Parenthetical

My badass colleague Arianna and her friend Anna, the Wandering Librarians, wandered to the American Library Association conference in New Orleans this week to present on great graphic novels for girls. I hear everything went well; yay! (Insert ALA-attendee envy here. But I’m sitting in my house without A/C and am not a sweaty puddle?) [...]

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This autobio-graphic novel chronicles the toothy trials of Raina’s adolescence, during which she basically had her entire mouth reconstructed. I loved it! She gets middle school girl relationships perfectly, the way a group of friends chooses one to pick on. They don’t even know they’re doing it, necessarily, but enough “just kidding!”s really hurt. Not [...]

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…If you are Rapunzel’s Revenge (Graphic Novel: Elementary/Middle Grade) or Emiko Superstar (GN: Young Adult), that is! I’m super-excited about both of these: they were two of my personal favorites. (I even gave Rapunzel’s Revenge to my friend Kate Diamond as part of her wedding present, a bad-ass redhead for a bad-ass redhead.) Congratulations to [...]

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After a motorcycle accident that puts a girl he barely even knows in a wheelchair, Tomomi Nomiya gets kicked out of school — which means he can’t play basketball anymore. His old teammates treat him like dirt. One day he comes to the gym to practice by himself, and meets Kiyoharu Togawa. Togawa lost a [...]

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Chiggers are a bug that get under your skin and itch; let’s get that out of the way right off the bat. In this book, they’re the plot device that gets one girl out of Abby’s cabin at camp, and a new girl, Shasta, in. Shasta claims to have been struck by lightning, to have [...]

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(Janes in Love is the nominated book, but I went back and read The Plain Janes first, so I’ll review them together. It’s not necessary background, but it certainly helped.) PJ opens with a terrorist bomb going off in Metro City, killing a number of people, and injuring more — including Jane. She’s fine, but [...]

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Emi was always kind of a geek by default, but this summer her geeky friends have headed off to a “young executives retreat.” Emi decides that’s not her scene, so she’s stuck at home in the Toronto ‘burbs, baby-sitting for her American neighbors, the Cutheberts. (The dad is big and blond; his grin is too [...]

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The Arrival, Shaun Tan: I almost never say this, but you must all go find this book and “read” it now. (Is it reading if there are no words? Parse it? Consume it? Anyway…) My friend Alison of the Wellesley Booksmith showed this off at a teachers-and-librarians event last fall, and I’ve been longing to [...]

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