Allen Say,
Drawing from Memory
Scholastic Press, 2011.

Ages 10+

Before even opening Allen Say’s latest book, the play on words of the title, Drawing from Memory, gives the reader a frisson of anticipation, enhanced by the simple cover illustration, a self-portrait of a young Allen Say floating, perhaps, in contemporary consideration of what has now become past. By the time we meet the illustration again in its context of an elated twelve-year-old Say having moved into his own one-room apartment, we are well and truly engrossed. Both before and after that defining moment in Say’s life, drawing is central to his existence. His childhood was not straightforward but Say recounts it with a lightness of touch in both words and pictures that is perfectly attuned to his readership. My favourite is perhaps the juxtaposition of a very small Allen drawing, drawing, drawing. Next along, a small boy walks away from his latest work, as his parents look in anger (father) and horror (mother) at the wall that has been turned into an artist’s canvas. The accompanying text, meanwhile, gives his father’s veto of art as a career for his son. This balance of humor and underlying tensions continues through the book, which ends with Say’s departure for America at the age of fifteen, “ready to start a new life with what I could carry on my back.”

Devotees of Say’s work will find vignettes linking to his previous books: however, the greatest parallels can be drawn with Say’s autobiographical novel The Ink Keeper’s Apprentice, for which Drawing from Memory is an absolutely must-have companion. For here at last is a full portrait of the real Sensei Noro Shinpei, the famous cartoonist to whom Say rather precociously and wholly pivotally apprenticed himself. Included in the narrative are photographs, nuggets of wisdom, and absorbing examples of Shinpei’s work. These include two cartoon characters that were Say and his fellow-apprentice Tokida, getting out of all sorts of scrapes. How wonderful is that! Further background about his later contact with Shinpei, who died in 2002, is given in Say’s moving Afterword.

Throughout the book, Say provides many vivid portraits: as well as his family, Sensei and Tokida, there is his art teacher Miss Goldfish, and her former pupil Orito-san, who taught Say karate as well as drawing from classical sculpture. And through it all is the self-portrait of a young man: his determination to be an artist no matter what, set against a complex family background and the cultural context of post-war Japan.

The story of Say’s childhood is a compelling one. It is fitting that, as an artist, he should tell it through pictures as well as words: and indeed, Say’s skilful combination of illustration and writing renders this account a masterpiece of graphic storytelling.

Marjorie Coughlan
December 2011

Kazuki Ebine,
Gandhi: A Manga Biography
Penguin Books, 2011.

Ages 10-14

Award-winnning animation artist Kazuki Ebine’s Gandhi A Manga Biography appears at first glance to be an ideal meeting of form and content that will appeal greatly to young adult readers. The greyscale-illustrated book provides an easily digested overview of Gandhi’s life, including specific events in South Africa and India that tested and strengthened his resolve to resist all temptation toward violence. Ebine’s project is something of a ground breaker for a genre that is often associated with aggressive action stories.

As the page order is reversed (to left-to-right), the book will be an easy introduction to manga for readers accustomed to western page layout. Ebine’s skill as a draftsman is evident, particularly in his portrayal of Gandhi as he ages. Over the 192 pages of the story, Gandhi is taken from a precocious child through his education as a barrister in England to his appointment in South Africa, where his action on behalf of Indian civil rights inspires his growing conviction that only peaceful resistance has the moral force to overcome injustice, and finally to India, where he works with Nehru but fails to stop the political forces leading to the partition and to the creation of Pakistan.

Compelling as the story is, the execution is somewhat disappointing. Penguin’s second in its manga biography series (an earlier volume featured the Dalai Lama) badly needs an editor. The text is riddled with awkwardness, from the many instances of agreement error (Japanese doesn’t distinguish singular from plural) to amusingly goofy expressions. (My favorite is “When I first heard your speech, I was so inspired as if you boiled my blood.”) The only closing punctuation marks are exclamation points and question marks. The lack of page numbers is an inconvenience. Young readers expecting a deeper understanding of Gandhi’s life and moral development may find that in this case, the manga form is less adroit than usual at conveying story through image.

Despite these hindrances, manga enthusiasts will appreciate getting biographical information in a favored format, and Penguin’s effort to present Gandhi’s life and precepts to a generation of more visually-oriented young adult readers is laudable. Let’s hope the editorial glitches are worked out as the company publishes further inspiring lives in the manga genre.

