One of our more frequent graphic novel warnings to parents is that, more and more today, the content does not fit what you expect from the colorful graphic novel format and its inevitable younger audience focus. That is certainly the case here. In this case it is less about immoral content and more about the age appropriateness of the subject matter as life and death, are brought to the focus in a fictional story.
This more mature subject matter does introduce a few things that parents will be surprised by.
At one point Winnie comments “I expect I better run away” (from home)
A family that is shown as kind and good get desperate and snatches Winnie up to avoid a huge secret coming out. Winnie refers to this as kidnapping.
An evil man appears to blackmail and mama strikes him with an object that ends up killing him.
A character shoots himself to prove he is invincible.
A police officer mentions having gallows for hanging someone if ever needed.
This nice family breaks mama out of jail. She is in there for a crime she definitely committed. This brings up a very worldly quasi-morality situation. To make it worse, Winnie actually sneaks out of her home in the middle of the night to help with the plan. To make it even worse, the book implies that kids started liking her more once they found out her part in the crime.
In a Q&A section at the end, a matter of fact statement says that “Of course, it’s true” about our light simply going out like a flame one day (pointing to death). Christians know our bodily death is of course not the true end of the story.
We also want to make sure to point out that once returned from the kidnapping mentioned above, Winnie comments that “Things happened to me that are mine alone and nothing to do with my family”. This is obviously a really dangerous line of thinking to put in front of a small child.
A few other items to consider:
A house is said to be one “you wanted to… maybe throw a rock or two” at.
Winnie begins to worry and the illustrations show a few examples that may frighten some readers.
A police officer smokes a cigar.