Kids of Appetite David Arnold September 20, 2016 Viking Books for Young Readers
I’ll preface this review with a disclaimer that The Outsiders is my favorite book of all time. At 13, it was the first book I ever finished and immediately went back and reread cover to cover. I’ve read it upwards of 20 times, and watch the film at least once a year, crying from the moment Ponyboy steps out of the movie theatre until he steps back out again. (Just to put things in perspective, I also cry from beginning to end of The Muppet Movie and the majority of The Goonies – if you can figure that one out please let me and my therapist know. We’re both really curious.) That being said, I’m always wary when authors use Hinton’s book, as it has a tendency to be used as a kind of shortcut for character development. In the same way that a “reader-girl” is shorthand for moral goodness, a reference to The Outsiders is often used as a quick way of understanding that character as a misunderstood misfit or loner.
Image Comics March 2016 Writer: Brian K. Vaughan Artist: Cliff Chiang Colorist: Matt Wilson Lettering: Jared K. Fletcher
In keeping with the rest of the world, I’m still reeling from the 48-hour trip that was binge watching Stranger Things. That synth-pop lovin’ Goonies meets Lost Boys meets ET masterpiece was MADE for me. When someone mentioned that Paper Girls was basically the comic book/female cast version of the show, I all but sprinted to buy it.
Just the cover had me completely won over. I MEAN, CAN YOU SEE IT?
Paper Girls follows four newspaper delivery girls through the pre-dawn streets of Cleveland, OH. Banding together, these ladies are ready to face whatever comes their way, whether it be bill-evading customers, uninvited male advances, or invading supernatural predators.
What I Loved
The Artwork. I’ll talk about the coloring first, as that was what initially drew me in and carried me through the entire volume. The way Wilson utilizes color is beautiful and spot-on. Many spreads and panels are almost ombre-like in their tonal shifts, utilizing a dusty, muted variation of stereotypical 80’s neons. This was, without a doubt, the most aesthetically pleasing comic I’ve read so far.
Chiang’s drawing was also a major winner here. The characters look like actual adolescent girls (a refreshing change of pace), and the clothing is spot-on, a perfect match for the time period while avoiding cliched trends like leg warmers and side-ponies.
I read recently that late to the game comic readers like myself have a hard time shifting from text-only reading to simultaneous text/image reading – skipping from word bubble to word bubble and ignoring the images in between. I’ve definitely felt this in my reading so far, but I think the artwork and color in Paper Girls helped me bridge that gap. I couldn’t help but pay attention.
I genuinely wanted to cut out entire spreads of this to hang on my wall. I’m assuming that this is frowned upon in the community – akin to highlighting, writing in margins, or dog-earing pages of books (All of which I do. What are you going to do about it? AB-SO-LUTE-LY. NOTHING).
What I Not So Loved
Pacing and Character Development. The four titular characters were each so uniquely different; it’s unfortunate that they seemed to get lost in the shuffle. Paper Girls got a bit bogged down by a constant influx of new characters (human and non-) and I often wished it would slow down a bit. I would have happily read page after page of the girls going around on their bicycles, smoking cigarettes, and putting down school bullies – providing some much-needed character development. This, however, wasn’t the case, and the story quickly moved onto a (still not quite fully realized) supernatural invasion (it’s a wild one).
I’m going to make a major (and much too early) generalization and say that this kind of fast-paced storytelling is just part of the medium, and I’m just not used to it quite yet.
In the end, I finished Paper Girls the same way I finished Stranger Things – pretty confused. Whatever supernatural being reeking havoc on Cleveland is yet to be fully understood by the end of Vol. 1. If that suspense doesn’t get readers itching to read Vol. 2, then the cliffhanger in the final panel will.
Vol. 2 of Paper Girls will be available November 30, 2016 (but you can buy the single issues now if that cliffhanger is just too much to bear).
