by Soph Myers-Kelley Puzzled, by Pan Cooke, is the perfect introduction to OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) for a middle schooler who knows someone with the condition or is experiencing it themselves. In this graphic memoir, Cooke shares the story of when he first started noticing his own symptoms of OCD (though he didn’t know what to call it yet) and the multiple ways it showed up in his pre-teen and teenage life. Using the imagery of an unsolved jigsaw puzzle and puzzle pieces, Cooke shows how wrong life can feel for him until he completes a ritual the right way,… Read More
The Con Artists
Book Review by Kevin Wolf Luke Healy plays many roles in The Con Artists. He is the creator (writer/artist), he appears-perhaps as himself—in the Prologue, Intermission, and Epilogue (kind of like Mister Rogers appearance before he put his sweater on and tied his shoes to enter the Land of Make-Believe—and with a disguise change (mustache, different glasses and shirt) becomes the main character, Frank, in this fictional graphic novel. One con artist, Giorgio, becomes clear relatively quickly, but how much of his actions are real and how much are a scam? With the plural book title, who might any… Read More