For week 12, I read This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki. It is about two girls who spend their summers in a beach town. Usually, when I read comics for this class, I tend to focus my attention on the illustrations since I am a visual person. For this comic, I was very engaged in the storyline which touched on several deeper topics including sex, teen pregnancy, miscarriage, as well as sexism/slut-shaming. I found my self so caught up in reading this, I needed to know what happened to these two girls during their summer. Friendship is the main topic of this book, I liked seeing the conversations that Rose and Windy had especially the deeper ones for example when Rose is using the word “slut” when talking about a teen girl who got pregnant and Windy is trying to convince her that her logic is flawed and sexist. I was so engaged that when summer ended and the girls both parted ways I was sad that it was over. This graphic novel was beautiful to me and I will definitely read it again in the future.
I was doing some research after reading this and I was shocked to see that there is a lot of controversy surrounding this graphic novel and the language that is used in it. The novel received a Caldecott honor which led people to believe that it is suitable for younger audiences. I would not recommend this book for younger readers since there is some language that could be deemed “inappropriate” (curse words and sexual words). There is an abundance of negative reviews on Amazon from parents of younger kids due to the language used which is saddening since it was such a great read and you would expect parents to do more research before buying books for their kids. I would definitely recommend it to teenagers and older readers.
Comments
Post a Comment