Charlotte Richardson
November 2011

It is 1978 in the former capital city of Cote D’Ivoire, Abidjan, and the 19 year old Aya is feeling restless, but not quite as restless as her friend, Adjoua, who is about to go out on the town with her hot new date, Bintou, who’s got a car and will take her to the open air maquis to dance and socialize all night long.  This might sound like your average teen drama, but this graphic novel Aya by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Ourbriere (published by Drawn and Quarterly, 2007) sets the story in a small African nation at the height of its prosperity in the 1970′s.  Author Marguerite Abouet and illustrator Clément Oubriere bring to life a heady time in the country’s past when there was a fairly large suburban middle class who enjoyed life in a busy and bustling African metropolis.   Although the temptations are great, Aya is determined to become a doctor and is prudent in the way she conducts her life unlike Adjoua whose dalliance with Bintou will lead her to … well, you’d best get the graphic novel out and find out for yourself!

This book was originally published in French, but made its translated debut in English in 2007 by the graphic novel publisher Drawn and Quarterly based in Montreal.  The English text is prefaced with remarks by Alisia Grace Chase, PhD who gives a brief outline of the golden days of Cote D’Ivoire’s prosperity and wealth in the 1970′s.  I found this book a remarkable read and it certainly gave me a completely different picture of Africa from what I formerly had and suspect many Westerners continue to have — that is, of a continent in continual strife with issues of poverty and warfare.  It is just this image that Abouet and Oubriere seek to dispel — if somewhat nostalgically — in this fascinating and engaging graphic novel.  Since this book’s debut, there have been two other Aya titles released: Aya of Yop City and Aya: The Secrets Come Out.

Emily Carr was a Canadian painter who is known for her paintings of the west coast of British Columbia.  Her now iconic depictions of the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest, and the totem poles and carvings of the First Nations people of the coast are infused with grandeur and beauty.  Emily Carr was an unusual woman for her time — an independent soul, greatly devoted to her art with a visionary sensibility.  In Four Pictures by Emily Carr by Nicolas Debon (Groundwood Books, 2003), four stories from Carr’s life are drawn in strips.   Each strip explores a time in Emily’s life in which epiphanies occur about the meaning and significance of art.

Although much has been written about Carr in print, I found Debon’s graphic novel approach to Carr’s life refreshing and engaging.  It must have been a daunting task as an illustrator and artist to have taken on the life of this great painter in pictures, no less!  But Debon does a wonderful job; near the end of the book, he presents a  stunning two page rendition of Emily looking on at a vision she painted herself of a lone pine tree reaching up to the heavens (Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky painted in 1935).

This is a great little book to inspire any young artist in the family and I recommend it highly for anyone interested in the life of this unusually talented and gifted Canadian painter.

Walking into the Young Adult graphic novel section of the main branch of the public library in my city, I noticed one particular book prominently featured on a stand.  It was Palestine: The Special Edition (Fantagraphics  Books, 2007) by Joe Sacco.  I picked up the book with some interest as our current issue of PaperTigers is all about refugee children.  Palestine is a comic book style rendering of author and artist Joe Sacco’s foray into the Occupied Territories of Palestine during the latter years of the first Intifada in the mid 1990′s.    It is a startling account for its time and place in form and style, particularly for North American readers,  although now — a decade later — it could be said there is more widespread knowledge of  the displacement of Palestinian peoples by the state of Israel.

Palestine was originally a set of 24 to 32 page comic books released every few months from early 1993 to late 1995.   It features a young man who appears like Sacco touring the Occupied Territories, relating his adventures.  After getting his journalism degree in Oregon,  Sacco decided to go to the Occupied Territories because, as he says himself, “I felt compelled to.”   Politically, as an American taxpayer, he felt irked by the thought of his money going to the state of Israel to “perpetuate the occupation” and as a journalist, he felt the state of reportage about the Palestinian people woefully inadequate.  So in the winter of 1991-1992, armed with a camera and notebook, he headed off to the Occupied Territories to begin his quest for journalistic verity — that is, of his own unique making in a form he himself calls “comics journalism.”

Children feature in the various strips.  In a section called “The Boys,” a 15 year old youth named Firas who is a worker for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is interviewed.   He is a dedicated stone-thrower like so many Palestinian youth.  When asked about school, he responds, “In the morning, if I go in the streets and see the soldiers, I’ll fight them.  I won’t go to school.”  In another strip, one particularly bright and curious girl of 10 turns the tables on Sacco when she plies him with a barrage of questions like “What does the water taste like in your country?  Do you have the soldiers and the Jews and Fateh and the Popular Front in your country?  Can a man have two wives?”  The girl’s interrogation ends when the grandmother tells her that if she wants, she could marry Sacco in two years when she becomes a woman, to which the girl replies “Why not?”

