Giant Days Volume 1, created & written by John Allison, illustrated by Lissa Treiman, colors by Whitney Cogar and letters by Jim Campbell, RL: TEEN

-


Several months back I started an Instagram account (@books4yourkids) with the intentions of sharing my book reviews there. It turned out to be very time consuming and it has morphed into posts about what I want to read, what I'm deciding between and fun stuff from my school library. Being a very visual person, I have found a few feeds with really stunning pictures of books as well as books and illustrators new to me. I discovered Giant Days by John Allison and Lissa Treiman at Laci Long's feed, @bookpairings, where she listed a character from the series as her fictional crush of 2016. I was feeling a bit tired of kid's books but not wanting to dip a toe into the serious world of adults, and Giant Days hit the spot, precisely. In fact, the moment I finished reading Volume 1, I bought Volumes 2 & 3.



When the graphic novel begins, we meet Daisy Wooton, Esther deGroot and Susan Ptolemy, three weeks into their freshman year at university in England. All different - Daisy was homeschooled and is innocent and naive, Esther is edgy and a bit mysterious and Susan is practical, if often disgruntled - but the immediate acceptance and strong bond that is created amongst strangers at college is evident and instantly believable.


Of course this graphic novel series is going to be about relationships, romantic and platonic, and relationships that start (and end) at university are always interesting. In Volume 1, the person Susan hates most in the world shows up on campus, the girls get the flu, Esther finds herself on a college "lad" website where she ranks third hottest first year and Daisy turns eighteen, making her legal for all things in the UK.

 

One thing that John Allison does amazingly, especially well, is create a rich, compelling story populated with characters you want to know more about in a quick, short time. Of course, he has Lissa Treiman's superb illustrations bringing the characters to life and moving the story forward. Sure, in this first volume (which is comprised of issues 1 - 4) the cast of characters are more types, promising to evolve, but it's a shorthand that draws you in and keeps you reading and wanting more. Of all the characters, McGraw (the fictional crush of 2016) is the most curious and unexpected. With his mustache and love for (reverence for?) women as well as his unflappability in the face of Susan's rants, he is intriguing...




With Volume 2 of Giant Days, Welsh illustrator Max Sarin takes over from Lissa Treiman and I can't wait to see the changes!

Giant Days, Issues 1 - 21











 Don't miss this special one-shot holiday issue for 2016  which poses the question:

What if Susan, Esther, and Daisy hadn’t become friends on their first day of university?? The world as we know it would be completely different! Or at least...moderately different! It’s the darkest timeline for our favorite students. Daisy is an Enya-blasting hermit, Susan violently dislikes her, and Esther falls in with the awful League of Former Head Girls. Original artist Lissa Treiman returns for this oversized special with 40 pages of story and art!


Source: Purchased







Popular posts from this blog

Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala

-
Image
Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala Review Copy from Abrams Kids I picture-walked Be a Tree! three times before I actually read the words. Felicita Sala's illustrations for Maria Gianferrari's poetic text are mesmerizingly immersive and richly colorful within a palette of earth tones. Throughout the text, Gianferrari, who shares her inspiration for this book in the author's note ( Peter Wohleben's The Hidden Life of Trees ), gently maintains the human connection to trees and the connections (and communications) trees share with each other.  Be a Tree!  begins exuberantly, inviting the reader to "Be a tree! Stand tall. Stretch your branches to the sun. Let your roots curl, coil in the soil to ground you." From your spine/trunk to your skin/bark and your heart/pith, the words carry you inward and then zoom outward and up to the canopy and ultimately, the forest. "You are one of many trees," and our roots "twine with fung
Read more

Under Earth, Under Water by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel Mizieliński, 112 pp, RL: ALL AGES

-
Image
Under Earth , Under Water by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel  Mizieliński is their fourth book I have reviewed here and their fourth book with the marvelous Big Picture Press , a publisher of oversized, highly illustrated, gorgeous books who believe that books should be "visually intelligent, surprising, and accessible to readers of all ages, abilities and nationalities." BPP definitely achieves this with every book they publish and, if you are a book lover, you will want to seek out all their titles. Under Earth , Under Water will appeal to anyone who likes to look inside things and understand how things work. With Under Earth, Under Water , the Mizielińskis, who have an illustration style that is filled with tiny details and a unique palette, take readers on a detailed journey, from the top of the page to the bottom, over and under land and then sea. The endpapers serve as the introduction and table of contents, with images scattered across the spread, page nu
Read more

Reading Levels: A Quick Guide to Determining if a Book Is Right for Your Reader

-
Image
While I wrote an article titled Reading Levels: How I Assign Reading Levels to Books, How the Publishers Do It and How You Can Help Your Reader Find the Right Book at the Right Time that discusses how reading levels are determined by professionals and amateurs like myself, there is more on this subject to discuss. Determining the reading level of a book from the children's section is never easy, mostly because there are several different standardized methods of determining reading levels. Add to this the fact that knowing their children's reading level is most often the only tool a parent is armed with when exploring the bookstore, library, website, etc, and the job becomes even more difficult. While I think that knowing a child's reading level is a very valuable tool if your child is reading below grade level, I think that it is a secondary consideration when finding books for children reading above, especially well above, grade level because, in most cases, content app
Read more