Graphic Novel Review: Louis Armstrong Jazz Legend

When I was a music major in college (yep, for one year), all roads in our jazz music history class rightly went through the life story of Satchmo, or Louis Armstrong. While there were many before him (Sidney Bechet, for example) who nurtured the concept of jazz before it became mainstream, it was Armstrong nearly alone who rode the wave of popularity of jazz and gave it both an inventive and popular culture twist — in concerts, on records, in movies.

And on street corners.

This graphic novel biography — Louis Armstrong: Jazz Legend — tells a condensed life story of the legendary Armstrong, from his roots in one of the toughest neighborhoods in New Orleans where some gun play lands him in a youth detention center where he first learns to play music, to his scramble to find enough coins to buy his first horn, to his band work with renowned leader Big Joe Oliver, to singing Hello Dolly as a surprise hit (he didn’t like the song all that much and sang it as a toss-away song) on the big screen. The narrative tone of this graphic novel (aimed at elementary students) is Armstrong’s own voice, told through a short history he wrote while recuperating in a hospital bed.

The pace of the book is quick, moving from one event to another like a riff, and as always with Capstone Press graphic books, there is a solid glossary at the back with musical terminology and a text version of Armstrong’s life, as well as some additional website links that readers can follow to learn more about Satchmo (called that because he had a large mouth and was nicknamed Satchel Mouth, before shortened to Satchmo) and his impact on popular music and jazz.

I wasn’t all that keen on the illustrations in this book, but I get that the artist was trying to capture the free jazz style of Armstrong in the drawings. I found them a bit too rudimentary, and green-washed, for my own liking.

Peace (in the story of jazz),
Kevin

 

Book Review: Jennifer Government

I really like Max Barry’s Lexicon, so I wandered back to this earlier novel, Jennifer Government. I wanted to like it. I did. But I didn’t. It felt as if I were reading a screenplay, not a novel, and when I looked at the publication date, it reminded me of how we need to time for writers to find their voice and vision. So, yes to Lexicon but no to Jennifer Government. The premise is interesting — the story is set in some not-too-distant future where two business conglomerates are basically running the world, with the government (the United States has taken over a few countries) running a distant third in terms of power.

Employees at companies take on the last name of that company, so John Nike is the villain here, and Jennifer Government is a federal agent chasing him. Other characters include Claire Sears, Hack Nike, etc. You get the picture, right? The pace of the novel is frantic, and I had trouble keeping up with the characters — who are very one dimensional, unfortunately — and the plot points, which are all over the place. It’s almost as if Barry is throwing everything he had into this book (and the author’s note has him thanking a friend for suggesting he remove another main character out all together … yikes.)

Here’s the thing– I wanted to like this book, and I wanted to like the character of Jennifer Government. But it felt as if Barry never gave me the chance to like either. Just as I would be settling in, the plot would shift and move. Like I said, this felt more like a screenplay than a novel. I’m just grateful he has found his voice as a writer now. Lexicon is worth your time.  It will make you think and engages you on a few levels. Jennifer Government — not so much. It will make you want to take a break from the book. That’s never a good thing.

Peace (in the review),
Kevin

 

 

Vine View: Graphic Novels Delivery


I am lucky. Every now and then, I get a box of graphic novels delivered as part of my work with The Graphic Classroom website (which may or may not still be around. I still get the books, though, and review them here.) I had to snap a Vine of the box, just minutes before my youngest son dove in (he gets first look, of course).

Peace (in the books),
Kevin

 

Graphic Novel Review: Boxers & Saints

If you have not had the opportunity to read Gene Leun Yang’s graphic novels, you really should. His eye for detail and for bringing the mystical into a story is interesting to experience. American Born Chinese is becoming a fixture in many classroom, and it should be. That graphic novel is storytelling at its best. His latest books are two stories of China that are really one story, told from two perspectives, in two different graphic novels.

Boxers focuses in on the Chinese resistance to Christian missionaries and Europeans who came to “tame” China (and reap its wealth, too, of course) in the late 1800s. The graphic story centers on Little Bao, who emerges as a leader of the resistance forces who seek to throw the white invaders out of China and retain their Chinese cultural identity. Saints is the companion book, viewing the same events through the eyes of a young girl who sees the Christian faith as the true path forward, seeing progress in the new religious views and savagery in those who remain fixed in the past.

I wish Saints were as powerful as Boxers, but I fear not. Yang seems to have focused much more of his creative energy on the story of resistance, and the story is wonderfully told, with deep characters, motivations and illuminating artwork that brings the reader not only into the mind of Little Bao but also into the heart of China, with all of its deep history and cultural pride. Be warned: there are gruesome battles in these books, and are not for the feint of heart. The violence is part of the setting, however, and Yang is not one to toss blood and gore into a story just for the heck of it.

