New graphic novels that will spark reflection about identity and belonging
Long DIstance by Whitney Gardner is a fast, fun read for middle-graders
Long Distance, written and illustrated by Whitney Gardner and published by Simon and Schuster, is a new middle-grade graphic novel about friendships new and old. Vega is NOT enjoying her summer vacation. When her dad decides to move from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington, she had to leave behind her best friend Halley. Vega was worried about making friends in Seattle, so her parents sent her to a summer camp designed for kids her age to make friends.
But camp isn’t exactly normal . . . which forces Vega to work with her bunkmates to figure out what’s going on.
Long Distance is a quick read with simple, minimal text and a fast-paced plot. As such, it’s accessible and addictive. The stunning illustrations, characterized by bright colours and expressive facial expressions, complement the lack of textual detail. Together, the words and pictures work in seamless combination to tell a compelling story about making friends in unexpected circumstances.
One small reservation concerns a plot twist near the end of Long Distance. I won’t spoil it, but some readers may feel that the book loses some of its grounded quality and clarity of message.
Despite this possibility, Long Distance is overwhelmingly a fun, wholesome read. I’m confident middle-graders will love its charming blend of intriguing plot, fantastic illustrations and dynamic characters.
Reviewed by Sayak S-G
Harriet Tubman Toward Freedom: high-stakes history, not dry biography
Listen up, lovers of graphic novels and important stories. The Center for Cartoon Studies has published a welcome new graphic novel by Whit Taylor and Kazimir Lee focused on famed American abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman. A diminutive woman, she is an outsized figure in the centuries-long struggle of Black people to achieve freedom. And the work’s title is well-chosen, as this is a story about the quest for liberation, not its full attainment.
There is heft to this hardcover edition. The Introduction is by Carole Boston Weatherford, writer of acclaimed children’s literature, including Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led her People to Freedom (2005). The Introduction provides a clear chronological biography within which the graphic novel’s tale can be fit. At the back of the volume is a series of “Panel discussions” that, like footnotes, dive deeper into the biographical backstory and historical context.
The graphic novel opens in 1850. Having fled slavery in the south, Harriet is employed doing “laundry and house tending” in Philadelphia. “How can you really know what freedom like till it yours?” is Harriet’s question. Harriet Tubman Toward Freedom shows us first how she answers this question for herself, and then the work comes full circle when another escaped slave poses the same question at the end.
As the story opens, Harriet is in conversation with William Still, a Philadelphia leader of the Underground Railroad. Still wants to record her story and the story of all escaped slaves. Her price? She wants to learn everything about the Underground Railroad. During their exchange, Harriet conjures vividly rendered scenes from her youth. Unable to make sense of being the property of others, she was banished to the fields for being too difficult. Her imagination fired when she first heard about an “Underground Railroad.” She acquired the nickname “Moses” for her acumen and uncompromising skill in “conducting” slaves to freedom in the north. She felt she had a God-given mission – and she experiences visions that seem to prove it.
But this beginning . . . is misdirection. Instead of a continued trail of biographical tidbits, the reader is about to be plunged into a gripping, real-life adventure story. The final three quarters of the graphic novel are the harrowing tale of one of her many journeys “toward freedom”: her return trip to the southern US to rescue her brothers and guide them to Canada on the Underground Railroad. Here, the quickly sketched biographical details come alive: Harriet’s faith in God; the clever strategems of the fleeing slaves; their terrible peril, and that of the network of good people – black and white – who aid them. We experience the harrowing and heart-breaking stories of the fleeing; the terrible price of loved ones left behind; and vivid portraits and unique motivations of the many individuals who aid them on their arduous journey.
Kazimir Lee’s illustrations are rough-hewn, unglamorous and moving. These angular, cartoony illustrations ooze with intense, authentic vigour that is amplified by the haunting, sepia-treated color palette that travels gradations from pale blue to pale orange and back . . . with nary a bright colour to be seen.
“What can you do but move forward?” Harriet asks. This ethos sees her never dwell too deeply on the outrages, but point herself and those she is conducting towards freedom. The irony, of course, is that Harriet Tubman: Toward Freedom is a powerful argument for readers young and old to look back on our history. To learn. To gather insight and strength. So we can move forward with purpose.
Reviewed by Scott Sneddon
Tori Sharp’s Just Pretend: the rare graphic novel that reads like a novel
I’ve read a lot of graphic novels, but Tori Sharp’s debut work Just Pretend (published by Little, Brown) is one of the few that truly merit the “novel” moniker.
