Crenshaw's Books & Decks

I travelled to Bhutan just after the release of this guide. Lucky me! This being so, all the practical information and advice was fresh and reliable, up to date, which is what any person purchasing a travel guide wants.

I found this travel guide very useful and practical, clearly written, well researched, well structured and nicely illustrated. Although most people travel to Bhutan in small-group locally-organised tours, it is possible to visit the country independently -a legal permit is necessary and a previous lengthy detailed application is needed- or semi-dependently by telling the local travel agent the places you want to go and visit and stay to make your own trip. This being the case, I consider the guide a good tool for all sort of travellers, not just the majority using guided tours.

Bhutan History is complex, and historical facts, myth and religion mix in ways that are difficult to separate at times. The authors make a terrific job at condensing and distilling it for the foreign reader in ways that are understandable and entertaining, and surprisingly unbiased at times (read for example the pages devoted to English interventionism).

I also loved the approach to Buthanese Buddhist customs and ways of living, and all the info about Buddhism in Bhutan (Mahayana Buddhism is so complicated!) which are very important to put into practice to show respect and get respect back from the locals, and to understand what is going on in a country that breathes Buddhism. I also found the book very good to find out on matters that some of the guides found embarrassing or inappropriate to comment upon or reply to because they relate to "odd" practices or monks' behaviour, etc., so the guide will tell you what some local guides won't.

The Kindle edition is truly useful, easy to carry around, with linked cross-references that make the book easy to move back and forth, clearly indexed, survivor-kit links, and everything so well structured that using the book is very easy. My only complain is about the formatting of the book using left justification instead of full justification of the text (very early 20th century!), which makes the book look amateurish and unpolished.

The selection of photographs and illustrations is very good, as you can expect from any Lonely Planet guide.

I had many expectations about this book after learning that the movie based on it had won the Palm D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. As  usually happens, high expectations aren't always matched.

"Le bleu est une couleur chaude" (Blue is a Warm Colour, funnily translated as Blue is the Warmest Colour) is the first major work by French graphic artist Julie Maroh. The book narrates the sexual awakening of Clementine, her coming to terms with being a lesbian, and her relationship with Emma. This is a posthumus story, as the book starts from the ending with a flashback narration of the love story as told by Clementine herself in her blue diary.

The artwork is wonderful. The use of colour is just another character in the story, if that can be said, because it gives the book its melancholic mood. Sepia tones are used in the flashback, only highlighted by Clementine's blue diary and Emma's haircut.  The story told in the present is painted in a mix of pastel blues, greens and ochres. Maroh has a great eye for detail and her depiction of the city's streets, parks and skyline, as well as the beach scenes, are truly beautiful.  She uses a mix of watercolour, pencil and mixed media to create precious images. 

I found the narrative simple, realistic and believable, but also a bit over-melodramatic at times. I think the story reflects well the hurdles that gay people find when they discover they are gay, first, and when they come out of the closet, then, having to deal with their not-always-accepting friends and families. I think the book also succeeds at depicting gay people as individuals, not as bunch of people who act or think the same, or who reacts to their own sexuality in the same way. As the character says:

 "For Emma, her sexuality is something that draws her to others, a social end political thing. For me, it's the most intimate thing there is". p. 131.

I have gay friends, and all of them fall on Clem's side. On the other hand, the book is unbalanced, because most of the story focuses in Cleme's teens years, while her adult life with Emma is barely sketched. This being the case, the ending feels hurried as we don't know why Clementine is feeling alienated from Emma, what is going on in her head for her to be deluded and act the way she acts.  

The book has explicit sex scenes.

Queen's Day was released in 1999, published after being listed in the September selection of the Xeric Foundation's comic awards. I have read it in Kindle format, as it has been released in electronic format this year by Alternative Comics.

This is more a booklet than a book, with just 69 pages. It contains three separate unconnected stories, some of Corman's early works, and as such they have to be appreciated. 

The stories are  drawn in a glorious black and white, with a predominance of a bright black and greys over white. The style is very expressionist (the cover really doesn't reflect the style of the comic), with angular characters. The texts are reduced to a minimum.

