Jen WangBesprekingen

Ah the last comic of Lumberjanes finally finished. Although I will miss the comics terribly, there still are some chapter books to read to get my fill of the girls including my favorite Ripley! There are two stories in this comic. First one is about a ghost story which terrifies one of the campers and soon after a mysterious figure is eating everything in the mess hall. Time for an investigation! The shorter story is about Ripley trying to find Jen with the help of a Sphinx. Art was wonderful in this issue and of course both stories were cute and silly.

Una historia pequeña sobre amistad y celos, muy bien llevada y muy bien dibujada.

El estilo de Jen Wang me sigue enamorando mucho.

Que belleza todo. Que maravilla de comic e historia. Que desfile de amor.

Frickin tender

I love the art in this graphic novel and I adore this story! A work colleague recommended this book to me a while ago and I've just recently had the opportunity to finally read it. I am making an effort to read more graphic novels and I am so glad I learned about this story. I look reading more from the author.

"Stargazing" is heartfelt and wonderfully captures the beginning friendship between friends, along with friendships fears, benefits, and resilience. Seeing Christine and Moon bond and become friends was the best part of this book.

I went into "In Real Life" with high expectations- several book reviewers I follow (and trust their taste in books) were RAVING about this. People were practically drooling over this graphic novel, and I couldn't wait to read it.
I don't understand that hype anymore. "In Real Life" has an interesting concept and a cool variety of strong, female characters, but overall, the storyline falls flat and the artwork leaves something to be desired.

The story revolves around Anda, a girl who has recently discovered a MMRPG called Coarsegold Online, where she can go on cool quests, fight fantasy creatures, and talk to other women in guilds. She teams up with an avatar named Sarge who convinces Anda to help her slay "gold farmers" - avatars who are simply gathering virtual gold in the game and then selling that virtual gold to players in real life. After doing so, Anda meets and talks to one of these "gold farmers" and finds out that he is a boy named Raymond living in China. He works as a gold farmer many hours a week- it's one of the only jobs he can get.
Slowly, Anda becomes torn between wanting to stay true to the Coarsegold standards and not let gold farming continue, and doing what she feels may be right by trying to help Raymond shape his life in a better way.

Like I said, this had a very interesting plot, and I really liked the tie-ins to economics and real life situations (like Doctorow discussed in his prologue). But these themes feel very weak throughout, and they're not as fully explored as I feel they could have been. For example, when Anda begins asking her father about how strikes work, I think there was definitely an opportunity there for a deeper discussion.
There is also a lot of "waste" in this book- wasted time and wasted space. For instance,during the course of the novel, one of Anda's schoolmates tries to convince Anda's D&D group to be a part of the new Board Game Club. This is brought up again near the end, but this adds almost NO substance to the book at all! That time could have been spent further developing the plot or the topic of economics and gaming.
Also, I'm very unimpressed with the artwork by Jen Wang here. Like a lot of people say, I think the colors are very pretty, and the characters are well drawn. But her backgrounds are very very lazily drawn. Sometimes there is no background, just a white page. Mostly it is a simple wash of color. Even within the Coarsegold game, which is a place of fantasy and cool stuff, the backgrounds are unimpressive. There are a couple of nice buildings or the hint of a forest a few times, but mostly, they're large, empty space with just a splash of green color.

I really want to like this graphic novel. It is a cool book to hold and flip through, but honestly, I think everything could have just been more well-developed. I'd be willing to read something else either Doctorow or Wang worked on, but it's going to be with much lower expectations

Unexpectedly charming. The plot took turns and made me feel things when I had settled down for an easy book about making friends. Ending was not strong tho.

oh so cute. and FUNNYlol the father

Fun read, nice illustrations. Deals with some serious issue of digital economy and its impact on people's lives.

Great art and a very sweet story about self discovery.

OK. Story was kinda silly.

A graphic novel about a young dressmaker who would like to do more than just sew other people’s designs, a prince who secretly loves to wear beautiful dresses, and the friendship that grows between them.

