Author: Gene Ambaum

The Cliff by Manon Debaye. Translated by Montana Kane. Drawn & Quarterly, 2023. 9781770466944. 152pp. Thirteen-year-old Charlie and Astrid make a secret blood pact to commit suicide on Friday, before noon, by holding hands and jumping off the cliff. Astrid […]
Read More

Firebugs by Nino Bulling. Drawn & Quarterly, 2024. 9781770467057. 164pp. This German graphic novel is a beautiful book full of art that’s mostly black and white with red accents. Red is also used for the panel borders and dialogue. The […]
Read More

Lightfall is my favorite kids / tween graphic novel series. If you’ve never read one of these, go read book one, The Girl & The Galdurian. Everything about it is beautiful, and it makes me wish my now-adult daughter still […]
Read More

Beowulf by Santiago Garcia and David Rubin. Translation by Sam Stone and Joe Keatinge. Image, 2018. 9781534309197. I read this version years ago and loved it; reading Zach Weinersmith and Boulet’s Bea Wolf made me want to reread it. This […]
Read More

The Gulf by Adam De Souza. Tundra, 2024. 9781774880753. 236pp. 2007, British Columbia. At the end of high school, Olivia runs away to join The Evergreen Community, a commune, to try to escape the meaninglessness of attending university and getting […]
Read More

Little Monarchs by Jonathan Case. Margaret Ferguson / Holiday House, 2022. 9780823442607. 256pp. My wife Silver bought a signed copy of this book at the ALA conference last year, and she very generically said she loved it but never mentioned […]
Read More

Robo Sapiens: Tales of Tomorrow by Toranosuke Shimada. Translation by Adrienne Beck. Seven Seas, 2021. 9781648275982. 304pp. Publisher’s Rating: Teen (13+) The thirteen chapters in this book (I think it’s a 2-in-1 edition) feel like short stories. Most feature a […]
Read More

Polar Vortex: A Family Memoir by Denise Dorrance. The Experiment, 2024. 9781615199051. 256pp. Dorrance’s graphic memoir opens with her trying to call her elderly mother, who lives alone on a quiet street in Iowa. After an email arrives from an […]
Read More

Pearl of the Sea by Anthony Silverston, Raffaella Delle Donne, and Willem Samuel. Catylist Press, 2023. 9781946395740. 164pp.. Pearl spends more time in the water than on land, diving for crayfish and abalone, though it’s illegal. (She and her dad […]
Read More

49 Days by Agnes Lee. Arthur A. Levine, 2024. 9781646143757. 352pp. For forty-nine days, Kit roams what I’m going to call the outskirts of the afterlife. (In the Buddhist tradition, this is the period between death and rebirth, according to […]
Read More