In "The Baba Yaga". An old Russian "witch" rescues a little girl that has fallen asleep in a freezing cold river. In "The Myth of Never Being Sick a Day in Your Life", a young lady visits her grandma and the mountain area where her brother lost her life. In  "Koninginnendag", a girl living in Holland is cheered up by a friend.
Despite the sobriety and brevity of the whole, the stories are engaging. There is something non-explicit that gives them a melancholic mysterious tone and blends them together, especially the first two. The elements that I personally see commonly reflected in all them are:
> gloominess.
> The forest, the mountain, and the power of Nature.
>  Ascension.
>  Support and care.

If you love rare non-mainstream comics, this is one of those. 

I have to say that this book has brought more laugh to my life that anything or anybody else this year. Laughing out loud continuously while reading anything is a gift that one has to appreciate for its rarity.

God is not Disappointed in You summarises and condensates all the texts amd books contained in the Bible in 220 pages, writing the story in a contemporary "dude-whats-up?" sort of language.

Russell has an amazing wit, a a daring sense of irreverence, a profane humour, and a great insight into the incongruence of the historical figures and events the Bible presents us with. It reminds me, in a way, of the way Monty Python approached Biblical facts in their unforgettable film "The Life of Brian". However, Russell does not deform or twists the stories and behaviours or laws contained in the Bible no matter how nonsensical or farcical they might appear. We have to remind ourselves that these stories were written and compiled thousands of years ago. In the introduction, Russell says:

"It is not my intention to mock the Bible with this book, nor to endorse it, but merely to present it on its own terms in a way that is accessible and which relays the same sense of fascination I had when I truly discovered the Bible for the first time. If you want to reject the Bible as ancient superstition or digest it as the holy word of God, that’s up to you. I just thought you might like to know what’s actually in the hot dog."

Russell's approach to the Bible is not historical or contextual, but I would have been bored to death if he had tried to do that. That is not his job or intention. "God is Disappointed..." is not an exegesis of the Bible, just a funny book on the Bible's texts.

You might think that reading anything Biblical is too serious, uninteresting, or religious. You might adduce that you aren't a believer, or a Christian. It doesn't matter. Russell's book is almost better than the original, forgive my enthusiasm. The  book will especially appeal to agnostics, atheists and lax Christians and Jews with a sense of humour. I guarantee, that you will still find yourself laughing out loud. To those who are practising believers, you might be irritated by the tone of some of the language used, but you won't find anything you haven't heard before in more dramatic formal terms if you go to Mass every Sunday and listen (i.e. with full attention) to the readings.


This not a book for everybody, though, because it touches on divine matters, and that is always a sensitive pruritus to scratch. Zealots, bigots, fundamentalists and any other -ish people who take religion to the letter might be angry, upset and even deprecatory. Knowing that, please dear bigot don't make a ziggurat of an issue about the authors' enterprise if you decide to go ahead and read it. You've been warned. You are very welcome.   

The books that I found funnier and more enjoyable were, in the Old Testament, the Books of Nehemiah and Esther and the Songs of Songs; I also loved the Book of Ecclesiastes because Russell really likes it (how not to?) and condensates it quite well and with less mock than the rest. In the New Testament, I thought all the Gospels were lovely, but the wittiest to me was the Gospel of Luke.
Just three samples for your to taste, they will give you an indication if you can stomach the book or not:

 <Deuteronomy> If you’re a soldier and you have a wet dream, you’ve got to leave camp for one whole day before you come back. Also, when you’re in camp, be sure to shit discreetly in a hole. Remember, God walks among you, and the last thing you want is for him to be stepping in your shit.

 <The 1st Book of Samuel > The whole ancient world was a bag of dicks. Even God was a bit of a dick.

<The Gospel of Mark>  Jesus rolled his eyes, and said, “People aren’t defiled half as much by what goes in their mouths as by the shit which comes out.” Then he went back to eating his sandwich. The Pharisees decided they’d had just about enough of this smartass.

I was a bit disappointed with Wheeler's illustrations. I like his drawing technique and character creation, and his illustrations are funny, some of them matching Russell's inspiration perfectly. However, many of the illustrations are just OK, and are overshadowed by Russell's tsunami-like wit. The cover of the book is fantastic, very simple, stylish and expressive.

The book is for adults as it contains swearing words, obscenity, profanity, sex references and other godly but sinful events happened thousands of years ago. Blame it on History; Russell is just making you laugh.

The adjective that most describe the book is hilarious. It made it to my top five of the year, and the happy-o-meter marked very high in the Treschaud's Scale of hilariousness.

 

This is the first book by Brown I read, and the first book in the "Girlfriends Trilogy". 

