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books

Level Up by Gene Luen Yang

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I am always so charmed by everything Gene Luen Yang writes, and his newest graphic novel, Level Up, is no exception.  His latest centers on Dennis Ouyang, a high school student whose parents desperately want him to become a doctor.  Dennis, on the other hand, would much rather play video games – maybe even professionally one day.  Dennis makes it into a good college, but when his dad – the person who exerted the most parental pressure on him – dies, he slacks off, staying at the arcade until all hours, skipping school, and failing his classes.  He’s placed on academic probation and eventually kicked out of college.
That’s when three angels show up and begin exerting that same pressure – plus a healthy dose of guilt – to become a doctor on Dennis.  They’re able to convince the dean to reinstate Dennis, and they also convince Dennis that he should make it his goal to work hard, get into medical school, and become a gastroenterologist (a poop doctor).  They tell him this is his destiny.  
Just as in the two previous works I’ve read by Yang (American Born Chinese and The Eternal Smile), things are not what they seem.  All is revealed at the end, and of course I can’t say anything more because that would spoil things.  But the reveal is a good one, giving the reader insight into the characters of both Dennis and his father.  It’s also heartwarming and a little weepy.
Like any good story, there’s more than one theme at work here.  We learn a lot about Dennis’ relationship with his father, which is certainly the primary aim, but we also see the development of Dennis’ friendships with his classmates in medical school and see how a teenager strikes out on his own to become an adult (something rarely seen in books – so few are about 20-somethings!).  Typical for Yang, there’s also a good dose of humor.
The art is done by relative newcomer Thien Pham.  It’s nothing hugely remarkable – cute without being childish, with a lot of soft colors that emphasize how adorable the angels are.  It’s nice to look at and he clearly has talent, I just tend to prefer bolder colors and firmer lines.
This is such a great book for 20-somethings (like me). Dennis starts out as a teenager but grows into an adult in medical school, making him around my age near the end.  Beyond the age equivalency, though, is the inclusion of the videogames: the front of the book is an old-school gameboy, and Dennis talks about playing the original Nintendo Entertainment System frequently, both of which my generation is very familiar with.  Today’s teens are a little too young to have grown up with these (relative) pioneers in gaming.  While there are no references to Duck Hunt or blowing on game consoles, Dennis does play Pac-Man and other arcade and NES games extensively.  Despite its YA designation, I feel like Level Up was written more with my age group in mind.
Copy borrowed from my local library.

Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge

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Paige’s family moves from Virginia — where she’s always lived — to New York City, and suddenly, she’s torn from everything she’s known. Her life has fallen into a new place, and she’s lost any sense of who or what she is. She knows she’s an artist, but having that label applied to herself is tough to understand. She doesn’t know where she fits into the new scheme of her high school, an urban high school where everyone seems to know exactly who they are and where they fit in. She doesn’t want to be the “new girl” forever, but it’s tough finding a place to slide into.

Paige pours those feelings into her notebook, one where she’s also noted the rules her grandma gave her when it comes to making art. As she begins unraveling her feelings about her new life and about who she is, Paige begins making new friends — both by accident and by purposeful interaction on her part (though she’d never admit to that). While making these new friends, she begins to understand what her purpose in this new life is, as well as begins to understand that being an artist is part and parcel of who she is. It’s how she deals with things, and it’s how she processes and understands the world around her.

Page by Paige is a new addition to the slight world of stand alone graphic novels geared toward teen girls. There are no superheroes in here. Instead, it’s a fully fleshed story about growing up and about change. It’s perhaps most about better understanding who you are as a person and embracing the things about you that make you unique. It’s a bit of an artist’s manifesto, even. As a reader, I understood everything that Paige said and struggled with when it came to making art and to valuing the role art plays in understanding oneself. I think anyone who has ever done something artistic, something that really requires delving deep inside to express a feeling or a thought or an idea, will relate to Paige easily; there’s a real tension between going out and living, sometimes and sitting back and letting life live around you, and Gulledge captures that strongly in both the words she’s written and in the illustrations that heighten those words.

The book is structured around the nine rules which Paige’s grandmother told her about creating art, and I think that the set up and execution of the book are successful because of this. The rules help Paige process herself and her place in this new, foreign, even exotic world she’s entered, and at the same time, they serve as her guidebook to creating meaning in her art. What was extremely smart on Gulledge’s part in illustrating the story, though, was not putting all of the rules out there from the beginning. Had she done that, we’d know the whole of Paige’s story from the set up; instead, we’re given the first three rules in an early illustration, but we’re lead through the remaining rules as the story progresses and as we begin to sympathize and urge Paige on in her path to finding who she is.

