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Cybils 2016 – Elementary & Middle Grade Graphic Novels

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cybils mg

Lowriders to the Center of the Earth by Cathy Camper and Raul the Third

This is such a great example of a Cybils book.  An impala (Lupe Impala), a mosquito (Elirio Malaria), and an octopus (El Chavo Octopus) are three friends who own a garage together. When their pet cat goes missing, they climb into their lowrider and set out to rescue him. What follows is a fast-paced adventure to the center of the Earth, involving Aztec gods, La Llorona, and even a bit of lucha libre. Camper weaves Mexican and Latin American culture seamlessly into the storyline, and her characters pepper their language with Spanish words and phrases (translated for non-Spanish speakers in footnotes at the bottom of each page). The story is rife with wordplay and puns, including some that take advantage of both languages at once. Raul the Third’s pen and ink art is unique and a delight to look at – I can picture kids spending long moments poring over the frequent double-page spreads, picking out every last detail.

The Wolves of Currumpaw by William Grill

This is a graphic adaptation of a story originally published in 1898 by Ernest Thompson Seton (who helped found the Boy Scouts of America), about a wolf named Lobo and various attempts to trap or kill it. I’m not sure how much the text itself was modified by Grill, but it still feels very old-fashioned in its syntax and word choice. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it did make it a bit of a dry read for me. The art, on the other hand, is phenomenal. I would describe this as a cross between a standard picture book and a graphic novel, because there are no panels, really, though the art is mostly sequential and necessary to the story, as opposed to being merely illustrative. It looks like it was done in colored pencil, a deviation from what most people think of when they picture a comic book. While I didn’t love the text, the art makes this a treasure of a book. In fact, the whole package is gorgeous and a stellar example of bookmaking – thick, somewhat rough pages, a textured cover, oversized. This kind of bookmaking is a hallmark of Flying Eye books and I always look forward to what they publish for this very reason.

Mighty Jack by Ben Hatke

I’m a big fan of Hatke’s work. His stories are so kid-friendly, and he’s a major double threat: great writing, great art. Zita the Spacegirl is one of my favorite graphic novel series and I recommend it all the time. Mighty Jack is his re-telling of Jack and the Beanstalk, and it’s a solid start. Jack’s family consists of his sister Maddy, who has autism and doesn’t speak, and his mom, who is taking a second job over the summer to help make ends meet. The setting appears to be pretty rural and Jack’s family also appears to be pretty poor, both elements you don’t see very explicitly in much kidlit. At the flea market one day, Jack is persuaded to hand over the keys to his mom’s car in exchange for some seeds…by Maddy, who speaks for the first time in Jack’s experience. It’s astonishing enough that Jack makes the trade, though of course he gets in hot water for it (luckily, the car is recovered). But when the seeds are planted, the story deviates from its source material pretty significantly. All sorts of different things grow, not just a beanstalk, and there aren’t really giants to speak of. Plus there’s a neighbor girl and some swordplay and possibly a dragon…it’s imaginative and fun and sensitive to its characters. It ends a bit abruptly and feels very much like a first installment, but I look forward to reading the next.

The Nameless City by Faith Erin Hicks

Faith Erin Hicks is another graphic novel creator I consider a double threat. I liked both Brain Camp and Friends With Boys (the latter was a 2012 Cybils winner I helped choose as a round 2 judge). I thought the concept of The Nameless City was really intriguing – a fictional city reminiscent of feudal China that is conquered every 20 years or so by a different group of people due to its strategic location. The two main characters each belong to a separate group – one a member of the conquering, the other a member of the conquered. The characters feel real and the art is expressive and lovely, as is always the case with Hicks’ work. That said, Angie Manfredi brought up some thoughtful points about the problematic aspects of the book’s premise and execution, thoughts echoed by another of our round 2 judges. These points are worth considering as we (particularly white and non-Asian) readers absorb stories like these, which draw inspiration from cultures that are not our own.

