Swallow Me Whole


Nate Powell - 2008
    Swallow Me Whole is a love story carried by rolling fog, terminal illness, hallucination, apophenia, insect armies, secrets held, unshakeable faith, and the search for a master pattern to make sense of one's unraveling.In his most ambitious book to date, Nate Powell quietly explores the dark corners of adolescence -- not the clich�d melodramatic outbursts of rebellion, but the countless tiny moments of madness, the vague relief of medication, and mixed blessing of family ties. As the story unfolds, two stepsiblings hold together amidst schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, family breakdown, animal telepathy, misguided love, and the tiniest hope that everything will someday make sense.Deliberately paced, delicately drawn, and drenched in shadows, Swallow Me Whole is a landmark achievement for Nate Powell and a suburban ghost story that will haunt readers long after its final pages.

Aya: Life in Yop City


Marguerite Abouet - 2005
    It’s essential reading.” —Joann Sfar, cartoonist of The Rabbi’s Cat Ivory Coast, 1978. It’s a golden time, and the nation, too—an oasis of affluence and stability in West Africa—seems fueled by something wondrous. Aya is loosely based upon Marguerite Abouet’s youth in Yop City. It is the story of the studious and clear-sighted nineteen-year-old Aya, her easygoing friends Adjoua and Bintou, and their meddling relatives and neighbors. It’s a wryly funny, breezy account of the simple pleasures and private troubles of everyday life in Yop City. Clément Oubrerie’s warm colors and energetic, playful line connect expressively with Marguerite Abouet’s vibrant writing. This reworked edition offers readers the chance to immerse themselves in Abouet’s Yop City, bringing together the first three volumes of the series in Book One. Drawn & Quarterly will release volumes four through six of the original French series (as yet unpublished in English) in Book Two. Aya is the winner of the Best First Album award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, the Children’s Africana Book Award, and the Glyph Award; was nominated for the Quill Award, the YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels list, and the Eisner Award; and was included on “best of” lists from The Washington Post, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal.

Monet: Itinerant of Light


Salva Rubio - 2017
    From the Salon des Refuses (“Salon of the Rejected”) and many struggling years without recognition, money, and yet a family to raise, all the way to great success, critically and financially, Monet pursued insistently one vision: catching the light in painting, refusing to compromise on this ethereal pursuit. It cost him dearly but he was a beacon for his contemporaries. We discover in this comics biography how he came to this vision as well as his turbulent life pursuing it.

The Divine


Boaz Lavie - 2015
    But you never really get away from war. So it feels inevitable when his old army buddy Jason comes calling, with a lucrative military contract for a mining job in an obscure South-East Asian country called Quanlom. They'll have to operate under the radar--Quanlom is being torn apart by civil war, and the US military isn't strictly supposed to be there.With no career prospects and a baby on the way, Mark finds himself making the worst mistake of his life and signing on with Jason. What awaits him in Quanlom is going to change everything. What awaits him in Quanlom is weirdness of the highest order: a civil war led by ten-year-old twins wielding something that looks a lot like magic, leading an army of warriors who look a lot like gods.What awaits him in Quanlom is an actual goddamn dragon.From world-renowned artists Asaf and Tomer Hanuka (twins, whose magic powers are strictly confined to pen and paper) and Boaz Lavie, The Divine is a fast-paced, brutal, and breathlessly beautiful portrait of a world where ancient powers vie with modern warfare and nobody escapes unscathed.

The Voyeurs


Gabrielle Bell - 2012
    It collects episodes from her award-winning series Lucky, in which she travels to Tokyo, Paris, the South of France, and all over the United States, but remains anchored by her beloved Brooklyn, where sidekick Tony provides ongoing insight, offbeat humor, and enduring friendship.“The Voyeurs is the work of a mature writer, if not one of the most sincere voices of her literary generation. It’s a fun, honest read that spans continents, relationships and life decisions. I loved it.”— Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library“As she watches other people living life, and watches herself watching them, Bell’s pen becomes a kind of laser, first illuminating the surface distractions of the world, then scorching them away to reveal a deeper reality that is almost too painful and too beautiful to bear.”— Alison Bechdel, Fun Home“A master of the exquisite detail, Bell provides a welcome peephole into our lives.”— Françoise Mouly, The New Yorker“I don’t think I could tolerate her if she wasn’t so talented.”— Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MindGabrielle Bell’s work has been selected for the 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Houghton-Mifflin Best American Comics and the Yale Anthology of Graphic Fiction, and has been featured in McSweeney's, The Believer, and Vice magazines. ‘Cecil and Jordan In New York,’ the title story of her most recent book, was adapted for the screen by Bell and director Michel Gondry in the film anthology Tokyo! She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Becoming RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Journey to Justice


Debbie Levy - 2019
    She blazed trails to the peaks of the male-centric worlds of education and law, where women had rarely risen before.Ruth Bader Ginsburg has often said that true and lasting change in society and law is accomplished slowly, one step at a time. This is how she has evolved, too. Step by step, the shy little girl became a child who questioned unfairness, who became a student who persisted despite obstacles, who became an advocate who resisted injustice, who became a judge who revered the rule of law, who became…RBG.

