CET Writes

This 2018 Maverick List honoree and @CTXTeenComicCon guest speaker brings lush artwork and magical realism to the #WeNeedDiverseComics movement. #LibrariesRRock #RRockReviewsHS ​ #MaverickList #yartxla #CTXComicCon   |   @nidhiart ,  @01FirstSecond

In this 2019 #MaverickList honoree,  @strangelykatie creates a gentle world in which miniature dragons have more in common with house cats than beasts of destruction. Check it out to see what kind of Tea Dragon you will be!  @OniPress   |   #CETReviews #RRockReviewsMS #RRockReviewsHS

With messaging, more subtle than the original,  @MollyOstertag 's sequel to Witch Boy enriches the series premise and strengthens the characterization of the denizens--making it clear that this tale is more than a one-off.  #CETReviews #RockReviewsMS #RockReviewsHS   |   @GraphixBooks

This 2020 #MaverickList nominee, hurls the reader two years into the future, a world where the rules have changed & crush is forbidden, so hold on tight as the ride is anything but smooth.   #CETReviews   #RockReviewsHS   |   @babsdraws ,  @brendenfletcher ,  @cameronMstewart ,  @ImageComics

Cover from Goodreads As a typical American teenager, Pri (Priyanka Das) has a lot of questions. As the child of a single, Indian immigrant mother, she has many unanswered questions: Why did her mother leave India? What was India like? Who is her father, and why did her mom leave him? Unfortunately Pri’s mom avoids answering these questions—putting a strain on their relationship and further piquing Priyanka’s interest, as India seems to call to her. Just when mother and daughter seem to be at an impasse, Pri finds a mysterious pashmina that holds the answers to her questions and transports her back to the seat of her heritage. But is this the real? In order to gain the answers that she craves, Pri must travel farther than she’s ever dared—physically, intellectually, and spiritually. This graphic novel's heartwarming navigation of the quotidien terrain of maturation, the hardship of self-discovery, and the adolescent tendency to rail against the confines of familial authority ar...

Although he’s a civilian now, Mark finds himself sucked back into war by Jason, his old army buddy, who seduces him away from his staid consulting job with promises of a lucrative military contract for a mining job in an obscure South-east Asian country. Unfortunately, what awaits them is the stuff of nightmares - a civil war led by magical child soldiers with an army of god-warriors. Albeit this text is well executed and visually very impressive, the imagery and plot are disturbing to the extent that I do  NOT recommend it for school libraries. The Divine  by Asaf Hanuka (Illustrator), Tomer Hanuka (Illustrator), and Boaz Lavie (Author) Adult  First Second  160 pp. Published 2015  ISBN  978-1596436749 $19.99 Magical Realism

At seventeen, Emery Land finds her life voraciously consumed by physical deterioration resulting from seizures.   Practically living in a hospital under constant surveillance by her scientist father and an ostensibly-skeptical team of doctors, she feels herself a lab rat; consequently, weighing the stifling emotional price of her caged existence against the physically lethal cost of freedom, Emery flees in order to pursue her theory that during her seizures she travels through time and space.  Inhabiting an emotional purgatory that exists somewhere between the heaven of free will and the hell of self-recriminations, she meets Asher Clarke who seems to be intimately entwined with her plight.  Together, they must race against the Doomsday clock to understand the truth of their complicated connection.  Above all else,  Flutter  is a beautifully-written, poignant tale of possibly-star-crossed lovers that questionably ends in death but certainly avoids b...

Image from amazon.com “La Sonnambula and the City of Sleep: A Fragment of a Dream” is one of many texts collected in an anthology of P. Craig Russell’s work, titled Isolation and Illusion: Collected Short Stories 1977-1997 . In this wordless tale, Russell employs colorless, romantic and surreal illustrations to evoke the strange opulence of a dream world. The plot begins with a frame story in which the protagonist sleepwalks. While sleepwalking, she dreams of being an angel who joins others to journey to the City of Sleep where they gather at a tower and peer through the window at a Rude Goldbergesque machine that generates the world of dreams. Upon entering this world, the angels soar through the air, narrowly escape the predators of the sea, and revel in their own splendor. Eventually, the protagonist leaves the group and returns alone to the city where she re-enters the tower and exits the dream world that it creates. “La Sonnambula” pairs well with Samuel Taylor Coleri...