I’m trying to look at books the way a librarian might, in order to help get me better at thinking from a reader’s point of view. Here are the other posts in the series.
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is another graphic novel. (I checked a stack of best-of graphic novels all out at once, so there were a bunch.) What you’re looking at here is older teens and up. The main character is a middle-schooler, but I would definitely read the graphic novel before handing it off. Some middle-school kids will do fine with it; it’s told at a middle-school level, but covers some extremely overwhelming topics. If you need to cover some extremely overwhelming topics with your kids at that age…this might help. Death, same-sex sexual attraction, attempted rape disguised as “bullying,” prostitution, murder, and loving someone who makes big mistakes are all covered.
The main character is a (human) girl who sees herself as a werewolf. She is artistically inclined, and the graphic novel, created by an adult, is presented as her handiwork. The “panels” in the graphic novel are free flowing, free associative doodles done in pen and ink. People can be drawn beautifully, mockingly, photorealistically, etc., based on the main character’s emotions at the time.
The story ranges from before World War II, to concentration camps in WWII, to the late Sixties, as the main character attempts to solve the murder of a neighbor, the “blue” woman on the cover.
The art in this is loose and improvisational, yet masterful; the writing is a masterpiece on a level with Art Spiegelman’s Maus. I’m not exactly going out on a limb to say that this volume is one of the masterpieces of Western fiction, graphic novel or otherwise.
It can be a challenging read, but mostly because it’s literally just heavy. A second volume is planned to come out in the second half of 2018.
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