Compass South by Hope Larson and Rebecca Mock

I really enjoyed this story of a pair of identical twins whose adoptive father has gone missing (presumed dead) and decide to impersonate another man’s missing twin sons, who also happen to have red hair, in order to benefit from his wealth. There are a couple of problems: they’re in New York and the man is in San Francisco, and these twins are a girl and a boy named Cleo and Alex. This is a historical adventure set in the 1860s that involves stowing away on a ship, gangs of street kids, mysterious artifacts, another pair of twins pulling the same con, reluctant cross-dressing, and hints of lost pirate treasure. There’s also a significant amount of emotional heft to the really fun storyline: the relationship between Cleo and Alex is fraught but loving, and their friendship with the other set of twins they meet – who have different motivations for their con entirely – adds another layer. Mock’s art is clean, colorful, and expressive. I’ll definitely be reading the sequel.

Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O’Neill

I love this book to pieces. It’s more on the elementary side than the middle grade side – a bit shorter, a bit more simplistic than the others on the shortlist. It’s a sort of retelling of Rapunzel, but this time it’s a headstrong black princess, Amira, who rescues a white princess, Sadie, in the tower. They then go on a series of fun, small adventures, culminating in a bigger adventure where they confront the person who put Sadie in the tower in the first place. And yes, they fall in love, and there’s a sweet lesbian wedding in the epilogue, where the two girls are now adults and have accomplished much in their lives – and have come back to each other to live happily ever after. The mini adventures are cute and funny, subverting gender roles along the way (including the proscribed role of men in traditional fairy tales), and the ending is a joy and a gift. (One note: Sadie is frequently described as fat, and refers to herself this way too, but another judge pointed out the art doesn’t do a great job of depicting her this way, which is true. So, there’s definitely a body positivity message, but whether it’s executed successfully or not is up for debate.)

Bera the One-Headed Troll by Eric Orchard

Bera finds a human baby one day and decides to save its life, when all the other creatures in the land of trolls would like it dead, or to use it for their own ends. In her quest to return it to its parents in the land of humans, she encounters all manner of creatures who pose a threat to either Bera or the baby – or both. This is a cute, imaginative story, but ultimately I found it mostly forgettable. That is partly due to the art, which is mostly browns and grays (I wish it had all been colored like the cover). It fits the mood of the story but also feels a bit repetitive. Worth a read, but not my favorite.

For reviews of titles on the Young Adult shortlist, see this post.

Cybils 2016 – Young Adult Graphic Novels

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In case you missed it, the winners of the 2016 Cybils were announced on February 14! I loved both of our winners selected for the Graphic Novels categories this year: Lowriders to the Center of the Earth by Cathy Camper and Raul the Third (Elementary/Middle Grade) and March: Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell (Young Adult). Since I was a Round 2 judge, I couldn’t discuss my thoughts on each finalist as I read them – but now that the winners have been revealed, I’m free to do so. This week, I’ll talk about the Young Adult shortlist and next week, the Elementary/Middle Grade one.

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Dare to Disappoint: Growing Up in Turkey by Ozge Samanci

Samanci’s graphic memoir tells of her childhood in Turkey in the 80s and 90s, a time of great political strife in the country. It’s a fascinating backdrop for Samanci’s own coming of age. She struggles to fit in, to please her parents, to excel in school, to understand her country’s shifting politics, and pursue her dreams – if she can figure out what those are. Teen readers will be interested by the history of Turkey during this time period – a place not much studied in school, but in the news here more recently because of the attempted coup last year – as well as drawn to Samanci’s universal struggles to become an adult and discover who she’s meant to be. Samanci’s art is unique, a hodge podge of cartoonish figures with collage elements that complements much of the humor in the story and provides a foil for the infrequent violence depicted.