Characters in this book were well done, and I appreciated that they never swerved into stereotypes. Paige falls into a group of artistic kids, but they’re not set up as the strange ones in school, and neither are they outcast or the popular kids. Instead, they’re all individuals, and I could keep them apart in my mind. Since the book’s told through Paige’s point of view, it would have been easy to have these secondary characters fall into a trope, but they didn’t — which is both proof of Paige’s ability to grow up and work toward her goals, as well as proof of Gulledge’s ability to flesh out individuals quite well.

The illustrations in the book — done in black and white only — are unique, and I found them to be strong and in harmony with the text. The details included in the illustrations make it modern, as many of the characters wear t-shirts sporting favorite bands (that are current), and perhaps my favorite little details included seeing what the characters were reading at different points in the story (Paige, for example, delves deep into Y: The Last Man). I found these little details important because they really spoke to an idea Paige brings up in her own art and in the rules she follows: inspiration. It was fun to be right there with her as she sought and found moments of inspiration in the world around her, and again, it makes these things relatable to readers who also find inspiration for their own art all around them. I won’t lie: I found the fact Paige has her own treadmill desk one of the highlights of this book for me.

Perhaps my only issue with the graphic portion of this story is that at times it felt very young, given the strength and the wisdom in the text itself. For me, the cover and font used on it speak more to a middle grade readership than a young adult one, and this is not a book for a middle grade audience. Middle school, definitely, but not middle grade.

My biggest challenge with the book, though, is that at times it borders on didactic. The points Gulledge wants to make with readers are important, but they’re almost served a little too clearly and obviously in the story. The rules from Paige’s notebook work perfectly to service the story’s goal, but there are instances throughout the book that these points are hammered home a little too much. As an adult, I found myself a little frustrated with those things being hit on again and again, and I can imagine that might turn some teen readers off entirely. Paige is a quieter character, and she’s one who is very internally focused. In no way does this make her dumb or unaware of herself and the path she needs to take to fit in and to understand the role art plays in her life. I think a lot of times characters who are quieter and more focused internally are branded as the kind of characters who need things repeated to them since they’re not showing off these lessons or their thoughts out loud or in showy ways; as someone who’s had people talk down to me because of my own need to process internally, I was annoyed for Paige that these “big lessons” were repeated and repeated and repeated. At the end, it felt like Paige’s coming to terms with herself was too adult-like, too reflective and insightful. It was a little too idealized.

While reading, I spent a lot of time thinking about audience for Page by Paige and actually had little trouble figuring out who’d like this book — fans of realistic fiction, artists, or anyone who has ever felt like an outcast or experienced a huge change in their life. I read this at the same time I was rereading Siobhan Vivian’s Same Difference, and I saw countless parallels between Emily and Paige. In fact, I almost brought Gulledge’s book to my teen book group’s discussion of Vivian’s book because I thought they’d be an excellent pairing. Fans of Liz Gallagher’s recent title, My Not-So-Still Life will also find great parallels between the stories and characters.

This is the kind of book you could sell easily to regular fans of realistic fiction, even if they’re not usually fans of graphic novels. Fans of Cecil Castellucci’s Plain Jane books will also enjoy this one. As I mentioned earlier, this book will work well for middle and high school students, though I wouldn’t feel comfortable handing it to middle grade readers. There aren’t language issues, but some topical ones that make it more appropriate for those ages. And while I think there are certainly males who will read and relate to this story, I think the audience for Gulledge’s book will be primarily female.

If you want more information about the book, want to check out the inspiration for the story, or want to download some of the cool art associated with the book (like Paige’s rules shared above), make sure you check out the author’s website. There’s also an entire blog devoted to just Page by Paige here. For anyone who does art or writing workshops, these look to be great places for ideas and inspiration.

Laika by Nick Abadzis

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I need to preface this review with a warning: There will be spoilers.  Although the events of the book are historical fact and therefore what happens isn’t really “spoiling” anything, I feel it’s better to err on the side of caution.

Laika by Nick Abadzis is a graphic novel about the Soviet space program – specifically Sputnik and Sputnik II – and a dog named Laika, whom the Soviets sent into space on Sputnik II with no plans for a return journey.  It’s also the story of the scientists and engineers who worked with her.
Laika begins with a man named Korolev making his way out of a gulag.  He was a political prisoner put away on false charges, and now he’s been allowed to leave.  Eighteen years later he is leading the Soviet space program.