Clumsy is a glimpsed window to Brown's personal love life and her long-distance relationship with Theresa.  A memoir structured in short episodes of his daily life that tell us about meeting, dating and falling in love with Theresa, but also the day to day elements that make a relationship grow despite how mundane: from hugging, to farting, sex tons of sex, condoms, insecurities, discussions, moments of indescribable happiness and others of tension. Life as you live it when you relate to somebody. A depiction of intimacy in its beauty and rawness.

Brown is good at telling a story with honesty and in a way that appeals to the reader disregarding the gender. Being a woman, I especially appreciate how Brown tells his love story, so very different from any woman's way of telling it and living it. I am sure that if Theresa had written or drawn her version, the tone of the story, the elements and moments selected would have been very different. The book, for obvious reasons, is appealing to men, especially those who, like Brown, are a bit clumsy, weird, sensitive and a bit needy, the post-modern male if you want.

However, what makes the book appealing is not only the approach to the memoir genre, and the way the story is built by decomposing it in micro-pieces, but also the fact that Brown puts his heart in there.  The result is a very charming naughty and tender love story.

Visually speaking, the book is drawn in a "rudimentary" sort of style. Like a comic strip in a newspaper. The pages are filled with six vignettes, drawn in a clear black and white, with lots of white space, very clean and clear, with little elements of distraction. Despite the simplicity and the lack of shadow work, the images are very well composed and framed, and Brown does a terrific job at creating complex expressive intimate images with very few strokes. I especially love his use of horizontal and vertical lines to create perspective and depth in images that, otherwise, would be flat. I love the way he draws nudity, the way he depicts body hair, and the facial expression of the characters.  All very cute.

The book is for adults, adult themes, sex, nudity and all the goodies that we want to find in comic and graphic goods. If you don't, well, back off.

I have to confess, that this book's cover is one of the most boring ugliest cover I have ever seen on any book. A major sin and put down, taking into account that the author is a graphic artist! Hellooooo. 

Tales from Outer Suburbia is perhaps the most Australian of Tan's books, and definitely very Western Australian. Tan is native from the northern suburbs of Perth WA, and the landscapes, urban furniture and fauna he depicts are just part of Perth's visual idiosyncrasy.

This book is atypical, in two ways. Firstly, Tan, usually very concise in the wording of his books and in the use of words in them, writes a lot in here, and the text is as important as the images. This is so, because this is a semi-memoir of Tan's childhood, and the stories part of his emotional memory growing up in Perth. Secondly, visually speaking, this book is eclectic in styles, because he he uses very different illustration and painting techniques and styles to accompany the different stories, which remind the reader of the ones used in his previous books. In that regard, the book is less congruent visually than his previous ones.

What is still typical of Tan is his mastery at drawing, its ability to create magic realism from the quotidian, to create visually appealing almost-touchable images, absurd meaningful scenes, and quirky funny adorable characters. I love the way he uses his images to create mock newspapers news, mock Post envelopes, mock wall-collages, how he incorporate the credits and acknowledgements in a borrowing slip library card or an envelop, his mock postage stamps, the quirky funny magical sketches that cover the inner front and back covers of the book.  

Some of his usual themes are also here, especially the concepts of foreign (how foreigners see us, how we see foreigners, what  foreign is) and of how our childhood memories never fade out in our hearts, no matter how mundane they were, because the way we lived and perceived them. 

 

The stories or chapters in the book are:
>> The Water Buffalo.
>> Eric (this is one of my favourite in drawing style and message -very similar to the Arrival- and because Eric is just the bomb!)
>> Broken Toys.
>> Undertow.
>> Grandpa's Story (Another favourite because of the narrative, and how Tan turns a real story into something really magical).
>> The other country (Because it depicts his contact with the Mediterranean culture and the magic in it. The painting is also very Mediterranean!)
>> Stick Figures (I love the visuals of this one because it depicts Perth summer landscape very well).
>> The Nameless Holiday.
>> Alert but not alarmed
>> Wake.
>> Make your Own Pet.
>> Our Expedition.
>> Night of the Turtle Rescue

To be honest, every story is wonderful.

This is a melancholic book about Tan's emotional landscapes, so it has to be read as such.

