This is yet another entry in a disturbing trend we are seeing more and more. Whether publishers and authors like it or not, graphic novels are always going to have young children as their primary audience. The format, at its core, communicates that it is for young kids who are drawn to page after page of illustrations. The problem comes when, as is the case in this book, when a graphic novel is used to communicate a story that should not be read by this younger audience (our classic example came in our review of “Hey Kiddo”).
This graphic novel betrays its inevitable young audience by delivering a story that is honestly just a huge downer. Often stories that are deep and moving have sad parts. This book is just sad, with no real redeeming content. This really makes it a poor fit for a graphic novel format. We don’t know who exactly would really enjoy the content of this book, but certainly not the young children who will end up being the audience (which is really disappointing considering the cover calling this a “Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection”).
There are other issues to bring up. The two biggest for Christians are the inclusion of what appears to be two men in a non-Biblical relationship (shown in several drawings) and the presence of a significant amount of superstition. The main character is on a trip (without any parents, with a group she has not met, somewhat supervised by a person her Dad used to know years ago… but we digress). This trip is to see an underground body of water with supposed magic-like abilities that people have claimed has granted them wishes. She desperately seeks to go and make a wish to undo a tragedy of the past. This is reinforced for children by comments by the main character and others, such as “I really think the lake could help her… If she truly believes in it, then it’ll work” and “I think the lake can make a wish come true if you ask in the right way, and if you really believe deep down” (speaking to a child) and that the lake “can make impossible things happen”. We also hear of “fortune-telling peaches”, a wishing lark where you tell it a secret you want to come true and release it, and similar items.
In a flashback we read/see a heartbreaking scene where the main character’s mother says to her father, “How can you celebrate with her (for her birthday)?? After what she did? I can’t even bear to look at her!” This is one of several examples of Mom being uber-depressed after a tragedy, which comes across super heavy. At one point we hear that “Mom tried to hurt herself again”. At one point he main character cuts her hair because of all this saying she “didn’t want to look like herself anymore”.
A few additional concerning items:
The main character has a dream of a tour bus driving off the road and off a large cliff. We only find out after it was a dream.
The main character and friend deface a local site on a trip with graffiti.
An older woman is asked why her husband is not with her and she responds, “Oh, he is much too old and grouchy”.
When hallucinating, a character sees a weird tree thing talking to her.
Another girl on the trip asks her, “So, how many R-rated movies have you watched?” We also hear of a scary-movie marathon.