Publisher: Papercutz
Release Date: August 2016
Price: $14.99
Creator(s): Jon Buller (writer); Susan Schade (artist)
Format: 180 pgs., Partial-Color, 6.5" x 9", Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-6299-1465-7
Age Rating: 7+
ICv2 Rating: 4 Stars out of 5
This hybrid book is unusual in several ways. First, it's aimed more at girls than at boys, the common audience for this story format. Second, it intersperses long wordless graphic passages in between short text sections. These graphic sections are dream sequences, if Dr. Seuss was designing your dreams. Third, the story that it tells is a surprisingly sophisticated story about family dynamics and life, but written for about a third- or fourth-grader.
Anne lives with a VERY dysfunctional family. Her father has wandered off, not for the first time, to work on a project that he thinks will improve the world, but the fact is that he keeps abandoning his family when he does these things. Usually these flights of fancy are measured in days, but this time he has vanished from the face of the earth for long enough that his wife basically has given up on him, and takes their daughter to live with her husband’s parents. The grandparents are weird and quirky themselves, terrible communicators and thoughtless in a goofy way. The book's title comes from the fact that they give her "healthy" bagels with a greenish tinge to take to school, and she gets that painfully funny nickname.
This weird combination leads to a great story, one that will appeal to many readers. The artwork helps to lighten up the serious parts of the story. Anne's attempts to deal with the weirdness of her life will help at least some readers realize that their own lives could be a lot worse, but without being preachy.
The story is suitable for all ages, although beginning readers will need help with some of the vocabulary.
--Nick Smith: Library Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library in California.
