Book-It 'o11! Book #57
The Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one and two, just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge
Details: Copyright 2011, Amulet Books
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Everyone sees a quiet redhead who draws things. But when I close my eyes, I'm laughing and screaming and scheming and daydreaming.
New city. New friends. New Paige?
When Paige's parents move her family from Virginia to New York City, Paige doesn't know where she fits in anymore. At first, the only thing keeping her company is her notebook where she pours her worries and observations and experiments with her secret identity: ARTIST. With the confidence the book brings her, she starts to make friends and shake up her family's expectations. But is she ready to become the person she draws in her notebook?
Laura Lee Gulledge's stunning art digs deep into the soul and exposes all the ups, downs, and sideways feelings of being a young adult on the edge of the rest of your life."
Why I Wanted to Read It: In my fevered search for more graphic novels from my local library, this was yet another stumble-upon. Young girl, artist... looked promising.
How I Liked It: Art and story are unfortunately still two very separate things.
The book's illustrations border on the gorgeous, particularly when it veers into the surreal. The lines and drawing dawdlings that are the visual artistic expression for a search for identity (in one such example, after sadly concluding that she's become too wrapped up in her own head, she depicts her profile with a lonely landscape, a single dandelion blowing tufts out towards the reader) are the book's strong suit.
Not so strong? The author (who is fairly young) occasionally tries a little too hard (perhaps at the insistence of a publisher or editor?) to incorporate modern youth culture, name-dropping (via t-shirts, posters, and a handy character playlist at the back of the book) carefully indie bands, "hip" comic references, awkwardly incorporating (shoehorning in) "new" technology, and generally depicting teenagers in not only an absolutely unrealistic light, but an unentertaingly unrealistic light.
Hopefully, the author will find a collaborator and/or she'll decide to ditch the youth market, because her work is too exquisite to go to waste on trite tales.
Notable: Paige and her new friends engage in glamour-bombing or guerilla art (maybe they got a hold of this book?) in a style so lovely and almost cute as to hopefully inspire (safe) imitation.
Title: Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge
Details: Copyright 2011, Amulet Books
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Everyone sees a quiet redhead who draws things. But when I close my eyes, I'm laughing and screaming and scheming and daydreaming.
New city. New friends. New Paige?
When Paige's parents move her family from Virginia to New York City, Paige doesn't know where she fits in anymore. At first, the only thing keeping her company is her notebook where she pours her worries and observations and experiments with her secret identity: ARTIST. With the confidence the book brings her, she starts to make friends and shake up her family's expectations. But is she ready to become the person she draws in her notebook?
Laura Lee Gulledge's stunning art digs deep into the soul and exposes all the ups, downs, and sideways feelings of being a young adult on the edge of the rest of your life."
Why I Wanted to Read It: In my fevered search for more graphic novels from my local library, this was yet another stumble-upon. Young girl, artist... looked promising.
How I Liked It: Art and story are unfortunately still two very separate things.
The book's illustrations border on the gorgeous, particularly when it veers into the surreal. The lines and drawing dawdlings that are the visual artistic expression for a search for identity (in one such example, after sadly concluding that she's become too wrapped up in her own head, she depicts her profile with a lonely landscape, a single dandelion blowing tufts out towards the reader) are the book's strong suit.
Not so strong? The author (who is fairly young) occasionally tries a little too hard (perhaps at the insistence of a publisher or editor?) to incorporate modern youth culture, name-dropping (via t-shirts, posters, and a handy character playlist at the back of the book) carefully indie bands, "hip" comic references, awkwardly incorporating (shoehorning in) "new" technology, and generally depicting teenagers in not only an absolutely unrealistic light, but an unentertaingly unrealistic light.
Hopefully, the author will find a collaborator and/or she'll decide to ditch the youth market, because her work is too exquisite to go to waste on trite tales.
Notable: Paige and her new friends engage in glamour-bombing or guerilla art (maybe they got a hold of this book?) in a style so lovely and almost cute as to hopefully inspire (safe) imitation.