The Cat in the Hat is one of those books that little children and adults enjoy reading because it is fun, it is naughty, it is educative, and the cat in the hat is just a quirky cat! Adults can see the value of the embedded message, and kids learn that behaving and being orderly will benefit them, not just their mothers. This is a classic of world children literature, and so enjoyable that you want to buy for yourself, to remember your childhood, or to make it part of your children's childhood. Like all Dr Seuss' book, this book is shrinkingly simple in its imagery, with a very 60s pop-culture sort of colouring and style, which gives the book a sense of surrealism that makes the whole acceptable for children. 

The application format works well with Dr Seuss' books and with this one, turn it in a sort of semi-animated mini-movie. You select the way you want to read the book, by yourself, by the narrator, or you just to leave it on auto-play and the pages and voice will move at their own pace. The app automatically rotates your screen, and uses the original illustrations of the book, closing up and down on them to match the action and speeches of the characters. Background noises have been added, but they are very cute and not invasive at all; still, you can mutate them if you want. You can browse the pages on your own by using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were those of a real book.

The narrator's interpretation and reading is great. The reading comes handy if you have children and want them to read and not to watch TV, but do not have the time to seat and read to them. Genius!

A few things that I would have liked to have available in this app are: 1/ Option of female and male voice. 2/ All the objects in the screen being interactive. Some of the main elements in each image show the name when you click on them, but some of them not, like the curtains or doors or walls, or the floor, or many of the secondary elements in the image. It would have costed nothing adding those extra words!

This is a perfect app not only for English speakers, but also for for foreign children learning English, as the interactivity of the app make learning new words fun and easy.

Dr Seuss are not just fun, are strikingly pop in their imagery, they are very educative and ridiculously funny. This is the case of Mr Brown Can Moo, which is addressed to very small children, those who are learning the name and sound of different things, that is onomatopoeia formation, This is is one of my least favourite stories by Dr Seuss, because there is no story. Although I recognise its pedagogic value.

The application is fantastic, as all of the Seuss stories that Oceanhouse has turned into electronic interactive format. The app is interactive if you choose the read yourself option; you can click on any image on the page and the word will pop up on your screen and will be pronounced. From the main menu, you select the way you want to read the book, on your own, using the narrator's voice, or auto-play. The app automatically uses the landscape setting and rotates your screen, and uses the original illustrations of the book, closing up and down to focus on the action and speeches of the characters. Background noises and musical notes have been added to enhance the experience, but it can be mutated if you want. You can browse the pages on your own using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were the ones in a real book.

Pride of Baghdad is a beautiful allegory of the events happened in Iraq after the fall of the Hassam Hussein's Regime. It is based on a true event occurred in April 2003: the accidental release of a big group of wild animals from the Baghdad Zoo after a bomb destroyed part of the premises. The book focuses on the wanderings of a group of four lions, two female (Safa and Noor), a male (Zill) and a cub (Ali) throughout the city after their escape.

The story exemplifies the questions that the world was making after the international intervention and occupation of Iraq, and the problems that the liberation and freeing of the Iraqies meant, de facto, for the Iraqies. The book uses the characters and the script to question the real meaning of freedom and living in peace. The book succeeds at presenting, in very simple but very effective terms, dual concepts for further thinking: civilised vs uncivilised, freedom vs oppression, instinct vs reason, wild vs tamed nature.

I would have liked Vaughan giving a step forward and creating something more profound and universal, which is impossible because the story is set in Iraq. For an allegory to be successful, the less time-place references, the better. That is why "Animal Farm" by Orwell is still a classic, understood and meaningful to people all over the world, decades after it was written. While Reading Pride of Baghdad, I thought that the book was very good, but it could have been brilliant, but it never got there because the dialogues and part of the story needed of further developing.

"There were other casualties as well". I loved that!

I absolutely love the artwork. Without Niko Henrichon's vision the book would had been way less effective and enjoyable. Henrichon's drawing technique, composition, colouring and use of lights and shadows are masterful; he is able to create stunning crispy-clear expressive images without crowding the page with too many vignettes, just the right amount. The book has an overall warm golden-orange tone that I absolutely love, with the sporadic presence of luscious bright green natural elements and dark-blue/green interiors and night scenes. One of the things I love more about Henrichon's drawing in this book is the use of sun shadows, I mean light shadows that are not dark, something he does with a wow easiness. The book is visually impacting because of the darkness of the story is rendered in bright yummy colours and aesthetically pleasing images. I always love that.

I thought the rendition for Kindle was pretty good!

A must have for lovers of graphic books lovers. Not for small kids. I think it is great for mid teenagers under supervision.

