YALSA top ten GNs 2014: Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
Written by Prudence Shen. Illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks.
Published by First Second (2013)

Sometimes I think that cheerleaders must be the most maligned group in fiction. I mean, I'm no expert in cheerleaders in fiction, but they generally seem to be portrayed as stuck up, exclusionary people that only care about looks and money.

But I guess I should explain what this comic is actually about. It begins with the high school robot club and the cheerleaders both wanting school money (the robot club wants new uniforms and the cheerleaders want to go to a robot competition, no wait...). However, there is only enough money for one of the groups (lets ignore that the cheerleaders want $4000 and the robot club only wants $1500), so the school decides that student council will decide who gets the money.

One of the robot club members decides to run for president, while his...friend (?) who is on the basketball team and used to go out with the head cheerleader gets signed up to run against him. Various dastardly election tricks are played by each side until the school decides that nobody gets the money. This part of the book was okay, but reading about high school politics didn't interest me that much.

The robot club decides to enter a robot fighting championship in order to get the money and go to their competition. However in order to do this they have to make their normal robot into a fighting robot, so they have to borrow $1500 from the cheerleaders with the promise that they'll pay for the uniforms with some of the prize money. (And if the cheerleaders have access to that much money why can't they just buy their own uniforms?) I found I enjoyed the comic considerably more after this point as, well, robot fights, but also because the characters' back stories and personalities were better fleshed out through various scenes and dialogue.

Perhaps surprisingly my favourite part of the comic came not from the robot fights, which were all pretty great, but from when the cheerleaders actually showed some compassion towards the only girl in the robot club. While "oh, they were nice all along" is _also_ a stereotype, it did make the characters seem slightly more believable and less one dimensional.

Actually, no, my favourite part of the comic was the art. Faith Erin Hicks seems to be everywhere these days (I mean, she had two books on the YALSA list in 2014!), and it has become obvious what a good artist she has become. Her ability to draw motion is really good (and thankfully so in a comic about robot fights), but I think where she really shines is in the expressions and body language of the characters she draws. She's great at allowing the reader to know how a character feels without them having to say anything at all.

Overall this was pretty okay, though that's clearly damning this book with faint praise. There were definitely parts that I enjoyed, but I also feel that you could cut out about a third of the book and made something that was more interesting (at least to me). Still, I'll gladly read more comics that Hicks drew, and I might check out another graphic novel written by Shen if the subject matter appealed to me more.

YALSA top ten GNs 2013: Trinity

Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb
Written and illustrated by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm
Published by Hill and Wang (2012)

It's not often that I think of a graphic novel as specifically for young adults. I am forever looking in the teen section in libraries to borrow graphic novels, and complaining that thing X is shelved there, but thing Y is shelved somewhere else, and that none of it makes any sense. I frequently think that by shelving something in the YA section of a library you are decreasing the number of people that will see it and borrow it (or at least the types of people). But that is all just conjecture and could be applied to any book shelved in any section. Maybe we should just put all the books in one big pile*.

Despite that Trinity is definitely what I would consider a YA graphic novel, though to some extent I would struggle why I think that way. I think ultimately it's because I didn't feel as though the book went into as much depth as it could have in regards to basically any element of the story. Everything is told well and clearly, but it also seemed to be a surface telling of what happened. Additionally, the use of explanatory text boxes throughout on many pages reminded me more of picture books or illustrated text than a comic, yet this is clearly not something for children. (I have limited experience dealing with kids, but I can't imagine trying to explain an atom to them.) However, everything did seem to be about the right level for a student in junior high or high school.

Artwise everything was fairly good. I mean, nothing really stood out to me, and I found it a bit weak in places where characters seemed particularly stiff, but it conveyed the information in an effective way and the illustrations describing elements of the science can definitely be beneficial to the reader. However, I was not impressed by the lettering, both in the choice of fonts and the design of the speech balloons.

If someone was interested in reading a graphic novel about this sort of things I'd probably recommend Feynman by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick instead. I don't remember exactly what it covered, but Richard Feynman did work for the Manhattan Project, and his biographies present a considerably more human and entertaining account of his experiences there (to be totally honest I'd probably just recommend the books themselves instead of the adaptations, as I thought they were great!). But as a general overview for someone (a younger someone?) who is not aware of the history surrounding this event, Trinity is probably works fine as an introduction to the science and history surrounding this project.

*No we shouldn't.

YALSA top ten GNs 2012: A Bride’s Story

A Bride’s Story (Volumes 1-3)
Written and illustrated by Kaoru Mori
Published by Yen Press (volumes 1-2, 2011; volume 3, 2012)

Only the first volume of this series was on the YALSA list, but I happened to see the first three in the library, so I picked them all up. To be honest because I didn't look at what this book was about I mistook it for Ooku: The Inner Chambers, which was on the 2010 YALSA list, and I kind of can't believe that I read about six hundred pages of this stuff.

