krakow54's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
tense
fast-paced
4.0
600bars's review against another edition
2.0
My mom read this as her book club book last month. She liked it so much she asked me to buy it for her! My mom doesn’t believe in owning books due to the existence of libraries, so this is a big deal. I read the book on my lunch break to see what it’s all about. It is just not my style! It’s extremely 2016-core NPR-core Obama nostalgia that makes my skin crawl, but by that metric it is like catnip for moms like mine.
I also didn’t care for the art style– each character is only drawn once, so every time the character appears it is copy and pasted and making the same facial expression regardless of what’s happening in the scene. There are a couple exceptions to being drawn once, like Jacob draws herself as a child for chapters about her childhood, but it will still be that same drawing used whenever we have Child Mira. Also, the drawings seem to be just digitally traced over photographs. I think leaning further into a collage style (the backgrounds of the scenes are photos) or commissioning someone who can draw would’ve been way better. I just finished reading a graphic novel where the drawings were either pyrography or fully embroidered images on the page so I’m just bothered by the lack of effort here lol. I’m not saying that it’s necessary for the artistic process to be extremely arduous to produce a story that’s compelling/worth reading, you can have extremely simple illustrations used to great effect. But this really did not work for me– I just hated the flat expressions that never change when the book’s covering a multitude of emotions.
Not to say that Jacob’s experiences with various microaggressions, colorism, racism etc aren’t awful and that these aren’t conversations worth having, especially with a small child. I also know everyone was having a collective insanity in the trump years that broke a lot of libs brains. The story where she’s supposed to ghost write the founding father novel for the rich white lady was hilarious. But as a whole It just feels like I’ve read too many similar books and it’s not really saying anything new or scratching beyond the surface. Ultimately I am thankful for this book because my mom had never read a graphic novel before, and she liked the experience so much she asked me for more recs, and I am a big fan of the format so I have a lot to share with her.
I also didn’t care for the art style– each character is only drawn once, so every time the character appears it is copy and pasted and making the same facial expression regardless of what’s happening in the scene. There are a couple exceptions to being drawn once, like Jacob draws herself as a child for chapters about her childhood, but it will still be that same drawing used whenever we have Child Mira. Also, the drawings seem to be just digitally traced over photographs. I think leaning further into a collage style (the backgrounds of the scenes are photos) or commissioning someone who can draw would’ve been way better. I just finished reading a graphic novel where the drawings were either pyrography or fully embroidered images on the page so I’m just bothered by the lack of effort here lol. I’m not saying that it’s necessary for the artistic process to be extremely arduous to produce a story that’s compelling/worth reading, you can have extremely simple illustrations used to great effect. But this really did not work for me– I just hated the flat expressions that never change when the book’s covering a multitude of emotions.
Not to say that Jacob’s experiences with various microaggressions, colorism, racism etc aren’t awful and that these aren’t conversations worth having, especially with a small child. I also know everyone was having a collective insanity in the trump years that broke a lot of libs brains. The story where she’s supposed to ghost write the founding father novel for the rich white lady was hilarious. But as a whole It just feels like I’ve read too many similar books and it’s not really saying anything new or scratching beyond the surface. Ultimately I am thankful for this book because my mom had never read a graphic novel before, and she liked the experience so much she asked me for more recs, and I am a big fan of the format so I have a lot to share with her.
madamzoohoo707's review against another edition
4.0
I can’t imagine how many families are having these difficult conversations with their kids right now. Don’t let the comic book concept deter you—these book shares insight into what it’s like to be “other” in America, even when you are American.
khushi_p03's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
4.5