, Sandy’s dad calls it a bad omen. Sure enough, in December 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in the U.S. The Canadian government begins to ban Japanese people from certain areas, moving them to “dormitories” and setting a curfew. Sandy wants to spend time with his father, but as a doctor, his dad is busy, often sneaking out past curfew to work. One night Papa is taken to “where he [is] needed most,” and the family is forced into an internment camp. Life at the camp isn’t easy, and even with some of the Asahi players playing ball there, it just isn’t the same. Trying to understand and find joy again, Sandy struggles with his new reality and relationship with his father. Based on the true experiences of Japanese Canadians and the Vancouver Asahi team, this graphic novel is a glimpse of how their lives were affected by WWII. The end is a bit abrupt, but it’s still an inspiring and sweet look at how baseball helped them through hardship. The illustrations are all in a sepia tone, giving it an antique look and conveying the emotions and struggles. None of the illustrations of their experiences are overly graphic, making it a good introduction to this upsetting topic for middle-grade readers.
An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel. (afterword, further resources) (Graphic historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0334-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure.
In a world based on Greek mythology, a 12-year-old aspires to be a Ferryer of the dead but gets off track when she meets a Living girl who’s found her way into the Underworld.
All Senka knows is her existence on an island in the middle of the Acheron River, “smack between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead,” where she’s the ward of Charon, the Ferryer of souls. Her teacher is an enormous raven named Mortimer. After Senka, who presents white, learns the Rules for Ferryers, Charon agrees to her repeated requests and starts training her to become a Ferryer. But when an emergency leads to Senka’s being left alone, she disobeys Charon’s explicit orders, takes the boat out on her own—and quickly learns that ferrying souls is far more complicated than she realized. She encounters dark-haired, brown-skinned Poppy, whose “edges are crisp”—she’s a Living girl who will sacrifice anything to find Joey, her younger brother who died. As Senka tries to convince Poppy to return to the Shore of the Living, the two get stuck in the Underwild, a “lawless place where chaos reigns” that’s filled with innumerable dangers and shrouded in secrets. Senka’s lively first-person narration relates the unexpected friendship that forms through her shared adventures with Poppy as they face mortality and the unknown. Debut author Targosz offers readers a meaningful exploration of grief and its impact on those left behind.
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781665957632
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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