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Wednesday, December 8, 2010
ISBN: 9781599900704
Rapunzel lives a quiet life behind the walls of the castle with her mother, Gothel. One day, bored of everything and dying with curiosity to know what is behind the wall, she disobeys her mother and finds a way over the wall. What she finds is a barren land and a line of dingy people waiting to get water from a well. One of the people, a woman, looks familiar. Rapunzel realizes that this woman is her real mother and that Gothel had taken her from her real family. When Gothel finds out she's discovered all this, she has Rapunzel placed in a large tree tower with no way down, located miles and miles from the castle. There she stayed for four years until one day her hair has grown long enough for her to lasso a neighboring tree to swing herself over. She journeys back to the castle, meeting Jack and his golden goose and other wronged citizens of the land on her way. Then, as all fairy tales must end, she defeats Gothel and liberates the whole kingdom.
An interesting take on the Rapunzel tale, this version features a wild west quality about it; with Rapunzel wearing a cowgirl outfit and using her hair as lassos. Even the dialect of the story carries that western twang. Perhaps the most interesting twist in the story itself is that Rapunzel, instead of waiting around to be rescued, gets herself out of the tree, and even passes a pseudo Prince Charming on his way to rescue/take advantage of her.
As a graphic novel, the colors are vibrant and the drawings are excellently suited to the story. Nathan Hale does an especially good job of bringing the landscapes to life. The arrangement of the panels remains dynamic enough not to bore the reader while also remaining easy to determine the direction to follow to continue the story.
Rife with humor, adventure, and a little romance, this book is recommended for readers 6th grade and up. Also recommended for those who like altered fairy tales, especially ones where the helpless maiden is transformed into a butt-kicking heroine.
Image taken from: http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/h1/h8093.jpg
ISBN: 9781600610707
The Zombie Apocalypse has come and for one guy, he's about to join the zombie population. Chris Lynch finds this poetry journal in the detached hand of a zombie who's just bitten him. He has time before the change to scribble a note in the first few pages detailing what happened to him. The reader then goes on to read the journal of the original owner, who liked to describe his day in haiku. The journal's owner continues to write haiku even after he has turned into a zombie, giving the reader poetic detail even as he eats his own mother's brains.
If gross humor is the way to a young adults heart, then this is the book for them. Each page of the book is filled with two to four haiku, that is each poem is three lines long with alternating 5-7-5 syllables in each line. Each page of the book is also filled with bloody fingerprints, photos of decaying zombies, and unidentified green goo. As the poems begin with a man who is still alive, the reader gets the fun of anticipating what's going to happen as the man is puzzled when "Beth from accounting, is just sitting in her car, eating spaghetti." Yeah, that's not spaghetti. Then the reader is treated to the introspective thoughts of what zombies do think about, eating brains and losing body parts. The frame story of the man who finds the poetry journal adds a second layer of fun. He begins by telling his story and at the end he knows he's going to turn into a zombie, and he apparently keeps writing through the transition as he says he loves his wife and he wants to eat her brains.
As before, gross humor and violence. Not to mention the illustrations, while definitely enhancing the book, would make me hesitate to put this into hands younger than high school. However, for the age appropriate audience, this book has a lot of potential to show young adults that poetry is not always stodgy, classical, or deep.
Image taken from: http://www.metroactive.com/metro/07.30.08/gifs/Books_Zombie.jpg
Monday, December 6, 2010
ISBN: 9780375714573
Satrapi illustrates the story of her life growing up in Iran from 1979 - to around 1984 while she was ages 9 - 14. The Islamic Revolution took place in 1979 and Satrapi begins the graphic novel with the immediate effect it had on her life: that schools must be gender separated and girls must start wearing the veil. What follows is the story of a young girl trying to make sense of the changes going on around her, learning who to look up to as a hero, facing bombings and death, and trying to come to terms with a God who allows such things to take place.
The illustrations in this graphic novel are done in a stark black and white. But far from lacking the vivacity of color illustrations, Satrapi's artwork comes to life with the use of patterns for textures and inking the negative space in most of the panels to make the people in them stand out more and overall setting a darker tone to the work.
The story manages to balance placing the reader into this vastly different world from America, yet makes it easy to put ourselves in Marjane's shoes as she reacts to the events going on around her. There comes a point in our lives where we are either think our parents are heroes for what they do or we are humiliated because our parents do not meet some societal ideal of heroic. For Marjane, she thinks her father's not a hero because he was not imprisoned and tortured.
Teens will enjoy this window into growing up in a very different country and may be surprised at the similarities they find between how Marjane thinks and how they do. There are many violent scenes and implied violence, but when you consider that Satrapi lived through these scenes and that she probably withheld even more violent ones, I think you'll find this graphic novel young adult appropriate. Recommended for 9th grade up.
Image taken from: http://iranpersepolis.wikispaces.com/file/view/persepolis_cover_big.jpg/32579625/persepolis_cover_big.jpg
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