Bad Friends


Ancco - 2012
    Rebelling against her abusive father and teachers who routinely beat her, 16-year-old Pearl smokes, slacks off at school, and runs with the bad-girls crowd. Yet her situation is well-adjusted compared to her fellow delinquents, especially her best friend, Jeong-Ae, who survives in chaotic poverty and is already dabbling in sex work. Pearl and Jeong-Ae run away together, try to get work in a hostess bar, and share a seedy motel room. When they’re finally forced to give up, only Pearl has a home, however unhappy, left to go back to. Reflecting as a comfortable, mostly happy adult, she can barely believe she escaped her hometown: “Even now I feel relieved when I realize I don’t have to get a beating,” Pearl marvels. Yet for all its bleak moments, the book has a tender warmth. Ancco evokes the confused excitement of adolescence: realizing adults can’t be relied on, standing up for yourself, trusting in friendship. In sharp, kinetic charcoal lines that seem in constant danger of toppling off the page, she renders a hostile world of monotone classrooms shadowy alleys, Oppa lovers, and the defiant girls who stand out from the crowd. Stunning in its stark look at child abuse, and empathy for its characters, Ancco’s artfully told story grabs the reader’s attention and never lets go.

It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken: A Picture Novella


Seth - 1998
    While trying to understand his dissatisfaction with the present, Seth discovers the life and work of Kalo, a forgotten New Yorker cartoonist from the 1940s. But his obsession blinds him to the needs of his lover and the quiet desperation of his family. Wry self-reflection and moody colours characterize Seth's style in this tale about learning lessons from nostalgia. His playful and sophisticated experiment with memoir provoked a furious debate among cartoon historians and archivists about the existence of Kalo, and prompted a Details feature about Seth's "hoax".

Emiko Superstar


Mariko Tamaki - 2008
    Young adult.

My New York Diary


Julie Doucet - 1999
    In one of the first contemporary graphic novels, Doucet abruptly packs her bags and moves to New York. Trouble follows her in the form of a jealous boyfriend, insecurity about her talent, her worsening epilepsy, and a tendency to self-medicate with booze and drugs.

Parenthesis


Élodie Durand - 2010
    Suddenly, the sentence of her normal life has been interrupted by the opening of a parenthesis that may never close. Based on the real experiences of cartoonist Élodie Durand, Parenthesis is a gripping testament of struggle, fragility, acceptance, and transformation which was deservedly awarded the Revelation Prize of the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

Tina's Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary


Keshni Kashyap - 2012
    Tina M., sophomore, is a wry observer of the cliques and mores of Yarborough Academy, and of the foibles of her Southern California intellectual Indian family. She's on a first-name basis with Jean-Paul Sartre, the result of an English honors class assignment to keep an “existential diary.” Keshni Kashyap’s compulsively readable graphic novel packs in existential high school drama—from Tina getting dumped by her smart-girl ally to a kiss on the mouth (Tina’s mouth, but not technically her first kiss) from a cute skateboarder, Neil Strumminger. And it memorably answers the pressing question: Can an English honors assignment be one fifteen-year-old girl’s path to enlightenment?

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910


Alan Moore - 2009
    The new volume chronicling the exploits of Wilhelmina Murray and her extraordinary colleagues, Century is an epic spanning almost a hundred years. Divided into three 80-page chapters -- each a self-contained narrative to avoid frustrating cliffhanger delays between episodes -- this monumental tale takes place in three distinct eras, building to an apocalyptic conclusion occurring in our own, current, twenty-first century.Chapter One is set against the backdrop of London, 1910, twelve years after the failed Martian invasion and nine years since England put a man on the moon. In the bowels of the British Museum, Carnacki the ghost-finder is plagued by visions of a shadowy occult order who are attempting to create something called a Moonchild, while on London's dockside the most notorious serial murderer of the previous century has returned to carry on his grisly trade. Working for Mycroft Holmes' British Intelligence alongside a rejuvenated Allan Quartermain, the reformed thief Anthony Raffles and the eternal warrior Orlando, Miss Murray is drawn into a brutal opera acted out upon the waterfront by players that include the furiously angry Pirate Jenny and the charismatic butcher known as Mac the Knife.

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth


Isabel Greenberg - 2013
    The people who roamed Early Earth were much like us: curious, emotional, funny, ambitious, and vulnerable. In this series of illustrated and linked tales, Isabel Greenberg chronicles the explorations of a young man as he paddles from his home in the North Pole to the South Pole. There, he meets his true love, but their romance is ill-fated. Early Earth's unusual and finicky polarity means the lovers can never touch.      As intricate and richly imagined as the work of Chris Ware, and leavened with a dry wit that rivals Kate Beaton's in Hark! A Vagrant, Isabel Greenberg's debut will be a welcome addition to the thriving graphic novel genre.