It’s not often a book comes along that is so full of wholesome, all-ages fun that you feel refreshed and inspired just by reading it, but If Found…Please Return to Elise Gravel is that book. Reproduced from the author’s grid-paper notebook doodles, this 2016 graphic novel from Québécoise illustrator Elise Gravel — The Cranky Ballerina, I Want a Monster! — received an English-language edition from Drawn + Quarterly this summer. Continue reading
Tracking her rise from humble beginnings to acclaimed author and self-made anthropologist, Peter Bagge‘s Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story charts the life of the Harlem Renaissance’s most famous woman writer, fast-forwarding through her life in bold technicolor to give us the woman, the myth, the legend: Zora Neale Hurston. Continue reading
I’ve written a lot about the need for diversity in kidlit, and New Zealander illustrator Katie O’Neill‘s Princess Princess Ever After hits on all the right notes. Told through O’Neill’s vibrant depictions, this love story of two young princesses saving towns from monsters and fighting back against dark magic will delight readers of all ages. Continue reading
In 2003, an artist living her post-college life in New York City made it her mission to draw one thing every day. Vanessa Davis didn’t always manage to meet her goals, but the resulting book, Spaniel Rage is well worth the effort. Continue reading
Even after decades of U.S. military involvement, the Middle East remains a mystery to many — if not most — people in the West. In Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, Sarah Glidden offers a work of meta-journalism that chronicles the experiences of a small band of reporters as they trek through areas many of us may never visit to gather the stories of individuals impacted by U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. The result is an intimate view of the journalistic process, accented with its own reporting on the lives of both journalists and their subjects. Continue reading