Saints is the weaker of the two books, thinner in both size and in story. A young girl, an outcast in many ways in her own family and village, finds faith in the Christian missionaries, and finds companionship in the spectral image of Joan of Arc, who visits the girl (Vibiana, her name after her conversion) regularly to inspire her faith and her heart. While Vibiana is a character to care for (there are funny, telling scenes at the start of the story that provide a rich insight into who she is), the story of her growth and her role in the stamping out of the resistance movement lacked the development of Boxers, in my mind.

But Yang’s move to wrap these two stories around each other was intriguing. We catch glimpses of both characters in the other story from time to time. I read Saints first, and had that in my mind as I read Boxers. But I wonder if my experience would have been different if I had read them the other way around?

Peace (in the story),
Kevin

Book Review: The Keeper of Lost Causes

I still remember the summer I discovered The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and how I devoured the books, one after another. Maybe you remember, too. The problem, of course, is that the series ended, and the novelist is long dead, and so that was that. Done.  But the series certainly opened my eyes to Scandinavian mystery writers, and I have been on the prowl for other series. In this way, I am a marketing dream for book publishers, right? I know. I know. I admit it.

I recently came across The Keeper of Lost Causes mainly because a piece in a magazine was making connections back to The Girl series. (See? Marketing gimmick works. Actually, my wife commented on the book cover design, noting the similarities to The Girl covers) And while this first book in a series called Department Q (a police department whose task is to clear out old cases) by writer Jussi Adler-Olsen is not nearly as engaging as I remember The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it worked for me.

I liked the main character — Carl Mørck, a detective with some demons, and gruff nature — and the twin storylines (that I won’t give away) that slowly connected together. It’s not really a mystery of unknowns, per se, but the story unfolds at a nice pace, with interesting characters, and the use of humor and the Dutch setting gives it an interesting feel. It’s not deeply political, but there are some politics at the edges of the story.  The Keeper of Lost Causes kept me hooked this summer, and I went out to get the second in the series — The Absent One — so that I could keep going. (A third book — A Conspiracy of Faith — was just published here in the US, too.)

Peace (in the pages),
Kevin

 

Book Review: The Spies of Gerander

It’s always a wonderful thing when you stumble on the perfect read-aloud series. Such is the case with author Frances Watts and her The Song of the Winns series. My son and I just finished the second book in the series (which Watts is still writing, so now we wait) called The Spies of Gerander.  The story revolves around four young mice — two brothers, a sister and a friend — who must become spies. One team infiltrates the palace of the monarch bent on destroying their family’s homeland; the other team is off to rescue their parents from a prison island.

Needless to say, treachery abounds everywhere, and danger lurks behind every corner.

The Winns is a river flowing through the country in question, and it is slowly becoming the fulcrum upon which the plot turns and twists.

Watts does a wonderful job of setting two stories in motion, leaving the reader dangling at the edge of chapters, and then tying the stories together by the end while still leaving some larger stories unresolved. She did this with the first book in the series, too (The Secret of the Ginger Mice). She clearly is a master storyteller, and my son and I now wait for the third installment sometime in the future.

Peace (in the reading),
Kevin

 

 

Hacking/Remixing the Stories of Richard Scarry

Book Hack 1

I’m not sure if he is still alive and if he is, how happy he would be, but yesterday, in my workshop for high school students, we ripped, cut, hacked , shredded and remixed one of Richard Scarry’s picture books. To be frank, I even cringed a little bit, as I watched students go at the pages with scissors, glue, and ideas. Books are still sacred texts in my head. I don’t regret it though.

First of all, the book had seen some solid reading days with my three boys, and the binding was coming apart. And I bought the book, so I figure I own it. We could hack it.

Second, we remixed the book to make a few points in this digital literacies workshop that I am leading with these English Language Learner high school students. We’ve been talking about hacking and remixing as part of the digital culture they live in (referencing Dangermouse’s work with The Beatles and Jay-Z as reference points), and we will move deeper into both concepts today and next week when we jump into Mozilla’s Webmaker Tools. Our discussions yesterday centered on the perceptions of the word “Hacker” and I gave a brief history lesson of the Internet and the origin of the Hacker Movement, as well as touched on the Hack for Change events that are popping up. By the end, we had a nice balance of good/bad hacking.

Then, we moved into hacking and remixing this Nursery Rhyme picture book by Richard Scarry. Their task was to remix some pages of the book, to tell a new story, using three of the 11 digital literacy vocabulary words that have been introduced. We have word walls up, and we do daily activities with the words — such as portfolio, digital literacy, remixing. (I’ll share that work out another day). I shared out the one that I did as a sort of Mentor Text.

Book Hack 2

To be frank, I was sure if the high school kids would dive into it. And it took a few minutes. Then, they were all cutting up the pages and coming up with stories, and very engaged. It was pretty neat to watch.
hackbook collage2
The results is a nice, colorful wall of remixed Richard Scarry characters talking about digital literacies.
Hackbook Collage1
Today, we remix the remix, as I will be giving them sticky notes, and having them add new dialogue or text to someone else’s posters. Should be interesting …

Peace (in the book hack),
Kevin

 

Book Review: You

Novels about video games often run the risk of being too immersed in the gaming culture to establish a solid story, or they go the other way and become so little about the game that the story never connects.

