Ghost World
Written and Illustrated by Daniel Clowes
ISBN 1-56097-427-3
80 pages
Fantagraphics, 1998
Genre: Graphic Novel; Adult Crossover
Readers Annotation
The summer after their graduation from high school, two teenage girls criticize the mundane and celebrate the bizarre in their town.
Plot Summary
Enid and Becky just graduated from high school and spend their days drifting aimlessly through their decaying town. They take pleasure in making fun of everything mercilessly; no one and nothing lives up to their demanding standards. Becky likes watching sordid television shows, while Enid finds strange people around town. At the diner she hangs out at, she meets John Ellis, who defends child pornography and serial killers for shock value, and spies on a middle-aged couple she deems the Satanists.
Enid and Becky meet Josh, who is rightly wary of them--he correctly suspects that they try to make him feel uncomfortable so they can make fun of him--but he's also interested enough in the girls that he lets themselves be persuaded by them to accompany them on some of their adventures. Enid convinces him to take her to a porn shop, and Becky and Enid also get him to drive them to a '50s diner to spy on the writer of a personal ad they have pranked into showing up. They begin to show some remorse in some of their antics; after openly mocking the waiter and the restaurant, Enid returns to leave him a big tip.
Enid's father wants her to apply to a competitive college. Becky at first sees this as a betrayal, but then plans to follow Enid to college. Enid's negative reaction forms a crack in their friendship. So does Becky's burgeoning relationship with Josh, whom Enid is also interested in. By the time the fall rolls around, the girls' lives have moved in separate directions.
Critical Evaluation
This is a funny and smartly observed comic about adolescence. Becky and Enid both portray themselves as tragically hip, as too cool to care about anything, while the reader can see that they both care about things desperately, that their coolness is an act put up to protect themselves against the pain they've both suffered in their lives. Enid's gone through a series of stepmothers and spends the latter half of the novel trying to recapture the happiness she experienced as a young girl, first by listening to her favorite childhood record and then returning to an amusement park she visited as a child.
Enid and Becky's treatment of other people is realistically callous. They treat others as objects of their own amusement. Though never as mean as they were, the work stirred up memories of similar comments and superior opinions I held as a teen.
There are many hints throughout the novel that Enid and Becky's friendship will not last. Often, they appear to be talking about different things. Enid makes fun of things that Becky likes and rightfully--though cruelly--accuses Becky of having no ambition for her own life and following Enid around. Becky ends up choosing a more conventional path, taking a job at a bagel shop and starting a real friendship or relationship with Josh. Enid is left alone and aimless; the ending of the story is ambiguous and sad. Some interpret it to mean that Enid commits suicide, while others believe that Enid has decided to leave her old life behind and start it as a completely new person, as she admits that she has fantasized about.
Clowes' blue-toned pen and ink illustrations are detailed and evocative. While Becky remains visually the same throughout the series, Enid tries on a series of looks, mirroring her desire to try on a series of alternate identities. Clowes portrays the "freaks" and "losers" Enid and Becky make fun of compassionately, showing both why they attract the girls' attention but also treating them with compassion and dignity. (It's important to note that Clowes gives himself the same treatment in the novel, as the comic artist that Enid loves, but dismisses as an "old perv").
About the Author
Daniel Clowes is a graphic novelist closely associated with Generation X and the underground comics movement. Most of his work has been published in Eightball, his own comics anthology, though the New York Times published one of his novels in serial formats. He's best known for Ghost World, which he also helped turn into a critically acclaimed feature film. His screenplay for that film was nominated for an Academy Award.
Curriculum Ties
The book is not particularly well suited for use in a school curriculum, though many have compared it favorably to the freshman year English classic, The Catcher in the Rye. A teacher who was trying to inspire modern teens might assign the graphic novel in conjunction with Catcher and ask students to compare Enid and Holden.
Booktalking Ideas
1. Talk about Enid and Becky's ironic attitudes and the types of things and people they love to hate.
2. Are Enid and Becky "frenemies"? Talk about how they may be outgrowing their friendship.
3. Talk about the novel's strange and wonderful supporting cast of characters.
Reading Interest/Level
While intended for an adult audience, the novel has a big young adult following. However, it is appropriate for high schoolers and above.
Challenge Issues
There is some nudity in the book; Enid tells the story of how she lost her virginity. Enid and Becky discuss sex, jokingly saying they "want to do" some of the oddballs they meet. They also discuss masturbation and the fact that they might be lesbians. Enid and Josh go to a porn store, where Enid picks up a giant dildo.
Should the book be challenged, the librarian should ideally read it. If not able to, s/he should read professional reviews of the book and descriptions of its potentially controversial content on a site like Common Sense Media. The librarian could point to its popularity, including being named an ALA Popular Paperback, and its general critical acclaim, as proof of its worth.
Selection Criteria
I wanted to read some graphic novels for this project. I was aware of Ghost World from the movie but had never read the book. I thought its subject matter (the lives of teenage girls) made it a perfect pick for this project.