The story then switches to our furry friend Laika, and her path to the space program is a twisty one.  She’s the unwanted puppy in a high-ranking government official’s home, then given to a young boy who doesn’t want her and abandons her on the street, then a stray who takes up with another dog for protection, and finally a captured dog taken to the space program.  There, Laika is taken under the care of Yelena Dubrovsky, a lab technician whose job it is to care for the dogs in the space program and ensure they are healthy for training.

The story is a good one, but it takes awhile to get to the good bits.  The beginning is a bit meandering – the parts with Korolev are not terribly interesting and can be a little confusing to readers who don’t fully understand the context.  Laika’s long road to the space program is also a bit tiring at times, and I feel like Abadzis dwelled too long on that journey.  I don’t think any parts should have been omitted, but perhaps condensing them a little would have helped.

Once we’re in the space program, things pick up quite nicely.  Abadzis does an excellent job of showing what training the dogs undertook, who was involved in the process, and how those working with the dogs felt about their work.  There’s a pretty intimidating culture of fear there – Yelena and a few of her fellow scientists and engineers often will not speak up about the welfare of the dogs for fear of reprisals.  At the same time, the scientists and engineers also feel that the work they are doing is of vital importance (it is a precursor to sending a man into space, after all), and they’re not fundamentally opposed to it.  This serves to humanize the characters.  Instead of two-dimensional puppy-killers or bleeding-heart animal lovers, they’re fully realized people, and the reader, as a result, feels for them.  And of course, we feel for the dog intensely.  A book about a dog dying is never not going to be a tearjerker.

The art in Laika didn’t really work for me.  It was difficult for me to tell the difference between the male characters, partly because the shape and design of the faces of the same people seemed to shift from panel to panel.  At times, Yelena’s face is very boxy, other times it’s more round, sometimes her lips appeared thin, sometimes thick, and so on.  I knew it was her because of her blonde hair worn up in a bun (and because at this point in the story, she is the only female), but at those moments when her hair was drawn down, she looked like a completely new character.  The full-color helped, since I could use hair color to identify people, but since most of the male characters had brown hair…well, it was tough sometimes.
Aside from the character’s physical inconsistencies, the art just wasn’t my style.  I prefer cleaner, prettier lines, and Abadzis’ art is sketchier.  He uses facial lines almost excessively, and they make the characters look downright evil sometimes (they’re not).  This aspect is simply a matter of taste, though.

I feel like Laika might have a hard time finding its audience.  There’s a cute dog on the front cover, which means it should appeal to young kids, but the reader really needs some background knowledge of the space race and the Cold War to fully understand what’s going on.  Then again, this is a story that can function on two levels and thus might appeal to both the younger and older set: the younger kids may only follow the story about the dog going into space (which may very well be enough for them), while the older kids and adults should understand both the story and its context.  Still, I’d recommend Laika most for those older kids since the book opens with Korolev leaving the gulag and takes a bit to get to the actual dog.
In an interview with Abadzis on Amazon, Abadzis says he deliberately tried to avoid making the book overly sentimental, which he accomplishes by not anthropomorphizing Laika.  It’s a good decision, but Abadzis’ feelings on the topic still come across pretty loud and clear.  After all, he closes the book with the following quotation from Oleg Gazenko, a scientist who worked on the project and one of the main characters in the story (and I also feel it’s the best way to close my review):
“Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us.  We treat them like babies who cannot speak.  The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it.  We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.”

Lost and Found by Shaun Tan

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Lost and Found by Shaun Tan is a book to be pored over again and again.  Although it was just published in 2011, the book actually consists of three stories written and illustrated by Tan in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Though fairly different in subject matter, they all touch upon the theme reflected in the title.
The first story, The Red Tree, centers upon a young girl who is having a bad day and the marvelous thing she finds at its end.
In the second story, The Lost Thing, a boy finds a strange lost thing and tries to find it a home, which is more difficult than it seems.
Tan concludes the book with a story written by John Marsden called The Rabbits.  This one is perhaps the easiest to interpret – a description of what is lost when colonists displace the native people on the land they conquer – and also the darkest.
For those less careful or more inquisitive readers, Tan includes an author’s note at the back where he elaborates upon the themes discussed within the three stories.  This addendum serves to give meaning to the stories in case the reader missed it, but also may prevent the reader from interpreting the stories for herself.  (I say this from experience, since I got something slightly different from one of the stories and had to re-think it when I read the explanation.)
The words Tan and Marsden have selected are nice, but it’s the illustrations that make this book a standout (not surprisingly).  Tan’s illustrations are so wonderfully unique and immediately recognizable as his style.  Sometimes I was reminded of pieces I had seen by Bosch and Dali – Tan’s got a great sense of the weird and pays attention to every little detail on every single spread – but his art is also unlike anything else.  The words themselves contribute to the illustrations.  Sometimes they’re handwritten, sometimes they’re “pasted” onto the page like a collage, sometimes they dance around or fall down the page.  The colors are rich and evoke just the right mood for each story.  It’s difficult for me to describe just what the art is like, since I am by no means an art aficionado, so I’ve given a couple examples here.  
I think kids would definitely be enthralled by Tan’s art.  There’s so much detail and a reader could spend a long time just studying the pages to ensure every little thing has been spotted.  The themes are pretty heavy, though, and full understanding comes with a bit more age, particularly when you consider the meaning is given with so few words.  There’s lots of room for interpretation.

