My graphic novel experiments continue! I checked this out because I opened it up and I liked some of the things the artist did with panels. I still do actually – there’s a page I remember, where the whole page is the character’s face, and it’s broken up into panels with dialogue across it. It’s a good effect, how the dialogue washes across the character as he’s deep in thought. Maybe it’s because I read Scott McCloud’s books, or maybe it’s because there were some rather flashy art choices (not flashy in a bad way!), but I noticed panel divisions…
2 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
So when I was about thirteen, I thought these books, Sister Light, Sister Dark and White Jenna were just about the best thing in the entire world. I got them from the library after my sister gave me Dragon’s Blood for my birthday, and then I wanted to get more Jane Yolen books, and seriously, I totally loved them. My sister made me a white sweatshirt that said Jo-an-enna in black letters, and she had a black sweatshirt that said Skada in white letters, and that’s how much I loved those books. They are all about a girl called Jenna…
5 CommentsDesultory. I was going to make that my whole review. Get it? Get it? Cause that the book was desultory and so was my review, see? See what I would have done there? But then I wanted to gripe about some stuff, so I decided to expand upon the ways in which it was desultory and have a moan about them. I can do that if I want. The Rules of the Internet say so. I was anticipating enjoying Forbidden Fruit. Sex and religion in the lives of American teenagers? That is very interesting! Plus, I flipped through it and…
2 CommentsCecilia Galante is a lovely name. The Patron Saint of Butterflies is quite good too. It’s all about two girls in a religious commune, Honey and Agnes. As children they were the best ever of friends, always racing and playing and having a jolly time together, but now that they are a bit older, Honey has begun to rebel against their religious leader, while Agnes is getting ever more scrupulous about her religious observances. When Agnes’s grandmother comes to visit and discovers that the commune people (communists?) are being abused by their religious leader, she becomes determined to take Honey,…
6 CommentsWow, Patrick Ness, color me super impressed. Way to create a distinctive, consistent, memorable voice for your protagonist. That isn’t easy. I have not read a book where I enjoyed the narrator’s voice so much since, mm, The Book Thief, and before that The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Which are two of my all-time favorite books. The Knife of Never Letting Go is based on a fantastic premise, that the aliens in this settled world have given the settlers the disease of Noise, which killed all the women and left the men able to hear each other’s thoughts; and then…
22 CommentsAgain with the piles of information! I had to read this one chapter at a time and then take a long break to think about all the things contained in each chapter. In Making Comics, Scott McCloud gets down to discussing the specifics about creating a comic book – everything from the placement and spacing in word bubbles, to the construction of panels in a way that’s intuitive to the reader, to the interaction of words and pictures. There can never be too much discussion about the interaction of words and pictures. Seriously. This book made me sad I can’t…
6 Comments