Even more graphic novels!

Do you think I like graphic novels? I seem to be reading them a lot lately! They are very good, quick reads, so I really enjoy reading them when I am having trouble getting through a longer book. I would like to tell you about three graphic novels in this post, each unique, and each wonderful in its own way.

You might have read or heard about Gene Luen Yang from his critically acclaimed American Born Chinese graphic novel. I read that a couple years ago and loved it. When I saw The Eternal Smile and Level up (I will write about Level Up in a different post), I snatched them up! The Eternal Smile is three separate, very different stories. The only similarity is that they all have HUGE plot twists. The first, called "Duncan's Kingdom" starts in a magical kingdom where a young man has to win the princess's heart by killing the king of the frogs and bringing back his head. This story ends in a very different place than it started and I thought was the best of the three stories. The second story, "Gran'pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile" is about an old, greedy frog (kind of a Scrooge figure), who is always looking for ways to make more money so when he jumps into his vat of gold, his head won't touch the bottom. This was my least favorite of the three stories, although the ending is somewhat redeaming. The last story, "Urgent Request" is about a young woman who is trying to get a promotion at her job. After being denied, she gets an email from a young prince in Africa, asking to transfer millions of dollars into her bank account. She naively sends all her back account information to him and next time she checks, her back account is empty. She continues email him and send him money, but is she really as naive as we think?

If you have children or have ever read to them, you may recognize the name Jane Yolen from the How Do Dinasaurs Say Goodnight? series. She writes A TON and has even written a graphic novel called Foiled. This was a great story about an NYC teen misfit, Aliera, whose passion is fencing. She doesn't have too many friends, let alone a boyfriend, so when her hot lab partner asks her on a date, she accepts. Meanwhile, her mother is a chronic garage sale shopper and bargained her way into a new practice foil that Aliera needed. The foil has a gaudy ruby superglued to the hilt. Aliera tries to remove it, but can't. When she meets Avery for the date, she discovers a whole new world within the one she knows, and Avery isn't who she thought he was. This was a very interesting story that I really hope continues in the future!

I think that Shaun Tan is one of the most creative people alive today. His stories are so interesting and are all allegorical. He has even made some of his graphic novels into short films, one of which won the Oscar for best short! This Oscar winning short, "The Lost Thing", appears in the book I read last night with my daughter, Zoe. The book is called Lost and Found. The first story in the book is called "The Red Tree" is more of a poem. It is quite beautiful, about bad days. "The Lost Thing" is the second story and is about a boy who is looking for bottle caps to add to his collection. Instead of finding bottle caps he find a thing that is lost. He plays with the thing and ends up taking it home. His parents don't want the thing in the house, so the boy takes it out to the shed. Where do lost things belong? That is what the boy has to figure out. "The Rabbits" is the last story and its words were written by John Marsden and tells a very common story of taking over another's land. Shaun Tan is Australian, so I imagine it is an allegory of the British and Aboriginals, though it is much the same story as the British and the Native Americans. It is really good, but very obvious in what it's about. It is worth reading just for the pictures, as are all of Shaun Tan's stories. He is a truly amazing artist!

Books removed from Bitch Magazine's Feminist Booklist.... I FINALLY FINISHED!

I first learned about these books and the whole controversy when Scott Westerfeld sounded off on his blog, which I got through Goodreads. A magazine out of Perth, Australia (a place I've been to and LOVED) called Bitch Magazine put out a list of the top 100 feminist Young Adult novels. After the list came out, a few people complained about three of the titles, which they claimed were not feminist because they didn't deal well with rape. Scott Westerfeld asked that his books be taken off the list if that was how things were being dealt with. So, naturally, I HAD to read these three books!

The first one is called Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott. This is one of the more difficult books I have ever read, especially considering it's only 170 pages. It is about a girl (Alice, though that is not her real name) who was abducted when she was 10 years old while on a field trip to the aquarium. Almost five years later, she is getting too big for Ray, her abductor. He gives Alice the job of finding her replacement. This book is deeply psychologically and emotionally disturbing, but in the end, I think it fairly accurately portrays what a young girl might go through in similar situations. I can imagine why some people would question this book's place on a feminist booklist, but I can equally come up with a good rationale.

I have to admit that I am at a complete loss for words on why Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce was pulled and replaced by Bitch Magazine. While I figured out the twist LONG before Scarlett and Rosie (the sisters the book is named for) do. As the title suggests, this book is a very unique twist on the Little Red Riding Hood story. At merely eleven years old, Scarlett's grandmother is horribly murdered and eaten by a Fenris (a werewolf). To save her nine year old sister, Rosie, Scarlett takes on the Fenris with only a shard of a mirror. She kills the Fenris, but only after it has taken one of her eyes and left her horribly scared. Now, seven years later, the sisters spend their lives training and luring Fenris to their death. The Fenris of this novel don't just make new Fenris by biting them. There is a secret code that the sisters and their friend Silas have to crack now that the Fenris are congregating in Atlanta to find the new "Potential" Fenris. I really enjoyed reading this book, especially seeing as I was expecting a morally difficult look at "rape culture" and found an action packed, whirlwind of a read! I can't wait for Sweetly to come out this summer! It is a "companion" to Sisters Red!

Ok, so I FINALLY finished Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan! And boy, was it a tough read! The beginning was extraordinarily difficult because of all of the atrocities that befall the main character, Liga. This is actually a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red (of sorts), but starts with their mother, living on the outskirts of an old-world kind of town. Her mother died a few years ago and for a while now, has been taking his liberties with Liga. When she gets pregnant, he visits the local "mudwife", a witch of sorts, and buys some herbs to get rid of the baby. When she gets pregnant again, she hides it from him for as long as she can. He finds out eventually and goes back for more herbs, but gets run over by a carriage on his way back and dies. Liga has the baby and soon after, another atrocity visits her that is so bad, she goes to the cliff, throws her baby over and intends to kill herself. A "moon baby" catches the falling babe and saves her and gives Liga two jewels to plant outside her front door. When she wakes up the next morning, two beautiful bushes have grown where she planted the stones and she is in an alternate universe... the place of her heart's desire. About nine months later, she births another baby girl and raises them in this perfect world. This book deals with healing and moving past bad things that have happened to you. It also deals with letting your children live their own lives and make their own ways in the world. I definitely see why people would want this taken off the booklist, but I can also see why others would want it on. Liga's daughters grow up to be their own women, one a powerful sorceress. I can not really make a straight decision one way or another. This is definitely a book that will stick with me for awhile (and I wasn't entirely thrilled with the way it ended, especially for Liga), but I might have been happier never having read it.

All in all, I'm glad to have read these books, if only for the fact that I might never have happened across Sisters Red or Jackson Pearce. I am looking forward to reading Sweetly, which comes out next week! I may try to read the three that replaced three on the booklist, but it probably won't be for awhile, because I'm waiting for the release of The Power of Six, Sweetly, Goliath, The Death Cure, and Crossed, all of which come out in the next three months! YAY!