Austin Grossman’s novel, You, mostly avoids those pitfalls as he weaves a story of a game design company with an interesting backstory. The narrator, a childhood acquaintance of the founders of Black Arts gaming, has come back for a job as a game designer after failed attempts to find a foothold in life. The company is on the edge of ruin, taken over by a investor looking for quick profits, and the company’s glory days are far behind it now, with the death of one its visionary programmers and the exodus of a senior partner.

Oh, and a nasty bug is loose in the game worlds, and it may very well destroy the virtual universe created by the company. Also, through some crafty programming and marketing that led the company to build software for e-trading, the bug may very well precipitate a financial Black Monday on Wall Street, too. These plot points move the book along, and Grossman’s experience in the game design field is evident. But is the human stories told here, of various characters as  the narrator, Russell, remembers what it was like to be part of this group of young outcast high school Dreamers who wanted to change the world, and saw their chance with video game design.

There were some scenes when I started to lose the thread, particularly when Russell gets visited by the four archetypes of heroes from the games he is playing (in order to find the bug, which creates sword that destroys everything) and designing (Russell is the lead designer for a new game). But mostly, Grossman keeps the story moving forward, and the enigma of Simon, a character who has died but whose legacy infects everything in the company, the game and the book (including the creation of the bug) is intriguing, and I wish there were more about him. But maybe Simon as a mystery is part of what drives the narrative here.

You works as a novel, and a primer on the inside of a game design company.

Peace (in the pages),
Kevin

 

Graphic Novel Review: Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant

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Now here is a pleasant surprise: a female protagonist in an adventure/action graphic novel story, whose wit and expertise carry the day. In Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, by Tony Cliff, the heroine — Delilah Dirk — meets up with Erdemoglu Selim (the lieutenant), strikes up a friendship in the midst of escaping one trap or another, and moves on to even more danger in her life as a freewheeling spirit whose never known to pass up the possibility of treasure, no matter how dangerous it might be.

This book by the  publishing company of First Second evolved from a webcomic series that Cliff has been developing and publishing online, but I enjoyed the adventure book without knowing a single thing of the backstory of Delilah Dirk.  Her swashbuckling energy drew me right into the story. In fact, I found it fascinating to catch a glimpse of her character through her actions, although Cliff focuses more on Selim as the psuedo-narrator of the story here, which begins when Selim is kicked out of his job because of Delilah, is almost executed because of it and then has his life saved by the story’s heroine.

There’s a breathless rush of action here, sort of like Indiana Jones, and the artwork is beautiful. We never quite resolve how a woman of Delilah’s talents conflicts with the mores of the Turkish society (male-dominated) but I appreciated Cliff’s restraint from developing a love interest between the two main characters. In fact, Delilah is not sexualized at all, although she is beautiful in mind, spirit and intelligence. Plus, she’s the most skilled sword fighter in the book.

And did I mention her flying ship?

There’s a lot to appreciate in Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant and I look forward to more adventures.

Peace (in the book),
Kevin

 

Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Adult stories never made sense. They made me feel like they were secrets, Masonic, mythic secrets, to adulthood. Why didn’t adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies?” — unnamed narrator, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

There some authors, that when they publish something new, I am so ready to devour their stories. Neil Gaiman is one of those writers, although I came late to his books in just the last few years. His style and sense of the world is so unique that, even with his quirkiness (or maybe because of it), his books find a way to draw you in and give in to imagination. I still think Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is one of the best examples of young adult fiction published in recent years, even if it does begin with a brutal murder.

His latest – The Ocean at the End of the Lane — has faint echoes of other classics that capture childhood in a story for adults. Namely, A Wrinkle in Time resonates throughout The Ocean at the End of the Lane. That’s a good thing, in my mind, and Gaiman plays with our sense of time and timelessness in unexpected ways in this story of a young boy whose neighbors have a certain magic that brings something awful into the world. The nameless adult narrator, remembering a time when he seven years old, tells this tale to us, and while the first part of the book moves slowly, it sets the stage for everything else to come.

This is a “coming of age” sort of book, but not quite, as Gaiman explores the fierce perceptions of childhood, and how adults see the world one way, and their children, another. I suppose this is true. What Gaiman explores is the dichotomy of adults viewing childhood as a safe place, while children know otherwise. There is danger and chaos lurking around every corner of our imagination, and the slightest mistake — say, forgetting to hold hands with the girl who tells you to never let go of her hand — can uncork things unimaginable and set the world on tilt.

This novel is a short one, fast-paced, and by the time you hit the middle, you’ll be racing for the end. If you are like me, the resonance of magic will linger for some time, and it may have you looking at your own children a little differently. Keep them safe, will you? And I would suggest that this book is for adults, not children, although it comes under the guise of a children’s story. But perhaps Gaiman would disagree, and argue that keeping children sheltered is not what we want to be doing. He’s not afraid to expose the dark underpinnings of the world, and maybe stories are a way to understand what we don’t quite understand.

Peace (in the magic),
Kevin