In a world in which children are over-indulged, over-protected and driven like cattle anywhere, Meg McKinley's wonderful story comes to teach children that walking is wonderful, that life is full of magnificent small things that brighten up our days, and that discovering them is not only part of life, it is life itself. The book is also perfect for adults who need to be reminded that mediocrity and boredom are things that you build everyday when you detach yourself from the gazillion beautiful things that life has to offer, and that opening your eyes and moving your derrière are basic for brightening your time.

The text and the illustrations are like an odd happy marriage. This is not the typical book for children with colourful illustrations and childish cute characters. Hughes-Odgers' images and characters convey well the lack of brightness of the life of a group of apathetic-looking children, who could be early teens. By using a mix of matt subdued greens, ochres, beige, blues and blacks, he creates a world that is earthy and mysterious, a sort of urban forest that is scary but exciting to walk through. I always love his characters and magic world, so I was delighted at finding him as the illustrator. His illustrations were first painted on wood panels and will be exhibited at The Place (mezzanine floor in the State Library of Western Australia) for about two months.

If you have kids or nephews, go and grab it. If you like illustration, go and grab it. If you want to feed you inner child, well, go and grab it - no money? Libraries are full of free books ;O.

A beautiful tiny book that brightened up my evening.

Children are fussy eaters, anything green or healthy is sort of no-no, refusing to eat what they haven't tried for no reason. The story is very cleaver, because the character is made fun of, like he sounds so silly, but also the character carrying the green eggs and ham. The book will teach children that you might be surprised at trying new things that seem unappealing, and those very things can become your favourite ones.

This is book is perfect for very small children, but it might not be that enjoyable for adults as other Seuss' books.

Kudos to Oceans and Hay House for doing such a great job with Seuss' books. The app is a sort of animated mini-movie. From the main menu, you select the way you want to read the book, on your own, using the narrator's voice, or you just to leave it on auto-play. The app automatically uses the landscape setting and rotates the screen, using the original illustrations to close up or down while the book is narrated. Background noises and musical notes have been added, but they are very cute and not invasive at all. You can browse the pages on your own using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were the ones in a real book.

Moreover, the app is interactive if you choose the read yourself option; you can click on any image on the page and the word will pop up on your screen and will be pronounced. They are basic words, so the app is perfect for small children learning to read, no matter English is their first or second language.

The narrator's voice and interpretation are very nice, and he uses different voices and intonations for each character, so the whole book is really enjoyable.

A lonely girl is in search of herself, lost without hope, and has to deal with herself and her demons to find happiness.

The Red Tree is an Ode to hope, to expect always the best, even in our darkest moments. A visual song about self-acceptance and about accepting life with its lows and highs. A book with very few words that, however, conveys deep emotions: sadness, loneliness, doubt, struggle, isolation, hope, happiness and triumph. The reader connects immediately with the little girl character because any of us has had in the past some of those emotions or feelings. We get this sense of oneness with the little girl, and feel victory with her when she finds her red tree.

This is one of this books that I re-read and peruse when I feel sad, when I feel stuck, when I want to remember that there is always hope, and life is full of surprises around the corner.

Some children's books are forever, Universal, and full of unspoken poetry. This is one of them.

Horton Hears a who is a book about the importance of every living being on the planet, no matter how small it is. It is a book about the importance of the voice of any person to contribute to the good of the community. It is a book about the need to believe without seeing. It is a book about doing the right thing no matter what others think of us.

Living with a gadget is the reality of most Western Kids. Paper books are not so cool now, too bulky, too heavy, too environmentally unfriendly, too last century. Apps like this show how to keep a classic of the literature alive making it cool to the new generations of readers without losing the spirit of the original.

The application is a sort of animated mini-movie. You select the way you want to read the book, by yourself, or using the narrator's voice, or you just to leave it on auto-play. The app automatically uses the landscape setting and rotates the screen, and uses the original illustrations of the book, closing up and down to focus on the action and speeches of the characters. Background noises have been added, but they are very cute and not invasive at all. You can browse the pages on your own using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were ones in a real book.

The narrator's voice and interpretation is just fantastic, better than in the other books, and he plays all uses different voices and intonations for each character. I would have loved having the option of female and male voice narrator, though.

The Rabbits is a children's book fit for adults. First published in 1998, it is still as fresh as the day it came out.