Faith Volume 1: Hollywood and Vine by Jody Houser, Francis Portela, and Marguerite Sauvage

Faith is a psiot, which means she has superpowers – ones that enable her to fly and put up a protective shield. She works as a staff writer for a Buzzfeed-type website during the day, in a red wig, and fights off bad guys in her spare time as white-haired Zephyr. The baddies in this volume are aliens with world domination on their minds. It’s not a terribly unique storyline, but Faith is such a great character, I didn’t mind. She’s into lots of different fandoms, which means she drops fun one-liners all the time that readers who love nerd pop culture will love picking up on. She’s one of the few fat superheroes out there, and her body size is never an issue in her heroics – though it’s not a non-issue in the book as a whole. This is a worthy start to a well-written, appealing series that I look forward to reading more of.

Lucky Penny by Ananth Hirsh and Yuko Ota

I thought this was…fine. It’s about a young adult in the more traditional sense of the phrase – it seems like Penny is in her early 20s. She’s kind of terrible at being an adult. She can’t afford rent so she moves into a friend’s storage unit instead. She finds a job at a laundromat where her boss is a twelve year old kid. She’s awful at dating, but that’s okay, because the guy she finds is pretty awful at it too. Penny’s antics are funny for a while, but I soon got annoyed with her. And her life made me feel kind of sad. Perhaps that makes me old.

March: Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

So much has been said about this book already, I won’t make my own summary terribly long. This book really is as good as everyone says it is. It’s timely, engrossing, important, and moving, and the art is a terrific complement. I learned so much but never felt like I was reading a textbook or being lectured. Highly deserving of all its accolades.

Monstress Volume 1: Awakening by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Monstress is a bit tricky to sum up in a pithy one-or-two-sentence synopsis. It’s about a war between two different species (human and arcanic), dark magic, revenge, and a teenage girl with strange powers she doesn’t want or understand. The world-building is complex (matriarchal, multiple different cultures with long histories) and the story isn’t immediately understandable – but stick with it, and you’ll be rewarded. Liu’s storytelling abilities are on full display here, and I loved how creative and intricate her creation is. Takeda’s art is a perfect match – beautiful and dark, with a slight anime influence. All that said…this is not a book for teenagers, despite the age of the protagonist. I don’t doubt many teenagers could handle it, but Image rates it M for mature and it more than earns that designation. The violence is ever-present, bloody, and gory. Children are murdered, bodies are dismembered, and people are sucked of their life essence – and we’re shown the result. There’s occasional nudity and frequent f-bombs as well, but it’s the explicit violence and dark themes that really put this out of the YA range. It’s beyond what I comfortably read as an adult, and I do read adult comics pretty regularly. This is good…but I wouldn’t recommend it to a teenager unless I knew that teen pretty well.

Ms. Marvel Volume 5: Super Famous by G. Willow Wilson, Takeshi Miyazawa, Adriean Alphona, and Nico Leon

I really enjoyed the first volume of Ms. Marvel that I read when it first debuted a few years ago, but I hadn’t kept up with it. No matter – this volume functions well as a starting place for new readers. Kamala Khan is officially an Avenger, which she has to juggle alongside everything else in her life: school, her brother’s upcoming marriage, keeping up her friendships…it’s all a bit much. Plus there’s a new baddie in town in the form of a real estate development company that’s using Ms. Marvel’s image without her permission to push their product! This volume tackles a lot that is relevant to teens’ lives (religion, an overabundance of schoolwork, family and friend obligations) plus some important social issues teens often care about, like gentrification and fat acceptance. Text and art work in tandem to tell a gripping story, and Wilson really has a way with her characters. Even though it had been years since I last read about Kamala, I fell in love with her and her friends all over again instantly.

Trashed by Derf Backderf

Backderf tells a hybrid fiction/nonfiction story about garbage collectors, based on a year in his own life that he spent as one. The nonfiction aspect is definitely stronger than the fiction – Backderf gives his readers lots of great information on how much humans throw away, what kinds of things we throw away, what percentage gets recycled, and where it all ends up. The two primary facts that have stuck with me are 1. landfills weren’t regulated much at all until recently (and even now not so much); and 2. Even though we recycle a greater percentage of our waste now than ever before, we also send more by volume to the landfill than ever before, simply because we generate so much waste. This book will make you want to double down on recycling and discarding less in general. The story itself was so-so for me. Characters didn’t have much personality, there was no real plot (no building action, climax, or resolution), and the main character, who was supposed to be in his late teens or early 20s, looked about 45.

