YALSA top ten GNs 2011: Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty

Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty
Written by G. Neri. Illustrated by Randy Duburke.
Published by Lee & Low Books Inc. (2010)

So before I read this I had never heard of Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, an eleven year old kid who was involved with gangs and shot a girl in Chicago in 1994. Honestly, it's kind of hard for me to understand that sort of thing. I was born in the same year as Sandifer, so I was also 11 when the events in this comic were happening. But instead of stealing cars and running from the cops I was playing Super Nintendo. (It was not until 1997 when Grand Theft Auto came out that I would begin stealing cars and running from cops.)

It's pretty evident that the entire situation surrounding Sandifer was tragic: his parents were in jail (and abusive when out of it), he had no real support system, and, to be honest, no hope. Near the end of this comic one of the characters says that Sandifer is going to be the only person from that neighbourhood that ever makes it to the cover of Time magazine, and they are more than likely right. I've talked with friends about class systems, and how the USA and Canada differ from the UK, but we do have to accept that there are places in our countries where you are pretty much fucked from birth. Sandifer grew up in one, and his chances from day one weren't that good.

Poverty can be incredibly hard to escape from, and this comic acts as a pretty good reminder of that. However, judging it as a comic is kind of weird. Does it have amazing art or tell the story in an interesting way? Not really, no. The art tells the story ("and it's perfectly fine!" he said, damning it with faint praise that is unfair to the artist), and the story tells the story. There really isn't that much more to it. Would I put it on a "best of" list for 2011? No. Would I put it on a top graphic novels for teens list? Yeah, because I think it's important for teenagers to learn about things like this. Maybe some people even read it and had their lives changed for the better. I can only hope.

YALSA top ten GNs 2014: War Brothers the Graphic Novel

War Brothers: the Graphic Novel
Written by Sharon McKay and Daniel Lafrance. Illustrated by Daniel Lafrance.
Published by Annick Press (2013)

So you'll see that I've credited Daniel Lafrance as one of the writers of the work, and it seems that not every website does this. Presumably this is because this book was originally a young adult novel written by Sharon McKay, and some people have assumed that she also wrote this. But from what I can tell she didn't actually have any connection to the production of this book (other than approval maybe?).

This does bring up the idea of how much of a comic's "writing" and story are down to the artist. We assume that the words in the speech balloons are the writing, but most of the time there is much more, with a writer creating a script, breaking the story down into pages and panels and describing what's happening. Of course, there are examples of artists creating comics from much less than full script, with Marvel style probably being the best known example. If an artist creates the layout of a page, or even a character's outfit, should that be considered "writing"?

Anyway....

War Brothers is depressing. It's about children kidnapped to be soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. (That's the group that Joseph Kony of Kony2012 runs.) So yes, this book about children being kidnapped at gun point, being forced to march through the jungle, starving, attacking and killing each other out of fear for their lives, having their ears cut off, and much more is based on real life. Hurray!

I haven't read the original novel, but Lafrance has done a good job in adapting prose into comic form. By this I mean that nothing seems to be missing from the original (it's entirely possible that there is, but nothing _seems_ to be missing), and that a complete story is told.

Throughout the comic the characters are well illustrated. Children tend to look like children (which is something some artists really struggle with), the use of colours is effective (especially in many of the night scenes), and Lafrance is effective in communicating emotions through facial expressions and body language.

For much of the story Lafrance doesn't use panel borders like many comics do. Instead the panels are bordered by gutters that are either fully white or fully black depending on the setting. While most panels use straight, rectangular borders, scenes of violence tend to feature much less regular panels with the black gutters at times seeping out onto the art itself.

There were a few times where I felt the computer lettering was not as strong as it could be. When you have panel borders changing depending on the scene it doesn't seem nearly as good when those scenes are lettered with fonts featuring identical looking computer fonts. Sometimes computer fonts are fine, but other times I really appreciate hand lettered sound effects and other text in comics.

Overall I think this comic is successful. It effectively tells a story where (I think) the real point is to educate people about something that is happening in another part of the world. And while it is depressing, it isn't as hopeless as some media about Africa can be. (This opinion piece from Fuse ODG about the portrayal of Africa in western media is kind of interesting.) If you're completely unaware of the situation regarding the LRA it might be more useful to read the Wikipedia article I linked to above, but this is worth reading too.

YALSA top ten GNs 2014: Dogs of War

Dogs of War
Written by Sheila Keenan. Illustrated by Nathan Fox.
Published by Graphix/Scholastic (2013)

When I saw that Nathan Fox had drawn this comic I was excited. Then I realized that I hadn't heard anything about this book from anywhere, and that I couldn't name anything he'd be working on recently so I clearly hadn't been following Fox's work that closely. Perhaps I don't actually like his work that much. I mean, I like Fluorescent Black don't I? Or maybe I've just read it... Or maybe I just own it because I literally remember nothing about it other than it's size (it's large!).