Many Palestinians are third generation refugees.  Paradoxically, they are the homeless in their own homeland.  Sacco’s rendering of their situation is a deeply moving and compelling account of their world, and is well worth the read.

Alia Muhammad Baker seems an unlikely heroine.  A quiet, unassuming woman, she works as the chief librarian at the Basra Central Library in Iraq.  In 2003, however, she is faced with an extraordinary challenge — how to save the books of her beloved library from being destroyed by the war with the invading forces of Britain and the U.S.  Alia has read books about the burning down and destruction of libraries in the ancient past — and she was horrified.  Now she faces the possibility of the very same thing happening to her library.  Can she save the books?  Read the graphic novel and find out!

Alia’s Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq by Mark Alan Stamaty (Knopf, 2004) is the account of one particularly courageous woman’s fight to protect the books of her city and nation.  Yes, librarians can be super-heroes, and Alia is a prime example of the kind of courage and determination, as well as wit and presence-of-mind that it takes to save a library from imminent ruin.   Artist Stamaty — a cartoonist for numerous outlets like the New York Times Book Review, the Washingtoon Post and the Boston Globe — has created a short but revealing graphic novel about the plight of culture in times of war.  Books do need saving; they are the repositories of a people’s ideas, culture and art.  Alia, is indeed, a heroine of an extraordinary kind.  Stamaty’s clever combination of using comic-book art to outline the story of an unlikely ‘superhero’ is brilliant and I hope he continues producing more graphic novels of this kind!

If you want to read more about Alia, you might check out Jeanette Winter’s picture book, The Librarian of Basra: A True Iraq Story, that came out just around the same time as Alia’s Mission. Here’s a review of it on PT.  There’s also a Personal Views article in PT about libraries and librarians in children’s books that is also worth checking out.

Marjorie and I at PaperTigers write the Books at Bedtime posts and these posts usually are about books appropriate for reading to children at bed time.  However, I’m facing a bit of a dilemma having a 13 year old son and a 9 year old daughter.  I no longer read to my son at bed time; he reads for himself and lately, his focus has been on comics and graphic novels.  As a result, I’ve been getting hooked on graphic novels myself (although admittedly the fascination for this genre started for me when I was a teen and had access to Japanese manga even though I couldn’t always read them very well) so I have decided to start reviewing graphic novels in future posts while still also doing the occasional Books at Bedtime post to cover those titles I read with my daughter.

However, as with many things in life, there are cross-overs and overlaps.  While perusing the graphic novel shelf at the library, my daughter found one for herself and brought it over to me.  The Boy, the Bear, The Baron, the Bard by Australian Gregory Rogers (Roaring Book Press, 2004) is a story set in Elizabethan England told entirely in images drawn by Rogers.   You would think a book like this wouldn’t be appropriate for bedtime reading, but quite the contrary!  My daughter, having perused the book, brought it to bed with her and asked if we could narrate the story together, playing the different parts of the characters depicted (which include, needless to say, the title characters including Bard Shakespeare.)  This was a totally appropriate way to read this book, considering that it featured the famous playwright himself and the world of theatre.  And we had fun, moreover, doing it!

Do you ever read graphic novels to your children at bedtime?  Tell me if you do; I’d love to hear of your experiences.  As children become more increasingly focused on the visual medium through the use of computers (we’re fast approaching the age of reading off our Kindles and Ipads to our children at night), reading graphic novels to our kids may well be the middle road of compromise!

A new list has hit the world of children’s literature–the Renaissance Learning Report on What Kids Are Reading. After gathering answers from more than 3 million students in U.S. schools, the report announces that first graders love Dr. Seuss, second graders are reading Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, E.B. White’s classic Charlotte’s Web is the third grade favorite, fourth graders flock to Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and fifth grade’s number one choice is Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen is the most popular book among sixth graders.

Then the news becomes dismal. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is universally beloved by seventh and eighth grade readers and for that yawning chasm of ninth through twelfth grade, To Kill a Mockingbird wins hands down as most popular book for people ranging in age from fourteen to seventeen.

Please don’t get me wrong. These are two wonderful books and deservedly popular among every age group, from Generation Not Yet Born to the Baby Boomers. What bothers me immensely is that these two titles are quite evidently being widely read because they are on school reading lists, and that is the kiss of death for any book. There’s nothing like a good, stiff essay test to drain the life and enjoyment from any piece of literature.

