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Book Reviewed by:
Rory L. Aronsky
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Hey, Kiddo is a profoundly important memoir about growing up in a family grappling with addiction, and finding the art that helps you survive.
In kindergarten, Jarrett Krosoczka's teacher asks him to draw his family, with a mommy and a daddy. But Jarrett's family is much more complicated than that. His mom is an addict, in and out of rehab, and in and out of Jarrett's life. His father is a mystery - Jarrett doesn't know where to find him, or even what his name is. Jarrett lives with his grandparents - two very loud, very loving, very opinionated people who had thought they were through with raising children until Jarrett came along.
Jarrett goes through his childhood trying to make his non-normal life as normal as possible, finding a way to express himself through drawing even as so little is being said to him about what's going on. Only as a teenager can Jarrett begin to piece together the truth of his family, reckoning with his mother and tracking down his father.
Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s graphic memoir is a prime example of a book that can help people feel less alone in situations where they think they are unique. The arc is a hopeful one, from living with a drug-addicted parent to taking the one class that sets him on the path to his life's work. He has created a powerful beacon for those who have been searching for the same kind of hope, and this graphic novel memoir reaches deep into the heart and soul and lodges itself there...continued
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(Reviewed by Rory L. Aronsky).
In the Beyond the Book feature that accompanies the review of the graphic novel Home After Dark, there's a list of books to read – basically a graphic novel starter pack. The earliest on the list is Maus, the Holocaust-as-cats-and-mice graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, published in 1986.
But go back eight years and you'll find A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories by Will Eisner, published in 1978. Although historian Richard Kyle coined the term in 1964, Eisner's book is widely regarded as the first full-fledged graphic novel. When it was published, Eisner said that he had "…settled on the term as an adequate euphemism" for a comic book, and that the class he taught, called Sequential Art, was what a graphic ...
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