Flicking through the book now I look at individual panels and pages and think "Yeah, that looks pretty good", but at the same time I don't remember thinking about the art at all while I read it, so evidently it didn't leave that much of a mark. Was it just the subject matter not appealing to me? Or was it something else?

First I guess we need to look at what this comic is actually about. It's split into three separate stories set during different wars: World War I in France, World War II in Greenland, and the Vietnam War. Each story is all about puppies!

Okay, not so much, each story is actually about dogs. The first one features a sixteen year old kid who ran off and joined in the war as a medic. A medic dog saves his life several times, there's a soccer game, hurray!

The second is interesting at least in it's setting. I've never heard much (or anything) about Greenland during the second world war, so it was interesting to learn that both Americans and Germans were there setting up bases. Here's a Wikipedia article if you want more information. Apparently Greenland was determined not be occupied by Canada!

The final story is the only one that I felt actually dealt with how horrible war is. A soldier who's returned to America from the Vietnam war is living in a trailer park, having nightmares, and dealing with PTSD. He bonds with a kid and his pet dog by telling him about his experiences in Vietnam.

Despite the final story I found this book to be, if not actually pro war, overly supportive of people fighting. The first two stories are a bit too "rah rah rah" for my liking and while the third story was better on this account, I also felt it dehumanized the Vietnamese people. While there does appear to be an element of "the soldiers are not in the wrong, it's the people who are telling them to fight" in this book, I really can't feel positive in regards to anything that's supportive of war in pretty much any way. Other people feel differently.

YALSA top ten GNs 2014: Will & Whit

Will & Whit
Written and illustrated by Laura Lee Gulledge
Published by Amulet (2013)

I read a lot of comics, but what I tend to read are comics put out by traditional comic shop publishers (e.g. Dark Horse, etc.). Sure, there are exceptions, but for the most part I'm not super aware of what's being put out by book publishers, and I'm especially unaware of things put out by book publishers and aimed at teenage girls. (Which is kind of why these YALSA lists are great! Exposing me to new comics is always good.)

Will & Whit is about Wilhelmina, a 17-year-old girl who lives in a small town, has "an old-fashioned soul", and wants an "unplugged summer" vacation. Now, if I was reading this as the blurb on a novel I probably would have given up already, as I clearly have no time for stories where the main character isn't a robot or wants to be a robot.

Will's parents died a year ago and she's been living with her aunt and trying to deal with things since then. She helps out at the antique store her aunt owns, and makes lamps (this seems kind of weird). Will a massive storm and/or a group of teens who are starting a carnival style art show help Will deal with her emotions? More than likely as there wouldn't be a story if they didn't.

This comic is fine, but in a lot of ways it just seems really generic. Teens feel isolated, teens are all super creative, technology doesn't help us interact with each other, etc. However, I'm not a teenager, am (hopefully) more okay with being who I am than many of them, and have read more books about being isolated and alone than they have. My issues are not really with the quality of the book, just that I've read other stuff with the same feel before. ("Then why do you read superhero comics that are all pretty much the same?" you ask while I try to change the subject.)

However, I do have a major problem with the art in this book: the two main male characters look (and act) more or less identical. They're both straight white teenagers with who dress pretty similarly (you could swap their clothes and never know) and have unspoken crushes on girls. Okay, so their noses are drawn a little differently, and the book is in black and white so the lack of colour limits how you can tell characters apart, but  I'm pretty sure their hair is even parted on the same side. The story could have made them twins and I would have believed it. Gulledge is capable of drawing females who both look and dress differently, and there's another male character who is distinguishable from other people, but she totally fails on this count. Make one of these guys goth or black (or both!) or _anything_.

This brings to light another problem with this (and many other books). Yes there are supporting characters who aren't white (hurray), but they aren't really driving the story forward. In this case the main character (or their love interest) could easily be non-white, but they aren't. I don't usually complain about this sort of thing (white is frequently the default...), and this isn't really aimed at this book specifically, but representation of minorities in fiction (and not just in supporting roles) is something that should be discussed pretty much always.

Library Tourism: Seattle Public Library - Wallingford Branch

I do a lot of "library tourism" where I visit libraries when I'm in another city, or make it a goal to check out other libraries in my city. Last year I visited every branch of the Vancouver Public Library!

I was recently in Seattle for the ASIS&T conference and we were able to check out the Wallingford Branch of the Seattle Public Library. It's tiny!

Comics workshop and events!

