I thought Runaways would be my first graphic novel. The pictures are gorgeous; the storyline seemed interesting; it reminded me of a not unpleasant two weeks I spent reading comic books in my sister’s sunny corner bedroom when I was 16 years old and recovering from whooping cough. But every time I opened that hardcover compilation of volumes 1-18, and felt the giant weight of 300? (unnumbered) pages of conversations in white bubbles, I gave up, and instead selected a plain old text narrative from our reading list of Young Adult novels.
In fact it was Dramacon, not the Runaways, that got me over the “story in pictures” hump. Dramacon, with its ever-so-slight but ever-so-easy-to-scan storyline, and dropping jaws and repartee dripping icicles or flames–depending on the characters’ shifting emotional barometers. I started reading it on the RedLine, from Quincy to Park Street. Then on the Green Line, from Park to The Museum of Fine Arts. Then walking, from the Museum to Simmons. And when I had to put it away? I immediately looked forward to my commute home so I could finish it. The perfect fast read for summer…or winter…or spring…or fall! Yes. Even for a 50 year old dyed in the wool English major–Dramacon exerted a strange and soothing fascination: who hasn’t had a head full of all the things we’d wished we’d said? Or an image of ourselves that is a world apart from what other people see.
I liked the low-techiness of manga. I liked how I got into a rhythm reading/scanning the pages. I liked that I read it better and enjoyed it more the less I worried about catching every word, and going instead for picking up the storyline and out-sized characters and, oh yeah!–the drama! the pulp paper equivalent to an afternoon soap opera for teens with a sense of humor as well as angst. Even now, writing this entry, I’m thinking–I can’t believe I read–and liked!–manga. I don’t know whether to feel like I’m just a little bit hip–or like I’m “chasing it”– a middle aged librarian dressing in in too-short, too-tight Abercrombie and Fitch. I kept the cover covered on the subway.
After Dramacon, American Born Chinese seemed easy. The pictures were easy to follow, and the various story lines and text–while complicated–were both fresh and interesting. I liked the lay out too–not so many pictures that I couldn’t take in the frames with ease, and not stumble on my way from page to page. It wasn’t until our class discussion of ABC that it occurred to me that the book might be little too much to my taste–that of an adult reader rather than a teen reader. More an award winner than a teen crowd pleaser. A point I have found myself coming back to again and again, because it makes me realize I tend to be a slave to award lists–not a quality you necessarily want when it comes to recommending books for reluctant readers.
Overall though, our class discussion of American Born Chinese was most useful as a starting point not for examining the values of personal identity, but for discussing a book with this format. How the lay out and pictures and visual cues and visual “tone” contribute to the meaning and experience of the story. I can (unfortunately it sometimes seems to me) talk about identity until hell freezes over–but i have a limited vocabulary and background when it comes to manga and graphic novels.
After both Dramcon and American Born Chinese and our visit with Robin over at Brookline Library, I thought Runaways would finally be the lush walk in the park I had expected when I first cracked the cover. Not so! Isn’t that strange? Mostly it was the size and design: the pictures were more dynamic than the ones in ABC and Dramacon–and without page numbers and white space borders, I had trouble orienting myself to the page. I felt like the story was getting ahead of me; that I couldn’t organize it as well in my mind as I can a narrative or a graphic novel with fewer and smaller frames per page.
This is not a criticism of the book or the storyline, which are both good examples of teen empowerment. I think my own experience would make my recommendation of this title to teen readers more informed and genuine–especially if the reader were new to graphic novels. I’d be more sympathetic to a reader who shied away from the picture format, and more apt to encourage them to stick with it, or to try some other selections that might “feel” more inviting and easier to eyeball.
Finally–Cathy’s Book. Teens–especially and perhaps exclusively!–girls, might be charmed and intrigued by the doodling in the margins, the important bits of paper stuck in the cover, the sketches of the main characters, and the cross outs that suggest a work endlessly in revision. In some ways, this felt like the equivalent of spending a long afternoon with your best friend dressing up paper dolls and fabricating a fantastic life story to go with each new outfit.
I liked the mystery part of the novel. I generally liked the characters. I liked the ethnic diversity. I liked the humor. I liked the girls’ independence and close friendship. I liked having bad guys in there who seem genuinely threatening. I didn’t take it too seriously, but seriously enough to want to know how everything turned out. I mostly liked the format, because at the same time it seemed a little precious and cliched–it wasn’t a format I’d seen before, and I did think it is one that might have at least browsing appeal to teens.
Put all that stuff together though, and I had the sense of a book that was trying to serve too many masters. I became too aware of the process and design of the book to lose myself fully in the story.
Would I recommend it? Yes. Would girls like it? Is it for tweens or teens? Is the age difference between Cathy and Victor problematic? Is the dialog a little too cute? I’m not sure. I also don’t know whether to marvel at the fact that borrowers had not lost any of the “parts” of the book–or whether to assume that maybe they had not actually opened the envelope and explored all those bits and pieces.
I tried to interest my 13 year old in this book, but after a dutiful glance she put it aside and within a day it was buried under napkins and magazines and volumes 1-6 of Harry Potter.
I do know that I might never have given these books a chance if they had not been on our reading list. That would have been a loss–not just for me, but more importantly, for teens who might come to the library–and to me– looking for a suggestion on what to read.
I don’t know how you put together your reading list for LIS 483, but from my perspective, this syllabus is valuable less for the absolute quality of each book; more for the fact that the list as a whole and the themes around which each week is organized, made me think outside the box and get in touch with my own personal biases as a reader, as an adult, and as Jessie Thuma. If I can take that awareness with me into the workplace, LIS 483 will have exceeded its promised outcomes.