Showing posts with label graphic novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graphic novel. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman
Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Art Spiegelman
ISBN 978-0-394-74723-1
159 pages
Pantheon Books, 1991
Genre: Graphic Novel; Adult Crossover
Readers Annotation
The author and artist details the life of his father, a Holocaust survivor, in this graphic novel that uses animals instead of people to tell the story.
Plot Summary
In Maus, a graphic novel, author and illustrator Art Spiegelman tells the story of his parents, Vladek and Anja, who were both Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust. The story is structured around Art, now an adult, visiting his father and asking him to tell him what happened to him before and during the war so he can write a comic about it. Anja is now dead, and Vladek has married Mala, another survivor; Mala and Vladek can't stand each other. Vladek tells the story, interrupting with asides about modern life or things that happened after the war, or comments about his son or his late wife.
Vladek met and romanced Anja in pre-war Poland, when things were good. Anja's father was a millionaire and Vladek was a successful small-time businessman. After the birth of their first son, Anja suffered from post-partum depression. Vladek accompanied Anja to a sanitarium, while a governess watched their son and her father minded Vladek's new textile factory. Anja regains her mental health at the sanitarium, but they return to a changed world. The rise of the Nazi party in Germany, and Germany's encroachment on Poland, means that life is not good for the Jews. Vladek is recruited into the Polish army, where he is held as a P.O.W. by the Germans. Eventually he is released to a German work camp, and when he is discharged, he manages to escape being sent to a concentration camp and returns home to his wife and family.
Vladek and Anja's situation gets worse and worse, and the Nazi treatment of the Jews grows increasingly horrific. Their wealth before the war means they have goods they can trade for food and relationships with businessmen they can exploit. Vladek proves himself to be wily, always finding ways to survive. Eventually the Jews are all crowded into ghettos, which slowly are emptied as the Nazis send more and more people to the work camps to die. Their family is torn apart; they send their son away to live where they think he will be safe. Anja's grandparents and then parents are sent to the work camps. Eventually Anja and Vladek are sent to Auschwitz, too. The story ends here, with the story of their experience in Auschwitz and after the war being told in the novel's sequel.
Critical Evaluation
This was a truly remarkable story. Spiegelman uses animals to portray the people in his father's story: the Jews are shown as mice (maus being the German word for mouse), which Spiegelman says refers to the Nazi's portrayal of Jews as the vermin of Europe. The Polish are shown as pigs, and the Germans are cats. Spiegelman uses black and white pen and ink cartoons to tell the story. The drawings are simple but evocative, effective at depicting the horrors of the Jews' situation in Poland.
Spiegelman's storytelling device, which switches back and forth between the past and the present day, and includes many asides from his father, is also really effective at showing the lifelong effects that the Holocaust had on his parents. We learn early on that their first son didn't survive the war, and we also learn that Anja eventually commits suicide. There's a comic inside a comic explaining the effect that his mother's suicide had on Art and his father, and this goes a long way to explain their current strained relationship. Vladek is constantly berating his son for wasting money: not cleaning his plate, hiring help to do home repairs, throwing things out instead of saving them in case they come handy. Art actually worries aloud to Mala that he is portraying his father as the stereotypical miserly Jew. However, it's clear that Vladek's life experiences, where he quickly went from having everything to having nothing, are the cause for his current behavior.
There are absolutely heartbreaking, unbelievably tragic stories that are included here. In some ways, the graphic novel format brings them to life more than a straightforward prose telling of Vladek's story would. For instance, when Vladek and his wife pretend to be Poles to avoid detection by the Nazis, they wear pig masks. This simply and clearly shows how they had to pretend to be someone else in order to survive in a more visceral way than words alone could.
It's a phenomenal work. While it is not specifically aimed at young adults, it will be an appealing title for teens who will respond to its format and the power of its story.
About the Author
Art Spiegelman is a well-known and highly influential comic artist. While Maus remains his best-known work, he has written a number of other graphic novels. He did a lot of work for The New Yorker and was the artist behind their iconic cover immediately after the September 11th attacks. He also invented the Garbage Pail Kids. Spiegelman and his wife Francoise Mouly published and edited the infamous underground comics anthology RAW, which was published throughout the 1980s.
Curriculum Ties
Maus would be great to use to teach high schoolers about the Jewish experience before, during, and after the Holocaust. Indeed it has been adopted by many high school teachers as an official part of the curriculum.
Booktalking Ideas
1. Explain the concept of the novel: the story of the Holocaust told through animals.
2. Talk about the way that Spiegelman switches between the past and the present to completely tell his father's story.
3. Talk about Anja and Vladek's experience under the Nazis.
Reading Interest/Level
This graphic novel is aimed at adults, though high schoolers will also respond strongly to it.
Challenge Issues
While the graphic novel depicts truly horrifying events--indeed, I had to look away or close the book at several moments--I hope that because all the events are based things that really did happen during the Holocaust, no one would try to censor this book. However, if the book were challenged, the librarian should point to Maus' status as a critically acclaimed title and stress its historical importance.
Selection Criteria
Maus won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Though the graphic novel didn't fit into an preexisting category, the Pulitzer Committee was so impressed by the book that they created a special award to acknowledge it.