The Rabbits is a metaphorical story on the colonisation of Australia as seen and perceived by the original inhabitants of the land. The rabbits represent the European arriving in Australia, and the Wallabies the Aborigines. Shaun Tan's illustrations are wondrous, as always, but also moody and dramatic, very beautiful and powerful in the portray of the beauty of this land, the mind of the newly arrived, and the way Nature was examined and transformed. Even the attitudes of the Europeans and the Aborigines are shown in the way they dress, look and move.

This is one of those books that should be compulsory in schools to teach Australian children the basics of the History of this country - that version that we miss from History books because those have been done from an Eurocentric point of view, not by those who were dominated. For the indigenous people colonisation is an euphemism of the destruction that they suffered. However, it is remarkable that the book is written by two non-indigenous people - it is daring today, so you can imagine how daring and controversial was 14 years ago.

Reconciliation is not just a flashy word used by politicians, it is a process of becoming acquainted with our past and giving voice to those who never had it despite being part of it. This book does just so in a very unpretentious beautiful way. The book also offers and environmental message of respect and understanding of the land as a basis to benefit from it.

This is also one of those books that needs parenting - you and you child side by side, the adult not only as reader, but also as inductor and teacher. A book that needs to be talked and discussed about, so your children grow to form a country that has a different mentality and attitude towards its History and towards Aborigines.

The Rabbits is one of my favourite Australian books of all times. So tiny, so simple and so profound. So daring in its few colourful pages.

This is he second instalment of the series Suee and the Shadow and the plot is getting more interesting by the minute. Our Suee is shining her true colours (or perhaps her true shadow) to herself and the world, and there is more action and mystery unfolding, things becoming darker and more intriguing.

The second part of the book starts on chapter five, but it barely has 90 pages, which you can easily devour in your lunch break. So that was a bit of a disappointment. On the other hand, the reader dives into the story, which has plenty more action, and is left at the edge of a cliff without handrail to hang onto.

I am falling, falling.... fallinnnnnnnng for the Suee Shadow Korean team. They are just awesome at creating an stylish comic with an intriguing plot, and lots of mystery and entertainment.

I love the pricing of the books, but I would like the third instalment to be a bit longer. To be honest, I would have loved the whole book done at once.

I think they should use they Korean names instead of the ones they use as plume names, because, well, they are making themselves a disservice. 

To be continued, when they continue...

I came across this Korean comic series by accident, and bang! Pow! Shsss! It is awesome.

Suee -an independent, aloof, intellectually developed cynical 12y.o.- has just moved to the suburbs with her workaholic father. Their new house and suburb is a bit miserable, her father is never present or caring, and her glorious days at her posh school are over. The Outskirtsville's school is mediocre by all means, as well as its students - a group of stereotypical people that Suee dislikes because they are too plain and predictable. Isn't she adorable? Things start to get interesting when, a series of events have her shadow talking to her. Why is her shadow talking? Why it comes and goes? Why aren't other people's shadows talking? Why are guys becoming mentally zombified? Why has the Exhibition Room been closed?

This is a mystery series, very addictive and intriguing. It is initially for early teens, but both the style and the script are good enough to enthral most adults, because there is a lot of delicious delightful dilettante darkness. Beyond the intriguing factor, I I thought that it is great that the way Suee's shadow is depicted is very Jungian! Like explaining the shadow to teens without having to go through the nitty-gritty of what the shadow is. Another element that had me glued.

The visual style of the comic is very much my liking: crispy-clean sleek images, interesting characters, with a masterful use of shadows, composition and colour. The images are dominated by black, white and different shades of grey, with the use of cut-out coloured elements in a glorious red (for action, aggression, rage, hits, attention) and pastel colours for the skin and dresses of some characters.

This is traditional comic storytelling at its best, coming from two unknown Korean authors (plus the translator, who has done a terrific job!).

To be continued...

Are you my Mother? is the most intellectually engaging comic book I have ever read, and I have read plenty! I came to this book because the author's name is in my list of "must" female graphic artists, and I am not disappointed. There are many reasons, beyond the undeniable quality of the book at both narrative and graphic levels, I was thrilled to find some of my favourite reading interests being part of the narrative (psychology, psychoanalysis, mental disorders) and some of my life practices reflected as well (dreamwork and metaconciousness), while a friend of mine is very interested in the Mother Archetype (and I even had a synchronicity event with her while reading this book).