A Bride's Story is set somewhere in central Asia in the late 19th century. At the time when women were married off to other families for money or political connections or any number of other reasons. As the comic begins Amir has been married off to another family, and she is positively ancient by bride standards (she's twenty), while her husband is only 12. The comic basically just follows the day to day activities of Amir as she becomes used to living with a new family.

It is incredibly boring.

Now, I find this kind of shocking as (spoilers ahead) Amir's old family comes and attacks the village she's living in, and in a later volume someone gets thrown into jail. Yet despite this it is just the dullest comic I have read in quite some time. Pages will be devoted to a character, who is never named, carving wood. Or there can be page after page of characters doing embroidery. Or, even worse, page after page of characters just _looking_ at embroidery.

But none of that is my real problem with this comic, my major problem is with the character of Amir. I realized somewhere in here that Amir is not actually a human being. Amir is a robot. Now you might be thinking "What? You said this book was set in the late 19th century, how is she a robot?", but I don't mean that she is a robot made out of mechanical parts (because really, nobody that knows me would ever think that I'd find that a problem). No, Amir is a robot in that she does not have human emotions or react to events like a human would. Instead she is absurdly innocent, verges on being an idiot savant in regards to her capabilities (she's an amazing archer!), who is amazed by _everything_. OH MY GOSH YOU CAN BAKE BREAD! Or you can sew, or there's a horse, or any other incredibly mundane thing astounds her utterly as though she has never seen it before. Amir reacts to events as though she has no prior history of doing or experiencing anything. She also becomes overwhelmingly devoted to her husband for no apparent reason whatsoever, which reminds me of robots who are devoted to their creator because, well, why not? It's kind of creepy.

Now this title has a lot of positive reviews online, and Kaoru Mori also had a title (Emma) on the 2008 YALSA list, so clearly she has many people who enjoy her work a lot, but I pretty clearly don't see the appeal of this comic. I will say that A Bride's Story is considerably better than Emma for two reasons. First, while the main character in both series is incredibly docile and passive, Amir is at least capable of doing _something_ (shooting arrows at things), while I don't think the main character in Emma did anything other than be embarrassed and polite, and second the art is really nice. I just wish it was being used on a comic I actually cared about.

YALSA top ten GNs 2008: King of Thorn

King of Thorn (Volumes 1-2)

Written and illustrated by Yuji Iwahara.

Published by Tokyopop (2007)

Sometimes a book can deliver everything you want, despite what the author's original intents were. But more on that later. I'm trying to get into the habit of reading books and comics without knowing anything about them. I don't read the blurb on the back (spoilers!), and it's often so long since I added the book to my "to read" list that I don't even remember why I wanted to read it in the first place. So I go in with no knowledge of what's going to happen at all except for whatever's on the cover. This means that early twists and surprises actually surprise me!

The cover of King of Thorn doesn't really reveal anything about the story at all (there are humans and monsters?), but I remember years ago thinking about reading this book because I really enjoyed the way the cover was designed. The use of blank white space within the "thorns" seeming to "eat" into the rest of the image, while the soft purple-y colour of the cover made it stand out to me for some reason. Maybe it's just that the colour purple being used on the cover is supposed to sell more comics.

Inside the story starts by revealing that a terrible disease, the Medusa virus, is turning people into stone and killing them and...hold on, isn't this the plot at the beginning of Eden: It's an Endless World? Kasumi is one of a pair of twins who have contracted the virus, but she alone has been chosen as one of 160 people to be placed into suspended animation in hopes that a cure will be uncovered. There's plenty of angst about leaving her sister behind as she's placed into the capsule and put to sleep.

And then...dinosaur attack! Okay, the dinosaur attack doesn't happen _yet_. First we jump forward some unknown amount of time into the future. The lab which holds the cryo-capsules has been completely overgrown with huge vines covered in thorns. Some of the capsules seem to be completely destroyed, but a number are still intact and people start to wake up and wonder what on Earth is going on. Then the dinosaur, or at least a giant lizard creature, attacks. In the ensuing fear, panic, and stampedes most of the survivors end up dead, leaving only seven people alive. The rest of the book follows their attempt to escape from the building, but floating over their heads is the dark realization that the virus which caused them to be placed into cryogenic sleep in the first place hasn't been cured, and the longest any of them has to live is six weeks. Gripping stuff!