I loved this sort-of fairy tale and its positive representations. Great storytelling, lovely illustrations, fantastic message. I highly recommend it.½

I liked this sweet short book about a young gamer being introduced to the problems of the real world via people she meets in an online game. The illustrations were stylized, imparting a ton of information about the characters and their feelings. I think the story was a little to feel-good for the realities of the topic.

Story: 5.0 / 10
Characters: 8
Setting: 7
Prose: 7
Drawing: 8

Tags: Gaming, MMO, work, leisure, advice, judgement

This one had a twist I did not see coming, but it turns out it's based on the author's life. Sweet and discussion-worthy story about identity (especially Asian-American community expectations) and friendship.

Sweetly charming!

sweet and innocent, an effortless mix of historical fiction and fantasy/folktale royalty, right up until the end. the end was nice, and i don't know what other ending i would want for a ya book about gender identity and expression, but i think i was living too much in the real world, and let's be honest, living in a monastery is pretty much the best possible outcome for Sebastian in the real world. they'd more likely be in prison or dead. i do recommend this book!

ETA: apparently the reason it comes off as historical fiction lite is that the dad was originally Leopold II of Belgium. he and the country got a name change in the second edition. still, yiiiiiiiiikes. that certainly was A Choice.

Oh gosh. This was so beautifully illustrated, adorable, and incredibly heart-warming (though not without a couple stabs in the feelings along the way). Anyone else get Selfridge's vibes from Trippley's? Also, period piece albeit in what I'd guess would be alt!belle epoque because while real world places are namechecked, I'm pretty sure there wasn't a Prince Sebastien of Belgium (aka no real historical figures were harmed in the making of this, nor did we trip on any actual events).

Also, I realize a portion of my reading in the last four months can probably be categorized as "Queer Book Club" and that's fine- on track for my goals of reading more LGBTQ authors/stories for this year.

I really enjoyed this read. I thought this story was super fast pace story. I loved how this book focused on girls and the gaming life. I also really enjoyed the art style of this graphic novel. I really loved this face pace story and also really loved the harder issues this tackled. I also enjoyed the under currents of romance that was present this story def put a smile on my face. I really hope to read more by this author in the future.

I found this graphic novel to adorable read. I really loved this graphic novel so much. I really flew through this book and just found it be such a fun and just made me heart happy. I really loved the storyline and also the drawing. I love it so much that I read it twice just so i could really focus on the smaller details in the story. I really loved it!

I really enjoyed this read. I thought this story was super fast pace story. I loved how this book focused on girls and the gaming life. I also really enjoyed the art style of this graphic novel. I really loved this face pace story and also really loved the harder issues this tackled. I also enjoyed the under currents of romance that was present this story def put a smile on my face. I really hope to read more by this author in the future.

I found this graphic novel to adorable read. I really loved this graphic novel so much. I really flew through this book and just found it be such a fun and just made me heart happy. I really loved the storyline and also the drawing. I love it so much that I read it twice just so i could really focus on the smaller details in the story. I really loved it!

This was unexpectedly charming and moving. And relateable on so many levels.

For me I understood where both Sebastian and Frances were coming from; obligation vs. self is a common struggle (if not always so dramatically and prettily done).

At some point we're all faced with the question of what our dreams mean to us and how we can incorporate them into our lives. For Sebastian his dream was the harder of the two - even now it would be a harder dream to see fulfilled, even though the world has progressed in some ways.

I greatly enjoyed the kinetic feeling of the drawings as well. I read a (very) early advanced reader copy of this book (digitally no less), so I can't speak to how the images will look in print, but just from what I've seen they will pop. The colors are softer, with bright colors really coming off the page and catching you with the detail work.

In the end I found this book to be the perfect way to pass a couple hours and look forward to sharing it with my niece.

Well, that was a lovely, sweet story about identity and acceptance. I really enjoyed both characters' relationships with femininity—Frances, a young woman who designs unusual and eyecatching dresses but whose own personal style is much more subdued, was a character I could so relate to. When we talk about gender presentation we tend to conflate our tastes with our presentation, but women can enjoy glitz and sparkles without wanting to incorporate them into our own fashion.

I adore Jen Wang's art; she's an amazing colorist, and her lineart is so expressive. The notes at the back confirm that she still does traditional inking with a brush, and it's my amateur opinion that you can really tell the difference.