Art Spiegelman
ISBN 978-0-394-74723-1
159 pages
Pantheon Books, 1991
Genre: Graphic Novel; Adult Crossover
Readers Annotation
The author and artist details the life of his father, a Holocaust survivor, in this graphic novel that uses animals instead of people to tell the story.
Plot Summary
In Maus, a graphic novel, author and illustrator Art Spiegelman tells the story of his parents, Vladek and Anja, who were both Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust. The story is structured around Art, now an adult, visiting his father and asking him to tell him what happened to him before and during the war so he can write a comic about it. Anja is now dead, and Vladek has married Mala, another survivor; Mala and Vladek can't stand each other. Vladek tells the story, interrupting with asides about modern life or things that happened after the war, or comments about his son or his late wife.
Vladek met and romanced Anja in pre-war Poland, when things were good. Anja's father was a millionaire and Vladek was a successful small-time businessman. After the birth of their first son, Anja suffered from post-partum depression. Vladek accompanied Anja to a sanitarium, while a governess watched their son and her father minded Vladek's new textile factory. Anja regains her mental health at the sanitarium, but they return to a changed world. The rise of the Nazi party in Germany, and Germany's encroachment on Poland, means that life is not good for the Jews. Vladek is recruited into the Polish army, where he is held as a P.O.W. by the Germans. Eventually he is released to a German work camp, and when he is discharged, he manages to escape being sent to a concentration camp and returns home to his wife and family.
Vladek and Anja's situation gets worse and worse, and the Nazi treatment of the Jews grows increasingly horrific. Their wealth before the war means they have goods they can trade for food and relationships with businessmen they can exploit. Vladek proves himself to be wily, always finding ways to survive. Eventually the Jews are all crowded into ghettos, which slowly are emptied as the Nazis send more and more people to the work camps to die. Their family is torn apart; they send their son away to live where they think he will be safe. Anja's grandparents and then parents are sent to the work camps. Eventually Anja and Vladek are sent to Auschwitz, too. The story ends here, with the story of their experience in Auschwitz and after the war being told in the novel's sequel.
Critical Evaluation
This was a truly remarkable story. Spiegelman uses animals to portray the people in his father's story: the Jews are shown as mice (maus being the German word for mouse), which Spiegelman says refers to the Nazi's portrayal of Jews as the vermin of Europe. The Polish are shown as pigs, and the Germans are cats. Spiegelman uses black and white pen and ink cartoons to tell the story. The drawings are simple but evocative, effective at depicting the horrors of the Jews' situation in Poland.
Spiegelman's storytelling device, which switches back and forth between the past and the present day, and includes many asides from his father, is also really effective at showing the lifelong effects that the Holocaust had on his parents. We learn early on that their first son didn't survive the war, and we also learn that Anja eventually commits suicide. There's a comic inside a comic explaining the effect that his mother's suicide had on Art and his father, and this goes a long way to explain their current strained relationship. Vladek is constantly berating his son for wasting money: not cleaning his plate, hiring help to do home repairs, throwing things out instead of saving them in case they come handy. Art actually worries aloud to Mala that he is portraying his father as the stereotypical miserly Jew. However, it's clear that Vladek's life experiences, where he quickly went from having everything to having nothing, are the cause for his current behavior.
There are absolutely heartbreaking, unbelievably tragic stories that are included here. In some ways, the graphic novel format brings them to life more than a straightforward prose telling of Vladek's story would. For instance, when Vladek and his wife pretend to be Poles to avoid detection by the Nazis, they wear pig masks. This simply and clearly shows how they had to pretend to be someone else in order to survive in a more visceral way than words alone could.
It's a phenomenal work. While it is not specifically aimed at young adults, it will be an appealing title for teens who will respond to its format and the power of its story.
About the Author
Art Spiegelman is a well-known and highly influential comic artist. While Maus remains his best-known work, he has written a number of other graphic novels. He did a lot of work for The New Yorker and was the artist behind their iconic cover immediately after the September 11th attacks. He also invented the Garbage Pail Kids. Spiegelman and his wife Francoise Mouly published and edited the infamous underground comics anthology RAW, which was published throughout the 1980s.
Curriculum Ties
Maus would be great to use to teach high schoolers about the Jewish experience before, during, and after the Holocaust. Indeed it has been adopted by many high school teachers as an official part of the curriculum.
Booktalking Ideas
1. Explain the concept of the novel: the story of the Holocaust told through animals.
2. Talk about the way that Spiegelman switches between the past and the present to completely tell his father's story.
3. Talk about Anja and Vladek's experience under the Nazis.
Reading Interest/Level
This graphic novel is aimed at adults, though high schoolers will also respond strongly to it.
Challenge Issues
While the graphic novel depicts truly horrifying events--indeed, I had to look away or close the book at several moments--I hope that because all the events are based things that really did happen during the Holocaust, no one would try to censor this book. However, if the book were challenged, the librarian should point to Maus' status as a critically acclaimed title and stress its historical importance.
Selection Criteria
Maus won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Though the graphic novel didn't fit into an preexisting category, the Pulitzer Committee was so impressed by the book that they created a special award to acknowledge it.
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