Little Girls by Nicholas Aflleje and Sarah DeLaine

I mentioned looking forward to this one after picking it up at TLA, but it was kind of a mess. The basic storyline is that there is a monster attacking a town in Ethiopia, killing people and animals. Two girls – one white and new to Ethiopia, one black and born there – decide to investigate it on their own. The synopsis promised some Ethiopian folklore, which manifests here in the monster called Kerit, but it was pretty difficult to decipher. I found it hard to follow the story, even on repeated reads. I’m still not entirely sure what happened, and even less sure about why, and it doesn’t seem intentional. It’s definitely not successful in delivering a traditional story (or really, a twist on a traditional story) to readers who are ignorant of it, but it doesn’t seem seem like it would be that interesting to readers who do know something about the monster already, either. This has the kernel of a good story, but the execution is a miss.

 

Fever Year: The Killer Flu of 1918 by Don Brown

Don Brown does a really good job of distilling complicated historical events into the graphic novel format. He includes first-person accounts, adding that level of detail that really personalizes something that may at first seem remote. He manages to keep the length in check, too, so the books never seem intimidating. I’m always impressed by how much information he packs into the slim volumes. His newest, Fever Year, is no different. While his book comes a year after the huge wave of books about the flu pandemic (including Albert Marrin’s excellent prose account Very, Very, Very Dreadful), it shouldn’t be overlooked – his signature artistic style adds a depth of emotion to the tragedy that is difficult to achieve in another non-graphic format. As usual, his facts are on point and he helps readers see how something like this – an event they may not have even heard about before – reverberates today.

 

Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden

This is Tillie Walden’s third graphic novel, but it’s the first one of hers I’ve read. Set in West Texas, it’s a story grounded in realism that slowly turns more and more fantasy as it goes on – much like a drive through the wide open spaces and mountains of West Texas itself. I have a soft spot for that part of the world, having driven through it alone a few times myself. It’s got a unique kind of beauty that I haven’t seen anywhere else, and it’s the perfect setting for Walden’s novel about two lost souls – a teenage girl running away from something terrible that happened at home, and a slightly older woman running from her own different demons. They fall in together for a while, eventually deciding to head to the (fictional) town of West to bring home a cat they rescued on the side of the road. But strange things start happening: the landscape seems to shift the closer they get, and dangerous people seem to be following them, looking for the cat. Walden’s art is great at showing the disruption of the landscape, which serves as a metaphor for the two young women’s respective traumas and how they’ve disrupted their lives. It’s an artistic and storytelling choice that feels perfect for West Texas. Walden treats her subjects with care. Her characters are prickly (understandably so), hurting, and in need of the friendship each can offer. The dash of magic is a great hook and deepens the story. This is an introspective novel for thoughtful teens. Plus, Walden gets bonus points for one of the two female leads being a car mechanic.