#firstsecond

Horse Trouble by Kristin Varner. First Second, 2021. 9781250225870. 288pp. including an author’s note, photos of Varner as a kid (including a few riding her horse), plus a few pages sharing sketches and her process for creating comics. http://www.powells.com/book/-9781250225870?partnerid=34778&p_bt

Twelve-year-old Kate hates being chubby and loves riding horses. She goes to school with her popular best friend Becky. Tuesdays and Saturdays she takes riding lessons at Millcreek Farm, where she also helps out to help pay for them. There are mean, unpleasant girls at both school and the barn, and Kate’s brother and his friends are jerks too. The fact that Kate keeps falling off horses as she’s training for competitions doesn’t help her self-esteem, either. The book is about her growing up a little, figuring out that she’s maybe somewhat cool (as is her brother), and that she’s more than a little awesome at riding, too.

My friend Marin has loved riding since she was a kid, and this book demystifies that for me. (My dad loved horses, too, but I’ve preferred motorcycles since my saddle came off an out-of-control horse running at full gallop on a beach.) This book has definitions of specialized vocabulary about horses and riding in “footnotes” that I found really helpful. I now know that the person who saddled the horse I fell off of probably wasn’t paying attention. That horse maybe have been bloating, which allowed the saddle to slip.

Worth noting: The drawings are charming, as is the use of red ink as an occasional accent color. I’ve read that it’s especially hard to draw horses well, and the horses in this book look spectacular, as do all of Kate’s falls and competitions.

Himawari House by Harmony Becker. First Second, 2021. 9781250235565. 384pp. with a note on the use of accents in the book + early sketches in the back. http://www.powells.com/book/-9781250235565?partnerid=34778&p_bt

Nao moves from the U.S back to Japan, where she was born, to study Japanese for a year between high school and college. She lives in shared housing with four others: Hyejung, from South Korea, who is studying for university entrance exams in Japan; Tina from Singapore who is doing the same; and two young Japanese dudes, the friendly Shinichi and very quiet Masaki. As Nao reconnects with her childhood self and tries to figure out if she’s gaijin or Japanese, the five form the type of fast, deep friendships that can only happen when everyone is in a new place, trying to help each other. (The other characters inner live are explored a bit in the book, too.) The story includes crushes, holiday parties, karaoke, part-time jobs, a charming grandma who lives down the street, and the best use of accented English I’ve ever seen in a book.

Worth noting: When the characters speak a language other than English, the language is in the word balloons along with English. It makes for a great chance to practice another language if you know a little of it, and it’s so much better than putting translated language in English between << brackets like this >>, which is what I saw in a lot of comics when I was a kid.

Becker previously drew George Takei’s graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy.

Congratulations and happy book birthday to @boyasun  Chasma Knights released this past week and you should definitely check it out- it’s so good!! I drew this lil’ fan art a while back, but I thought I’d share it for the special occasion. 

I finished coloring The Brain this weekend! ✨ 100+ pages of educational fun~

It won’t be out for another year or so, but I can’t wait for ya’ll to read it!

It’s a book!!! The first copy of the graphic novel I illustrated arrived!! Embossed text! Spot gloss! A bonus cover under the main cover! Four stories written by Nathanial Lachenmeyer, and about 100 pages of color artwork and several years of work. Thank you @FirstSecond for making it look so nice! It comes out June 18 but you can preorder or request it at your library now- all greatly appreciated ☺️✨

#kidlit #graphicnovel #FirstSecond
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