A teenager rewrites her story in this enchanting yarn.
In Willis and Andelfinger’s graphic novel, a high schooler finds herself thrown inside her own fiction.
Brie Page just wants to get through high school being as invisible as possible so she can go home and write her stories, or listen to her podcast about writing, or think about writing. When her mother forces her out of the house to do “normal teen stuff,” Brie finds herself in front of a bookstore she’s never seen before. The very strange store owner’s name is Ambrose. When Brie confesses her teenage woes, Ambrose offers to let her buy a special pen that will supposedly help Brie in crafting her tales and escaping the real world. After fighting with her former friend Viv on the way home, Brie sits down with her new pen and starts to write three different stories, with hours passing in the blink of an eye. The next morning, Brie opens her locker at school to find a portal inside. Entering it takes her to another world with talking horses and a sorceress—and Brie herself is the queen. Knowing this is one of her yarns, Brie follows the plot, but it doesn’t quite go as she wrote it (“This was supposed to be the end of the story…and yet I’m still here!”). Hopping from one of her texts to the next, Brie starts to realize something is going on and changes her writing, pulling her family and friends into the madness. In this cleverly constructed graphic novel, Taylor and Marchbank use mostly black-and-white illustrations, switching to bright colors when Brie hops into her stories. With inspirational themes of standing up for yourself against bullies, taking charge of your own narrative, and finally finding a way to talk to your crush, this engaging story has something for everyone.
A teenager rewrites her story in this enchanting yarn.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781952303579
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Maverick
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.
Continuing his apparent mission to refract the whole of English culture and history through his personal lens, Ackroyd (Thames: The Biography, 2008, etc.) offers an all-prose rendering of Chaucer’s mixed-media masterpiece.
While Burton Raffel’s modern English version of The Canterbury Tales (2008) was unabridged, Ackroyd omits both “The Tale of Melibee” and “The Parson’s Tale” on the undoubtedly correct assumption that these “standard narratives of pious exposition” hold little interest for contemporary readers. Dialing down the piety, the author dials up the raunch, freely tossing about the F-bomb and Anglo-Saxon words for various body parts that Chaucer prudently described in Latin. Since “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale,” for example, are both decidedly earthy in Middle English, the interpolated obscenities seem unnecessary as well as jarringly anachronistic. And it’s anyone’s guess why Ackroyd feels obliged redundantly to include the original titles (“Here bigynneth the Squieres Tales,” etc.) directly underneath the new ones (“The Squires Tale,” etc.); these one-line blasts of antique spelling and diction remind us what we’re missing without adding anything in the way of comprehension. The author’s other peculiar choice is to occasionally interject first-person comments by the narrator where none exist in the original, such as, “He asked me about myself then—where I had come from, where I had been—but I quickly turned the conversation to another course.” There seems to be no reason for these arbitrary elaborations, which muffle the impact of those rare times in the original when Chaucer directly addresses the reader. Such quibbles would perhaps be unfair if Ackroyd were retelling some obscure gem of Old English, but they loom larger with Chaucer because there are many modern versions of The Canterbury Tales. Raffel’s rendering captured a lot more of the poetry, while doing as good a job as Ackroyd with the vigorous prose.
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02122-2
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
PERSPECTIVES
Utterly charming and swoonworthy.
Two beloved characters from artist Eunnie’s Instagram feed get a full-length graphic novel treatment.
Readers meet college student Momo just as she’s about to encounter PG for the first time. It’s not an ideal meet-cute, however. Momo is doing her friend Kayla a favor by dropping off some class notes at Kayla’s friend Lea’s dorm room. When scantily clad PG answers the door, Momo is immediately flustered by how gorgeous she is—but she learns that PG has a reputation for seducing women and avoiding serious commitments, the exact opposite of Momo, who’s never dated anyone. Still, after witnessing a fraught situation at a nightclub, Momo overcomes her shyness to check on PG. They have an open conversation and a romantic dance. Running into each other around town turns into texting, which turns into mutual big feelings. Readers will fall in love with both young women as they fall in love with each other. Their conflicts give them depth and feel believable for their stage of life, their different but equally relatable backstories are fleshed out, and the satisfying resolution inspires happiness. Well-developed friendships play smaller but still important roles. The appealing artwork features clean, pastel-tinted backgrounds and doe-eyed characters with expressive faces. Momo has dark brown skin and wavy brown hair; PG is Vietnamese American.
Utterly charming and swoonworthy. (Graphic romance. 14-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780593403228
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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