Castle Waiting by Linda Medley

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I first read Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting graphic novel as part of an assignment in library school.  It was the very first graphic novel/comic I had read in years (the last one before that was probably an issue of Casper when I wasn’t even double digits).  I wasn’t averse to reading graphic novels, and I had long embraced the notion of having them in public libraries as practical and necessary, I just hadn’t ever bothered to go find one I thought I would like.
I’m glad I chose Castle Waiting as my gateway drug.  It has a lot of elements I really enjoy in a novel: fairy tales reworked in new and interesting ways, a strong female protagonist, humor, feminist themes, and some nice surprises in the plot.  I revisited the book this week and was pleased to discover that I enjoyed it just as much the second time around.
Castle Waiting opens with what seems to be a fairly straightforward re-telling of Rapunzel.  Near the end, it morphs into something different (there’s a particularly funny set of wordless panels at this point), and we see that it’s the origin story for the place known as “Castle Waiting,” which has become a refuge for the weary and the imperiled.  As one of the characters tells our protagonist later on, the castle provides sanctuary for those who need to live in safety or die in safety.  When you consider the fact that the setting is a fairy tale world, it becomes easy to see how this story is a feminist one.
After the origin story, we’re introduced to our protagonist, lovely young Jain, who’s pregnant and on the run from her husband (not necessarily the father of her child).  She’s been told by her own father about Castle Waiting and its sanctuary, so she makes her way there.  Once there, she’s welcomed by its inhabitants, a diverse array of characters which Medley has plundered from the pages of nursery rhymes, legends, and fairy tales.
The second half of the book involves a group of bearded nuns.  That’s awesome enough in itself.  I don’t think this story is as strong as the one featuring Jain, but it’s amusing and interesting nonetheless.
The emphasis in Castle Waiting is not on sword and sorcery, and there’s not a great deal of action.  Instead, Medley focuses completely on the characters, giving us vignettes without major climaxes that allow us to really get to know everyone.  By the end of the book, they’ve become friends, and we wish we could visit for a weekend.  There’s nothing pulse-pounding about this comic, and sometimes that’s exactly what people need.
All of the female characters (and the male ones) are independent and interesting.  They’ve all got their own back stories and their own little quirks.  A few of the characters are particularly funny, cracking jokes and seeing humor in everyday activities.  While the characters’ lives weren’t necessarily rosy, they’ve all found a home at Castle Waiting, and the tone of the book reflects that sense of community.         
Medley’s art is all black and white, which I normally avoid (I prefer full-color), but it works here.  Her linework is very detailed and helps give the story its sense of fun.  The humor in the story comes not only from the dialogue between the characters, but in the reactions seen in facial expressions and body language.
Castle Waiting is basically a fairy tale (or rather, a series of fairy tale-esque stories) told with a feminist bent.  It has similarities with Bill Willingham’s Fables in that they both re-work traditional stories for a new audience and both center around a community of diverse characters who have found sanctuary with each other, but Castle Waiting is much different in tone.  Whereas Fables is most definitely for an adult or mature teen audience (lots of violence and sex), Castle Waiting is more child-friendly.  Its tone is a bit gentler and it doesn’t have any of the content parents tend to object to: bad language, nudity, violence.  That said, I think Castle Waiting is best appreciated by older teens and adults due to its themes, which younger readers may miss or simply not find interesting.
I first read Castle Waiting in individual volumes, but I got my hands on the compilation for the re-read (so the origin story, Jain’s story, and the bearded nuns story were all together).  Wow this book is beautiful. The spine has a cloth-type covering and it comes with a built-in ribbon bookmark.  It’s kind of ridiculous how much I love these ribbon bookmarks.  The cover, the only part of the book in color, shows the characters the reader meets within the book’s pages, and even the horse’s personality is evident.
This review covers only Castle Waiting Volume I, but Volume II is out now, and it’s sitting on my table ready to be read.  I’m definitely looking forward to it.