After six weeks of reading, writing, interviewing, theorizing, hair-pulling, and Youtube watching, I submitted my second term essay. Cue the streamers!
My supervisor all but told me to pretend our Easter “break” didn’t exist, and that after drinking a celebratory glass of wine, I should turn right back around and go back to the library to start reading for thesis. In fact, I should proabably just chug the glass of wine at my computer in the library to save time.
While I respect and admire my supervisor and take every piece of advice she gives me to heart, I also respect my ability to do whatever the darn heck I want and I was outta there faster than you can say “Perry Nodelman”.
Now, a week or so later, I am getting fully into thesis-reading mode, but am loving the extra time to read books that aren’t written by old white dudes theorizing about children’s literature.
Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton
I’ll be totally honest – it was the cover that got me. I am not usually a fantasy reader; I pretty much keep to the contemporary and realistic side of fiction. But that blue and gold could not be ignored.
I had the chance to meet Hamilton when she spoke at a children’s literature publishing panel at Cambridge, and she spoke a lot of the extensive “world building” involved in this particular novel. Advertised as “Arabian Nights meets the Wild West,” Hamilton’s imagined Dustwalk and the surrounding Miraji desert is filled with fresh, thrilling, and oftentimes terrifying characters and magical creatures.
The protagonist ticked all of the “strong YA female character” boxes as a “gun-slinging runaway who don’t need no man” type. The male heroine, who I admittedly had a huge crush on, who was just like everyone else’s male heroine – sly, handsome, brave, and (surprise,surprise) hiding a huge secret. However, despite at first sounding like so many other YA reads out there, the world of Miraji is exciting, diverse, and new.
I believe I’m right in saying Rebel of the Sands is just the first of what will be a trilogy, and I’ll be looking forward to the sequel.
The Lie Tree by Frances Harding
When Faith’s scientist father is shamed and outcasted from his academic community for falsifying findings, the family must move to the quiet and closed-off island of Vale. Not long after arriving, Faith’s father is found dead, and it is up to her to uncover the truth behind his mysterious death.
I was ALL KINDS OF INTO this book. It had everything – mystery, deception, Charles Darwin, feminism, drafty old houses, conniving maids, the list goes on and on.
Faith quickly became one of my all time favorite protagonists, with her tenacity, wit, and strength. She is smart and clever, dreaming of becoming a natural scientist like her father. But Victorian society was not especially kind to smart and clever girls. As she is told by a doctor and keen craniometrist, “too much intellect would spoil and flatten [the female mind] like a rock in a soufflé”. Despite everyone seemingly against her, Faith, manages to turn her new island town upside down, with help from a few unlikely allies and a mysterious “lie tree”, to uncover the truth behind her father’s mysterious death.
This novel is the most engrossing I’ve read in a while, and Harding attention paid to each character allows for a deep understanding and connection. Exploring themes of women’s place in society, anatomy of lying, and evolution, The Lie Tree is a gripping fantasy that you quickly forget is just that.
Front Lines by Michael Grant
I stumbled across the trailer for this book online. A reimagining of World War II with drafted female soldiers? Sold.
Grant’s newest alternative history is told from the varied perspectives of three female soldiers – and the best compliment I can pay the novel is that I continually forgot it was an alternative history. Rio, Frangie, and Rainy all have their reasons for joining the fight: Rio is dealing with the tragic death of her sister, Frangie is trying to keep her family fed, Jenou is escaping an abusive home, and Rainy is simply trying to stop Nazis. By the time the soldiers come together at The Battle of Kasserine Pass, they all, men and women alike, simply share the hope of getting home safely.
While the varied perspectives was interesting and offered a lot of fictive information, I’m always wary of multi-perspective books as I feel that characters can easily get lost and muddled. There were moments where I had to remind myself of who was who, but Grant’s use of one omnipotent third-person narrator helped things along.
Front Lines is the first of what I believe will be three novels, and I’ll certainly be picking up the next one.
Adventures in Wonderland 