Most GNs feel a little slight: in their page count, in the scope of the story, in the complexity of the situations. Not Just Pretend. An autobiographical reminiscence, it immerses the reader and oscillates back and forth between the real and imagined lives of teenaged Tori. Tori’s home life is a challenge: her parents are divorced, and she travels from one strained home to the other. She is by turns an afterthought, a mocked bystander or a forced tagalong with her brother and sister. And school is a shifting landscape of evolving, uncertain – and maybe permanently ending – relationships.
The narrative is disorienting at first – it relentlessly unspools a dizzying flow of new family and school situations that unleash big, big, BIG emotions. The story is almost exhaustingly episodic – and this is what makes it novelistic. I suspect young readers will fall headfirst into these deep slices of exterior and interior life. Especially wonderful are reminiscences where young Tori pulls friends into fantasy play, and the tantalizing, fully visualized deep dives into a fantasy tale that Tori is writing. The story’s stars are Talia, the fairy with the crystal of heart, and Penny, the human girl with the crystal of body. These denizens of fantasy are analogues for Tori and her best friend Taylor, and their struggles against the forces of evil – and a world that is changing their relationship – are clear analogies for what is playing out in the real world.
This is a book – a novel – about the transitions and changes young people find themselves experiencing: how we cope with them, how we grow, and how sometimes things change suddenly, almost by themselves . . . and how other times, we need to accept the pain of surrendering or saying goodbye to them.
Sharp’s flowing illustrations are energetic, bright and colorful, and affectingly gawky and exaggerated. In short, the graphic part delights. At the same time, like all the best novels, Just Pretend works on more than one level. A young reader could disappear for hours inside this engrossing, breathless soap opera as it recounts a year in the life of a young girl. And Tori’s fantasy story provides a tantalizing deeper level of meaning. It’s a metaphor that merits examination because Just Pretend ends not in the real world, but the fantasy world. “Just what do you think that ending means?” would be a great discussion to send a young reader back into the book to plumb its depths.
If you’re looking for a relatable, modern and imagination-affirming work of substance – a true graphic novel – for a young person in your life, take the advice of the title . . . Just Pretend.
Reviewed by Scott Sneddon
Thomas King’s Borders: a masterpiece of graphic novel minimalism that belongs in classrooms and family libraries
Prepare to be wowed by the new graphic novel edition of Thomas King’s iconic story Borders featuring illustrations by Métis artist Natasha Donovan, published by HarperCollins Canada. This powerful, resonant story about identity – individual, familial, cultural and national – centers on an unnamed Indigenous boy and his mother who live on a Blackfoot reserve that straddles the US and Canadian borders.
The story opens with the boy recalling the prior departure of his Sister Laetitia to Salt Lake City. In his memory, she announces that she can go because “Dad’s American, so I can come and go as I please.” The difficult emotions of that moment – for her, for her mother who pretends not to care, for the unnamed boy – contrast her mother’s later pride in Laetitia’s determination to go where she wants to make the life she wants. The boy recalls specific physical details at the store on the Canadian side – the coffee, the Orange Crush, the conversation about these things – while the pictures unspool a subtext of unspoken love and pain.
Some time later, worn down or perhaps inspired by a succession of postcard invitations from Laetitia, the mother decides to visit her daughter in Salt Lake City. The central conflict arrives when she and her son attempt to cross the US border. Her straightforward, unwavering answer to the border agents’ standard first question – no matter how many ways it is asked – turns the crossing into a pinballing odyssey back and forth in the space between Coutts, Canada and Sweetgrass, USA.
The volume of words per page is low – but don’t assume this is a quick read. The sparse dialogue is subtle and incisive. Each spoken word exchange reverberates with unspoken pain, limitation, belief or questions. Indeed, Borders is a true masterwork of minimalism: of showing, not telling, and impelling the reader to read. To think. To empathize. And to ask questions.
Donovan’s illustrations masterfully conjure a variety of places – “Canadian side”, “American side”, “Blackfoot nation”: widening skillfully to landscape vistas and contracting to buildings, quiet family moments, or tight, face-to-face exchanges with border guards.
Borders, we learn, are everywhere and nowhere. Sometimes the border is a liminal zone of transition – a place where national or family identity is defined or limited. But sometimes it’s an arbitrary, ephemeral waterline that evaporates when exposed to determination, grace and certainty about one’s identity.
Young readers will be filled with powerful questions about what’s really happening in Borders: what it means, why it matters, and what could be done about it. The scant language and deceptive simplicity of the artwork straddle depths of discussion that simply beg to be plumbed.
On September 30, Canada recognized our first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. Getting this version of Borders into classrooms and family libraries could be an engrossing entry point – for eager and reluctant readers alike – to join the deepening national conversation that September 30 is one important part of.
Reviewed by Scott Sneddon
© SesayArts Magazine, 2021
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