These were in lots of the sections, which we thought was neat. The hold section at this library was huge. Judging from their website the Seattle Public Library doesn't limit the number of holds you can have a year, just the number you can have at one time.

YALSA top ten GNs 2014: March

 

March (Volume 1)
Written by by  John Lewis and Andrew Aydin. Illustrated by and Nate Powell.
Published by Top Shelf (2013)

While he's now best known for his comic work like Swallow Me Whole, I first learned of Nate Powell through Soophie Nun Squad, a rather bizarre band slotted into the punk movement at least partially because of the content of their lyrics and who they hung out rather than anything else (Powell was roommates with a member of Defiance, Ohio for a while). Their live shows frequently featured puppets and costumes and it's too bad they don't perform any more as I'd like to see them. The CD I have by them features a cover and other artwork by Powell (who is also credited for "voice, claps, hit a button, puppets"), and it's great to see him working on book such as this.

March is a book chronicling the civil rights movement in the United States through the eyes of John Lewis, a US congressman and an "American icon" that I've never heard of... Of course, I am a Canadian, and so I presumably know less about this than Americans do, but I felt that there could have been a little bit more context for what segregation and the civil rights movement where. I guess that while American kids are taught about all this stuff, I can imagine a kid in Canada (and remember this is a book aimed at kids and young adults) or elsewhere being confused by what's going on. (Though without access or experience with them it''s impossible for me to really know.)

The book starts telling Lewis' life starting in the 1940s rural America and continuing up to the lunch counter protests in 1960. Throughout we're given Lewis' thoughts on the movement, and the emphasis many people put on non-violent protests. Reading about the institutionalized racism portrayed in this comic is pretty upsetting. I mean, my birth is closer to those events than to the present day, but I can't even imagine restaurants here refusing to serve people because of the colour of their skin. It really makes me wonder what groups we're discriminating against today that, thirty years from now, will make us feel appalled by our own actions.

While the information given in this comic is solid, I found the book as a whole is a little frustrating. The story is effectively told, but as it's just "part one" the story isn't complete in any real way. Secondly, there's a kind of weird almost present day (2009) framing sequence of Lewis talking about his life to kids and other people. It  crops up at various points of the book, and based on the dates I guess the final book is going to end with the inauguration of Barack Obama. While I understand why that is important, and would be a fitting conclusion, I also felt that it just ate up pages that could have been better used to give more historical details. Finally, and this is fairly minor, there's a term used that I consider a racial slur about Irish people, which is a little off putting.

Powell's art is good, but I'm apparently worse at describing artwork than I am at actual stories, so it's probably best if you just look at a preview.

YALSA top ten GNs 2009: Skim

Skim
Written by Mariko Tamaki. Illustrated by Jillian Tamaki.
Published by Groundwood Books (2008)

When I originally read Skim months ago I really didn't think it was very good. It definitely got better near the end, but overall I didn't really get why people liked it so much (or rather, even if I did, it didn't appeal to me personally). Reading it a second time, and feeling much more depressed overall (school...), I definitely found it more appealing, though I felt it did have a lot of the same problems I found my first time through.

But first, Skim is a book about some kind-of-outcast kids in an all-girls high school in Ontario in the early '90s. They read about Wicca, are kind of goth, and when a boy who was dating someone in the school kills themselves everyone gets worried about them (because of course the kind of depressed goths are going to kill themselves). We follow Skim, the main character, as she interacts with her teachers, family, and classmates, and grows further away from some people and towards others.

My biggest problem is the creepy relationship that happens between a student and a teacher. Yeah, it's fiction, yeah not everything has to be spelled out, but I still think this is a super creepy thing and other than one of the characters moping a bunch it's not really dealt with. People write about stuff that doesn't happen I know, and being overly preachy can be pretty terrible, but still, it made me kind of uncomfortable.

Anyway, once that's out of the way the story becomes a lot more appealing to me. A popular girl who fell off her roof and broke both her arms (while attempting suicide?) is constantly surrounded by other girls who try to make a thing out of it by having clubs and dances and stuff that are supposed to be about how great life is. The girl seems to become more and more distressed and Skim manages to create some sort of connection between them. This was the best part of the book, as the other character, who'd been dismissed previously, is shown to have a personality. I kind of wish that the entire book had been about them coming to terms with themselves and who their friends actually are, as despite these scenes we didn't really get a full picture of them. Oh well.

So yeah, a lot of people loved this, I thought it was okay. But really, it's about emotions and family and teenagers and there's not a single robot and nobody travels through time, so  I'm not even surprised it didn't do that much for me. (Also the art, which many people enjoyed a lot, evidently wasn't my thing as I don't really remember it, but that doesn't mean it was bad!)