American Born Chinese ***

by Gene Luen Yang
Color by Lark Pien
Publishes by First Second 2006
234 pages

A clever little book with lots of charm. It interweaves three seemingly unrelated stories until they all combine at the end to tie everything up. The tie-in I thought was a little weak and felt forced, but the individual stories are very charming and poignant.

The first story is a folktale about a monkey king who is denied into a party where all the cool deities are because he is a monkey and doesn't wear shoes, even though he has trained to be immortal and god-like. He doesn't like this and vows to become powerful and unmonkey like.

The second story is about a boy living in the United States and going to school. He encounters racism and loneliness, until another Asian friend comes along. That friend confronts him when it comes to a girl.

And the third story is a riotous story about a loud, obnoxious overly stereo-typed Chinese cousin who comes to the states and embarrasses his Americanized cousin. The stereotype is so overboard that it is absurd and very funny.

The one common theme to the book is that of being one's self. Even in the Monkey King story, the monkey learns to be a monkey and is okay with that.

The drawing style is clean, and the color is bright and vibrant. Not draw in the typical alternative comic style but very nice to look at and the stories are good.

here are some images from the book.

And here is someone else's opinion, far more eloquent than mine.

Leap Years **

by Ian Bennett
Published by Candle Light Press
2005

This is an okay little graphic novel. It's a story about a lonely young teenage boy going through high school. The story last exactly through his High School career. He meets this imaginary toad, and things start to go right under the toad's tutelage. He becomes a basketball star (the toad makes sure all his shots go in), he starts dating, runs for president and gets accepted to Northwestern University in Evanston. He does less well in school but everything else is going so great that it doesn't matter. He's untouchable. It's a little inconsistent. The toad preaches learning for learning sake but then preaches about cheating. I guess it's okay to cheat since as the book says several times, "what you learn in High School is not taught to you". So it's anti establishment. He even has the last say at the graduation ceremony.

I'm not sure what the lesson was, but the book had it's moments.

Very crudely drawn figures and art. Though I think that was the point.