So what was the thing I disliked about this book? The main character. The girl on the cover with huge glasses and who, as you can probably guess if you've ever read any manga, is a shy and awkward teenage schoolgirl who is also nice and kind and maybe brave. She has seemingly no characteristics beyond that, practically sleepwalks through the plot, getting rescued multiple times, and could, in my opinion, just not have been included at all. I feel like I've seen this character in numerous manga before (though, I could not actually tell you which ones), and they're not a character type that I really care for. A character can have self doubt over their actions, but Kasumi's self doubt (at least in this volume) is whether she should even bother continuing to live. It's survivor's guilt that starts before she even enters the capsule. I'm assuming that Iwahara wants us to identify with, or at least care about, Kasumi, but it wouldn't bother me if she died in volume two. Actually, that'd be pretty gutsy so I'd be impressed, but I'm doubting that'll happen.

The other characters aren't that much better: there's a kid, a woman (who of course ends up looking after the kid), an older rich business man guy, another guy (who apparently has less of a personality than Kasumi), a black guy (who is of course big and strong), and a super 1337 hacker criminal (the big muscley guy with the tattoos on the cover). The hacker is, at least so far, the real protagonist insofar as he has driven pretty much every element of the plot: leading the characters, suggesting plans, coming up with ideas, saving people, thinking about what's going on. He's a stereotype too, but one I'm more interested in reading about.

Still the entire plot and situation of the comic really grabbed me, even if the characters themselves didn't seem like anything particularly special. I'm totally ready to read more of this series (especially since, as it's only six volumes long, it will actually end), but unfortunately the VPL only has volume 1 and every volume is out of print since Tokyopop, its original publisher, has basically not existed as a company in several years. Thankfully it doesn't look like prices on the secondary market are that high, so hopefully I can pick them up somewhere. I'm also interested in checking out some of Iwahara's other series, two of which, I've just discovered, have been translated into English.

VPL Inspiration Pass

The Vancouver Public Library offers a really rad service called the Inspiration Pass. It's a pass that allows free access to 25 different events and activities around Vancouver, from museums, to farms, to musical performances, to ice rinks. And it's a super popular program, which is both great and terrible.

I put a hold on an Inspiration Pass just over a year ago on February 23rd, 2013. I'm currently 224th in line (for one of five copies at that branch). There are currently 525 people on this hold list, which is (just) the shortest of any of the 21 hold lists (every branch has some passes). While it's cool that this program exists, I really have to question multiple year long wait lists. There are somewhere over 100 passes available throughout the library system (their site says 120, but I can only identify 115 on their website's catalogue). Each branch gets five, while the main branch has 15.

Unlike other hold systems where you place the hold and you can pick it up at any branch, in this case you have to pick it up at the branch specified. Since they're at every branch, this isn't really the problem.

The problem are (as I said) the massive wait lists! Here's a list of the various branches and the number of holds each has.

Carnegie - 525
Dunbar - 526
West Point Grey - 526
Strathcona - 526
Collingwood - 529
Kerrisdale - 530
Fraserview - 530
South Hill - 531
Champlain Heights - 532
Firehall - 536
Marpole - 536
Kensington - 549
Joe Fortes - 553
Britannia - 557
Kitsilano - 580
Renfrew - 589
Terry Salmon - 572
Hastings - 592
Mount Pleasant - 604
Oakridge - 625
Central Branch - 1729 (averages to ~576 per 5 passes)

Total: 12777!

Now, it is possible to place a hold on more than one of these, but once one shows up all your others get cancelled. You're also limited to borrowing only one pass a year, but that's clearly not going to be a problem any time soon. So why is it taking so long? The borrowing time for each pass is two weeks, and I have no idea how long they'll actually hold them for you. I think holds are 5 business days, but I'm not totally sure. We'll say a week total.

(one week hold) + (two weeks borrowing) x 110 (approximate number for how many holds per pass) = (how long you have to wait to pick up a pass)

That's, uh, a little over SIX YEARS. Okay, so it's not actually that bad. Some people pick up their holds on the first day, some people return their passes after a day, some people never pick up the holds in the first place. So the actual time each pass is out is in use by each patron is less than the maximum. I don't remember exactly, but I think I was in the mid 400s when I joined the hold list last year (so it looks like the hold lists have actually gotten longer), but that means they're getting through about 200 holds per branch per year, so it's really only a 2-3 year wait. Much better!

Other library systems offer similar programs, and from my anecdotal evidence they generally work on a first-come, first-serve basis and are valid for less time. Sure this means that if you can't get to the library at 10am you might not get one, but more people in total will end up using them. A friend even suggested that there should be a way to do this using technology. Upon reaching the front of the hold queue the patron gets emailed a limited use bar code that can be printed off or shown on a device. It expires in x days and the next person gets sent one immediately afterwards.

To me this sounds great, but another friend said that at this point the VPL can't change how they've been doing things as people would complain a lot. It doesn't matter that more people would get to use the service, but that whoever the complainer is _didn't_. I guess that VPL just didn't think that this program would be anywhere near this popular and didn't predict years long waiting lists. Unfortunately "owing to the agreements with our partners we are unable to expand the program at this time".