Cybils 2016

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In case you missed it, the judges for the 2016 Cybils awards were announced on the 21st, and I’m thrilled to be a Round 2 judge of the Graphic Novels category this year. (Kelly is back on Cybils, too, as a Round 1 panelist for Middle Grade and YA Nonfiction!) After the past two years of heavy reading on Round 1 of YA Speculative Fiction, it will be nice to take it a bit easier this year on Round 2. It also means I get to help select two winners, one from Elementary/Middle Grade and the other from Young Adult.

As I do every year, I’ve created a list of potential nominees for my category. Nominations run from Saturday, October 1 through Saturday, October 15, and I’d love to see all the titles on this list get some consideration from Round 1. Here are the official rules for nominations, but the gist is this: it has to be a graphic novel (obviously), been published between October 16, 2015 and October 15, 2016, and you can only nominate one title per category.

I confess that manga is a weakness of mine, but as part of my day job, I have been reading a bit more of it, so if you have some awesome manga titles to nominate, please do so.

Young Adult

Elementary/Middle Grade

Princeless: Raven the Pirate Princess Book 1: Captain Raven and the All-Girl Pirate Crew by Jeremy Whitley, Ted Brandt, and Rosy Higgins

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raven the pirate princess

I wrote about how much I loved Princeless before. I didn’t think it would be possible to love its spin-off more, but I think I do. Raven the Pirate Princess follows Raven, a pirate princess who was due to inherit her father’s ship – until her brothers betrayed her, locking her in a tower to be “rescued.” The girls in Princeless don’t wait around for a rescuer, though, and when Raven escapes, she sets about hiring her own pirate crew to get revenge. This first volume chronicles her attempts to do this, and it’s funny and exciting and entertaining the whole way through.

The cast is diverse (at most, three out of the five main crew are white, with varying body types and sexual orientations, and Raven herself is Asian) and the social commentary is pure genius. I literally laughed out loud during the interview process in the bar, where man after man walks up to Raven, hoping to be hired with pitches like “I’ve always been really into Eastern Pirate culture” and “I always thought it would be cool to work for a female captain…you know, she could be all stern but sexy” and “You’re probably not even a real pirate girl. I bet you don’t even know what Captain Fraction’s name was before he changed it!” And more. It’s like a bingo card of every tired, offensive, “innocuous” thing ever said to nerd girls, Asian girls, powerful girls…girls in general. Oh god, I love this whole scene so much, I want to hug it. Whitley manages to give each of the five main characters distinct personalities in a limited number of pages, and the art by Brandt and Higgins is expressive and builds these characters just as much as the writing does. Flashbacks are at times a little hard to pick up on right away – I didn’t notice anything artistically that marked a flashback, and there are no dates or “three years earlier” or anything like that. Still, context eventually got me there. For well-read comics fans, there are a few cameos, too, which are unnecessary to understand the story, but are nice little Easter eggs for those who notice them.

I’d say this book is for an audience a bit older than that of Princeless proper. I opted to place it in our teen section in the library, whereas Princeless is in our juvenile section. There’s nothing hugely objectionable, but a lot of the jokes would go over the heads of tweens and younger kids, and they’d likely not understand much of anything that happens in the bar scene, which takes up a big chunk of the book. There’s a bit more violence, too, and the characters are all 16 and up. Highly recommended.

Dare to Disappoint by Ozge Samanci

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We are taking part in the blog tour for Ozge Samanci’s Dare to Disappoint today. You can and should check out the entire schedule for the tour here and visit those sites for even more peeks into the book and process behind it (it’s neat!).

 

DareToDisappoint
I know very, very little about Turkey. The only history I know is what I learned in my Western Civilization course freshman year of high school and a little bit from European History my senior year. Even in those cases, the bulk of what’s taught is very historical — centuries past — with little or no exploration of more contemporary events.

