Material appropriate for young adults
Arthur Bean is a genius-it’s just that no one else realizes this quite yet. He’s going to be a world-famous author, and the first step is to win this year’s story-writing contest. What he writes is pretty funny, but it gets him into trouble too.
The title of this book is REUNION DE MONSTRUAS and it was written by Alba Nora Martinez. (Spanish edition) This is a story meant to tell the Aria’s experience with strange and unexplained real life phenomena.
On an island off the south coast of Victorian England, fourteen-year-old Faith investigates the mysterious death of her father, who was involved in a scandal, and discovers a tree that feeds upon lies and gives those who eat its fruit visions of truth.
Featured in WOW Review Volume IX, Issue 3.
In this important graphic novel, two Aboriginal brothers — both gang members — surrounded by poverty and drug abuse, try to overcome centuries of historic trauma in very different ways to bring about positive change in their lives. Pete, a young Aboriginal man wrapped up in gang violence, lives with his younger brother, Joey, and his mother who is a heroin addict. After returning home one evening, Pete and his mother’s boyfriend, Dennis, get into a violent struggle, which sends Dennis to the morgue and Pete to jail. Initially maintaining his gang ties, a jail brawl forces Pete to realize the negative influence he has become on Joey and encourages him to begin a process of rehabilitation through a traditional Native healing circle.
A literary graphic novel unlike anything else on the racks, 750 Years tells the story of our time, focusing on one single building in France as it sees its way through the upheavals of history. Beginning in the thirteenth century and making its way towards today, this historically accurate story is the eagerly anticipated debut from Vincent Mahé.
Amina lives on the edges of Mogadishu. Her family’s house has been damaged in Somalia’s long civil war, but they continue to live there, reluctant to leave their home. Amina’s world is shattered when government forces come to arrest her father because his art has been officially censored, deemed too political. Then rebel forces kidnap Amina’s brother, forcing him to become a soldier in Somalia’s brutal ongoing war. Although her mother and grandmother are still with her, Amina feels vulnerable and abandoned. Secretly, she begins to create her own artwork in the streets and the derelict buildings to give herself a sense of hope and to let out the burden of her heart.
A lively, intelligent, and witty survey of the world’s major religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism). Dutch comics artist De Heer is openly curious and questioning but remains respectful in this entertaining, informative, and provocative overview.
When her imagined perfect life with her estranged mother begins to unravel, fourteen-year-old Apple finds comfort in reading and writing poetry.
Zoe isn’t the intellectual type, which is why she doesn’t recognize world-famous author Thomas Rocher when she stumbles into his apartment…and into his life. It’s also why she doesn’t know that Rocher is supposed to be dead. Rocher faked his death years ago to escape his critics, and has been making a killing releasing his new work as “lost manuscripts,” in cahoots with his editor/ex-wife Agathe. Zoe doesn’t know Balzac from Batman, but she’s going to have to wise up fast… because she’s sitting on the literary scandal of the century.
Miguel Angel, 17, has managed to stay out of gang life because of a generous man, known as Coach, who has established a boxing club in an abandoned packing shed. Miguel Angel reads about Muhammad Ali, and dreams of the boxing ring as a way to bring his family out of poverty. As the story begins, he and girlfriend Britney have just discovered that she is pregnant. The narrative alternates between Britney and Miguel Angel, drawing a sharp contrast between the lives of her ultra-rich celebrity lawyer father and their family, and Miguel Angel’s impoverished life in a one-bedroom apartment with his mother and five stepsiblings.