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Reading Challenge A nonfiction graphic novel |
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A brief history of a long war : Ukraine's fight against Russian domination
by Mariam Naiem, illustrated by Yulia Vus and Ivan Kypibida
A beautifully illustrated and comprehensive graphic history of Ukraine's centuries-long struggle against Russian domination, from the Middle Ages to today's devastating war, by an award-winning journalist and Ukrainian cultural historian. Featuring gorgeous illustrations by Ukrainian artists Yulia Vus and Ivan Kypibida,A Brief History of a Long War is an ode to the moments of resistance and resilience from the Ukrainian people in the face of Russia's oppressive, colonial history.
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Black arms to hold you up : a history of Black resistance
by Ben Passmore
'You're not out in the streets with everyone else?' Ronnie asks his ambivalent son Ben, shambling in with arms full of used books: the works of Malcom X, Robert F. Williams, Assata, and Sanyika Shakur, among others. 'Black liberation is your fight, too.' So begins Black Arms to Hold You Up, a boisterous, darkly funny, and sobering march through Black militant history by political cartoonist Ben Passmore. From Robert Charles's shootout with the police in 1900, to the Black Power movement in the 1960s, to the Los Angeles and George Floyd uprisings of the 1990s and the aughts, readers will tumble through more than a century of armed resistance against the racist state alongside Ben--and meet firsthand the mothers and fathers of the movement, whose stories were as tragic as they were heroic.
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Can't we talk about something more pleasant? : a memoir
by Roz Chast
A graphic memoir by a long-time New Yorker cartoonist celebrates the final years of her aging parents' lives through four-color cartoons, family photos and documents that reflect the artist's struggles with caregiver challenges.
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Gender queer : a memoir
by Maia Kobabe
An autobiography about the author's path to identifying as nonbinary and asexual, and eir story about coming out to eir family and society. By addressing questions about gender identity--what it means and how to think about it--the story also doubles as a much-needed, useful, guide.
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The hidden life of trees : a graphic adaptation
by Peter Wohlleben
This vibrantly illustrated graphic novel follows Peter as its loveable main character, revealing the secret network of the forest and sharing struggles and triumphs from his career protecting trees. Told in Peter's warm, conversational voice, not unlike that of a beloved grandfather chatting fireside, this visually stunning book offers scientific insights and pearls of wisdom gained from Peter's decades of observing forests, including how trees impact weather and climate, how they communicate with each other, and how they interact with fungal networks deep within the ground. It also offers poignant memories from Peter's personal life.
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It rhymes with Takei
by George Takei
For the first time ever, George Takei shares the full story of his life in the closet, his decision to come out as gay at the age of 68, and the way that moment transformed everything. From his earliest childhood crushes and youthful experiments in the rigidly conformist 1950s, to global fame as an actor and the terrible fear of exposure, to the watershed moment of speaking his truth and becoming one of the most high-profile gay men on the planet, this book offers a sweeping portrait of one iconic American navigating the tides of LGBTQ+ history.
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Knitstrips : the world's first comic-strip knitting book
by Alice Ormsbee Beltran, Karen Kim Mar, illustrated by Laura Irrgang and Michele Phillips
The world's first comic-strip knitting book, Knitstrips presents 22 original patterns, boundless humor, and seriously appealing knitting instruction. Inspired, original, and laugh-out-loud funny, knitstrips are patterns and knitting instruction mixed with advice and humorous commentary--and presented in illustrated comic book panels. The book includes 22 brand-new patterns and is designed to mimic a bound collection of comic books in a series: each issue with its own cover and wry theme--from yarn stashes to binge knitting--that is close to the heart of knitters. Issues offer four to six knitting patterns each, plus designer highlights and a variety of stories and technical discussions. The result is a fresh, lively knitting adventure that is like nothing the fiber world has seen before.
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Oak Flat : a fight for sacred land in the American West
by Lauren Redniss
Oak Flat tells the story of a race-against-time struggle for a swath of American land, which pits one of the poorest communities in the United States against the federal government and two of the world's largest mining conglomerates. The book follows the fortunes of two families with profound connections to the contested site: the Nosies, an Apache family whose teenage daughter is an activist and leader in the Oak Flat fight, and the Gorhams, a mining family whose patriarch was a sheriff in the lawless early days of Arizona statehood.
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Something, not nothing : a story of grief and love
by Sarah Leavitt
In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt's partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo's death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolor, ink, and colored pencil--for Sarah, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation. She spent two years creating these comics.The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love.
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Solutions and other problems
by Allie Brosh
Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh's childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.
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Seek you : a journey through American loneliness
by Kristen Radtke
When Kristen Radtke was in her twenties, she learned that, as her father was growing up, he would crawl onto his roof in rural Wisconsin and send signals out on his ham radio. Those CQ calls were his attempt to reach somebody--anybody--who would respond. In Seek You, Radtke uses this image as her jumping off point into an exploration of loneliness and the ways in which we attempt to feel closer to one another.
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The secret to superhuman strength
by Alison Bechdel
From the author of Fun Home, a profoundly affecting graphic memoir of Bechdel's lifelong love affair with exercise, set against a hilarious chronicle of fitness fads in our times.
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Fun home : a family tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel's groundbreaking, bestselling literary graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the Fun Home. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, a unique coming-of-age story written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail. A narrative woven with rich literary allusions and heartbreaking honesty that redefines what a graphic memoir can be.
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In the shadow of no towers
by Art Spiegelman
In the Shadow of No Towers is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of September 11th, 2001. Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda. He responded in the way he knows best. In an oversized, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics (which Spiegelman says brought him solace after the attacks), he relates his experience of the national tragedy in drawings and text that convey--with his singular artistry and his characteristic provocation, outrage, and wit--the unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy.
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Ginseng roots : a memoir
by Craig Thompson
Ginseng Roots. follows Craig Thompson and his siblings--who spent the summers of their youth weeding and harvesting rows of coveted American ginseng on rural Wisconsin farms for one dollar an hour--and interweaves this lost youth with the three-hundred-year history of the global ginseng trade and the many lives it has tied together. Stretching from Marathon, Wisconsin, to northeast China, the book charts the rise of industrial agriculture, the decline of American labor, and the search for a sense of home in a rapidly changing world.
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Welcome to the new world : a graphic novel
by Jake Halpern
After escaping a Syrian prison, Ibrahim Aldabaan and his family fled the country to seek protection in America. Among the few refugees to receive visas, they finally landed in JFK airport on November 8, 2016, Election Day. The family had reached a safe harbor, but woke up to the world of Donald Trump and a Muslim ban that would sever them from the grandmother, brothers, sisters, and cousins stranded in exile in Jordan. Welcome to the New World tells the Aldabaans' story.
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The complete Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi
Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up as a girl in Iran during the revolution. Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming--both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.
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Kid gloves : nine months of careful chaos
by Lucy Knisley
Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother. But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be harder than anything she'd ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages, and her eventual successful pregnancy plagued by health issues, up to a dramatic, near-death experience during labor and delivery. This moving, hilarious, and surprisingly informative memoir, Kid Gloves, not only follows Lucy's personal transition into motherhood but also illustrates the history and science of reproductive health from all angles, including curious facts and inspiring (and notorious) figures in medicine and midwifery.
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