I have other problems with the waiting lists (“two adults and up to four children aged 18-years and younger” or “up to six young people aged 14 to 18 years old", bleh), but that'll have to wait until I actually get the pass. Hopefully some time next summer I'll be able to post about the awesome museums I got to visit!

YALSA 2014 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens

Every year since 2007 the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) section of the American Library Association (ALA) has created both a long list and a top ten list of "great graphic novels for teens". You can see all the lists here. Previously they had included some graphic novels on their "best books for young adults" lists.

Last year I was invited to give a guest lecture on the history of comics and graphic novels for children and young adults, and upon looking at these lists realized that I had read less than half of the book on the top ten lists (and hadn't even heard of others!). As a so called "expert" on graphic novels in libraries I didn't really think that this was appropriate, and decided to read as many of the volumes that I hadn't read as possible.

I'll be reviewing them as I read (or reread) them, and this page will eventually contain links to all the books from 2014. Here's the full list of nominations from 2014, and the top ten list. This year I've read fewer of these books than ever (approximately 1.5)! I blame being in grad school.

Will & Whit by Laura Lee Gulledge.

The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks.

Dogs of War by Sheila Keenan and Nathan Fox.

MIND MGMT (Volume 1) by Matt Kindt.

Rust (Volume 2) by Royden Lepp.

March (Volume 1) by  John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell.

War Brothers: The Graphic Novel by Sharon McKay and Daniel Lafrance.

Strobe Edge (Volumes 1-6) by Io Sakisaka.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks.

Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang.

Tintin in the Land of Potential Censorship

I'm a pretty big Tintin and Hergé fan. I first read the comics as a child, and I even remember going to libraries to borrow the comics. The first one I owned was Prisoner's of the Sun, and I think that its use of in media res (as the second book in a two part story) has influenced my enjoyment of creating stories that start in the middle.

I've read all the Tintin comics (and several of Hergé's other comics), read the novel, own several of the pastiches that have been created, have read or watched comics, books, and documentaries about Tintin and Hergé, watched the various animated shows (and will watch those weird old live action movies at some point), went to Belgium just so that I could go to the Hergé Museum, have owned pieces of the merchandise (including rad standees when I was a kid, and a watch I wore until it broke), had Tintin's haircut for years, and in some ways feel that my life as a globe trotting, occasional journalist that wants to have adventures was influenced by Tintin.

So I say this as someone who really loves the character: Tintin in the Congo is a racist book that should not be in children's sections of libraries (or bookstores for that matter).

Now, I've seen this book in children's sections before (that's where I first read it a few years ago), but I'm writing this post because of this article about a library that refuses to move the book out of the children's section after parents complained.

First a bit of background. Tintin in the Congo was the second Tintin adventure after Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. It was originally published from 1930 to 1931, but this version doesn't really look much like what most people expect Tintin to look like. Hergé was still a fairly young and inexperienced artist at this point in his career so the art isn't as developed as it would later be, plus the books were published in black and white. Later he redrew and colourized his earliest books (excluding Tintin in the Land of the Soviets), and this revamped version was released in 1946. Later revisions (to remove a rhino being blown up) where made in the 1970s at the request of publishers in other countries.

Despite those changes the colour version of this book was not published in English until 2005. (A reproduction of the original black and white version was published in the early 1990s, but that was aimed a collectors.)

Now I could go into all the problems with the book, but there are other articles written by people who have read it more recently than I have (and I'm not that interested in rereading it). So try this one or this one.

I'm not saying Tintin in the Congo shouldn't be in libraries, but putting it in a children's section seems misguided and ignorant at best, and malicious at worst. Honestly, there aren't enough portrayals of people of colour in any comics, let alone in comics aimed at kids, and so having one that is super racist against Africans seems like a terrible, terrible idea.

The head librarian at the library in question apparently said that moving the books was the same as censoring them, which seems kind of strange to me. They quote the ALA definition of censorship as a "change in the access status of material, based on the content of the work and made by a governing authority or its representatives", while saying that “If the Jones Library does nothing else, we protect everyone’s constitutional right to read anything he or she wants. Our mission does not include censorship.”

How does moving this book to the adult graphic novel or 741.5 section change the access status? Children can still find it (and in fact more people overall would see that the book exists). I have to wonder what this library would do if a book was miscatalogued. If Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie was in the kid's section at the library (it's a crossover between Peter Pan, the Wizard of Oz, and Alice in Wonderland!) would it just stay there forever?

When it comes down to it I think the only reason that Tintin in the Congo is shelved in the kids section anywhere is because most cataloguers don't know that much about comic books (I see miscatalogued comics all the time), and so they just put it where all the other Tintin comics go. It's kind of funny that I'm complaining about that this time, as usually I'm upset because a series has been split into multiple different sections, but I think this shows that for librarians knowledge of material and context is important.