Teachers and librarians deserve a hearty round of applause for rescuing students from the required reading of my youth, which was also the required reading for my mother in the days before World War Two. Silas Marner may well be a dazzling piece of English literature, but you’ll never get me to admit it–or, for that matter, my eighty-plus-year-old mother. Both of us, in our different generations, read it thoroughly enough to pass the following test with flying colors but neither of us would claim it as our best-loved book of that particular year.

This latest list does a great job of showing what is being assigned in classrooms across the country. What it doesn’t show is what “kids are reading,” especially when they hit adolescence, and this is something we all need to know, if only to enlarge our own reading horizons.

At the Tiger’s Bookshelf, we’ve asked questions about ways to make children readers. Perhaps one of the easiest ways is by finding out what they truly enjoy reading, picking it up for ourselves, and then talking with them about it, rather than making us talk to them about what we think they should be reading.

This may lead us into the graphic novel arena, or the world of fantasy and science fiction, or other literary roads that for some of us are less traveled. We could end up reading poems written for a poetry slam, or a zine or two. If we ask questions, read what’s recommended and then talk about it with teenagers, we’re certainly going to enter interesting territory.

What’s being read for pleasure by our children and why are those choices popular? When they go beyond the snack reading that every age group indulges in, what books do they turn to? What is being devoured, read again and again,and then passed on to friends?

I don’t know and I would certainly like to find out. Is there anyone out there with some answers?

Magabala Books, based in Broome, Western Australia, is an Australian indigenous publishing house. They’re committed to using aboriginal illustrators for their growing list of children’s books, but aboriginal illustrators are as few and far between as towns in that part of the country. So manager Suzie Hazlehurst put together a proposal to train and mentor promising talent. With funding from Writing WA and artsource, Suzie invited artists and likely future artists recommended by the local art centers in the Kimberley region to participate. She brought illustrator Ann James from Melbourne’s Books Illustrated to teach two 4-day intensive courses, one in Broome and one in Perth, with about a dozen participants each.

“Ann did a great job teaching both established artists and people with no experience in art mediums,” Suzie says. “Illustration requires specific skills. Artists have to know how to work with publishers, writers, and designers. They need to understand layout and collaborate on deciding which parts of a story need more detail.” Three workshop participants submitted exciting sample illustrations, she reports, and are now being mentored for particular titles.

Furthermore, Magabala is mentoring a young Adelaide writer on his graphic novel, which will also be the first graphic novel Magabala has published. The publishing manager is overseeing editorial guidance and a Melbourne designer with much graphic novel experience is offering design input. The target publishing date is late 2008 for this 3-way collaboration.

Magabala’s star is rising. The company, started in 1984, became an Independent Aboriginal Corporation in 1990. A recent move into the old Visitors’ Center in Broome, across the street from the new Visitors’ Center, has increased visibility and growth. A bush garden is in the works, as are gift products to be developed from the “artistic collateral” of their books. “Broome gets 300,000 visitors a year,” Suzie muses, “and if only a tenth of them bought one of our books…”

Wondering what the word Magabala means? Check it out here. For more about Australian indigenous book publishing, visit PaperTigers here. And here’s a PaperTigers review of one of Magabala’s most endearing titles, My Home in Kakadu. Who knows how much this one book has done to increase respect for the indigenous cultures of Australia?

The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco just opened a big retrospective on the work of Tezuka, father of anime and manga, words which refer respectively to the Tezuka-inspired animation film and graphic books now so fabulously popular. Opening day at the museum last weekend, the show was packed with twenty-somethings and parents tagging along with their 10-year-olds. Nicole Harvey (who buys children’s books for the musuem shop, among her many other duties) and her colleagues at the museum have been working overtime to get the adventurous show and related activities up and running. There’s a Manga Lounge set up with a typical manga-fan kid’s bedroom and lots of manga-related products. The bookshop has a great collection of manga and books about anime and manga, including Gilles Poitras’ deconstructions of the magic for those of us who are a little more dependent on the written word. Gene Yang, author of the highly regarded American Born Chinese, is among the area artists who will demonstrate their comic art skills at weekly events through the summer.

If you’re the parent of a comic-lover and live nearby or if you plan to visit the Bay Area this summer with kids, the Tezuka show is a chance for you to learn something and earn some undying gratitude from the children as well. And if you can’t be here in person, the show’s website has links to everything from a Tezuka bio to essays on manga. Check out the blog, too! Help yourself to a virtual visit to a magical world.