Ozge Samanci’s Dare to Disappoint was a really worthwhile read for me, since it was and is a reference point for this particular area of history now. This personal memoir looks at what life was like growing up in a country that itself was learning to grow up and find an identity.

Samanci is a second child in a family where her older sister excelled. This was the case in school and in other venues, and her parents were pleased with her. Ozge, on the other hand, was far less interested in her studies. Sure, she completed them — this is a key element of the story, as the Turkish education system is very different than the US system — but she didn’t excel nor quite have the passion for it in the same way her sister did.

The bulk of this story centers around Ozge coming to terms with what it is she wants to be doing with her life. Does she want to become an explorer? An actress? Go on to a good college to make her parents happy at the expense of her own happiness? Can she work to make both her dreams in theater and her parents dreams for her education happen simultaneously? These questions frame the entirety of the story in a way that any reader, no matter where they live, wrestles with. But what makes this stand out beyond that is the historical context. We learn along the way the values and systems that exist in Turkey and how they shift over the course of Ozge’s childhood and adolescence. Where once few choices existed, the growth in consumerism and imports meant that choices one had in every arena from eating to clothing to one’s future shifts and adjusts. It’s in those cultural changes that Ozge further marinates on the questions of what to make of her own life.

This should easily explain the book’s title Dare to Disappoint.

What’s most standout in this particular graphic novel, though, is the art. Samanci utilizes mixed materials to create her story. While the bulk of art is what you’d expect in terms of drawings, there are a lot of unexpected surprises that go in to creating an image:

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On the bottom right-hand page, you can see how Samanci weaves polished rocks into the art. There are other examples of this throughout, including found art collages, buttons, and even some unexpected surprises (which you’ll see further down this post!). This design is really friendly and appealing, which makes it a nice contrast to some of the heavy political elements in the text itself. Which isn’t to say those parts are hard to read or unnecessary; instead, what Samanci is able to do is balance those topics with her own personal, singular, teen experience. It’s relatable, rather than above her head — except when it is!

My biggest criticism, though, is that a lot of Ozge’s own experiences post-realization of what it was she wanted to do with her life is given short shrift in the end. It wraps up almost too quickly. I found myself wanting much more than I got, in particular because I saw so much of her growing up process along the way. There were pages and chapters dedicated to her education and her experimentation, but her wake up call that she wanted to be an artist and draw comes very late in the story and the journey through that realization — rather than the journey to that realization — isn’t here. I suspect this might be so there’s room for a second memoir that goes through that journey, but I wouldn’t have minded another chapter here, just to give me more of a taste for how this happened.

Readers who love graphic memoirs will want to pick Dare to Disappoint up. It’s not necessarily a straight read alike to Persepolis, as the angle on this particular book is much more about the journey to finding one’s passion in life, but readers who want to be better global citizens or read stories about real people in other parts of the world will find those elements interesting to think about in comparison. Readers who are fascinated by the art here will want to spend time at the artist’s Tumblr, too, which showcases her unique style of mixed media. This book is perfectly fine for younger teen readers and has great crossover appeal to adults, too. The toughest elements for younger readers may be some of the political elements, but they’ll skip over them to follow Ozge’s personal story and lose nothing for it.

 

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One of the unique elements of Samanci’s style is she’s not only working in illustrations, but she also creates collages out of various items throughout the book. This adds a whole new layer to the story. Here, she’s sharing a little bit about an unusual — but brilliant — item that found its way into the finished edition of the book.

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Miniature Muffin Cup

There was an amazing store where I lived: Tom Thumb Hobby and Crafts. Unfortunately, they moved somewhere far. This store was full of paper, beads, miniature houses, model making materials, sewing and baking supplies, and many more. Tom Thumb was so mind opening for a comics artist like me who combines comics with collage. While wondering in the store I saw the miniature muffin cups. I thought, I can make skirts with these in my collages. As if my editor Margaret Ferguson read my mind, a couple days after I bought the muffin cups she suggested me to put a skirt on the main character in one of the frames. My miniature muffin cups took its place in Dare to Disappoint.