Are you my Mother? is Bechdel's quest to understand the relationship she has with her mother from childhood to the present time and see how their relationship shaped her psyche an who she is. It sounds a bit boring, but it is not!

The book is a wide open window to Bechdel's mind and heart, and to the way she lives and sees the world. She does not censor herself to be liked, so her opinions about the world, life or other artists, her family, her mother, her girlfriend/s and herself are sincere and believable. We also see her displaying her neurosis, depression, her obsessions and compulsions. Bechdel has a sharp-razor mind that understands complexity with easiness and sometimes she thinks the reader will to. I don't think is always the case, but she does not debase herself to the level of the mainstream reader because that is not who she is. A killer combination of elements that will get any person interested. There is no fluff in this book, but you will find moments of tenderness, passion, fun, sadness, doubt, confusion and raw honesty, all of them infused in the hiper-metaconsciousness Bechdel swims daily to sort out her personal and creative life.

The book has a Matryoshka doll sort of feeling as it is organically multi-layered and cohesive in its graphic and literary narrative, and one layer covers another, which, at its turn, covers another, despite all being a perfectly organic set. This a very Magritte-ish book as well, both in the imagery (See, f. e. pages 212 or 252) and its structure. So we see her writing the book about her father, while she is interacting with her mother, creating the book about her mother, thinking about the book about her mother, seeing herself doing so, at the same time. Almost an out of the body experience. The chapter on mirrors is perhaps the clearest example of this Magritte's man painting himself while paints himself while paints himself. Extremely cool.

Graphically speaking, Bechdel is amazing. Her drawings are realistic, very expressive and multifaceted, very attentive to the detail (from the facial micro-expressions to the details on the floor or walls, everything!) but also very dynamic. Her approach to this graphic novel is also very photographic and cinematic, and reminds me of a pre-movie visual-rendering of a script, because her drawings are not only fabulous per se, they are fabulously composed and framed: eagle-view scenes, scenes from the street into a room, scenes with the self as object (shots of her feet, reflections on a mirror or train window), voyeuristic (sex scenes). Moreover, she inserts and reproduces with her own handwriting personal (past and present) letters by her, her mother and her father, pages of newspapers, highlights from the books she is reading, clipped photos and quotes, mock-flashback images about her mother's childhood, Winnicott and Wolf's lives, and what it is not. Just awesome. They create texture, they create life on a paper and visually engage and enthral the reader.

Everything looks and flows so easily that one forgets that it is masterful. You have to stop and say wow to yourself, because this girl has an extraordinary talent. I found so many wow pages and vignettes! Just one example, pages 103-105 and how she depicts the pass of time, so beautifully simple and effective.

Having said the above, this is a complex book, divided in chapters that start with the depiction of one of her dreams, and dive into especial facets of the relationship mother-daughter from a psychoanalytic point of view. She starts with Freud and Jung readings but ends devoting her attention to the work of Donald Winnicott, whose life and writings on mother-child bonding click more with her. She also sees some parallels between Winnicott's theories, Virginia Wolf's writings (the Lighthouse especially) and her own life. Bechdel plays dream analyst and psychoanalyst with herself, and she is the object and the subject of her book. There are nudity, sex scenes and adult themes in the book, so this is not a graphic book for a lazy reader or for children.

I don't like the hue of red used in the normal pages of the book. I would have rather had all in black or white or work on another hues. I found that the textures of the colour could have been better, but this me being fussy!

This is a wonderful collection of short stories published by Dr Seuss in different publications. The stories, as all Seuss', are embedded with wonderful messages about ethical behaviour and good life values for the little ones, but made fun by Seuss' fanciful rhymes and illustrations. Most of them are enjoyable for adults as much as for kids.

My favourite stories, are the Bippolo seed (a modern retake on the European Folk Story of the milkmaid and the pail, but with a focus on greediness), The bear and the rabbit (an hilarious tale, very Aesop's fable in a way, about the power of your intellect to win over brute force, and also on the power of perception to condition your behaviour) Gustav the goldfish (follow the rules, even if they look silly, or you might find yourself in big trouble), and Steak for Supper (about the dangers of bragging and speaking what you are up to when you are with certain people).

I find Tadd &Todd an OK story, while The Strange Shirt Spot and The Great Henry McBride are blah to me, and to adults, but they might be appealing to children.

The application is fantastic, as all of the Seuss stories that Ocean House and Hay House has turned into electronic interactive format. The app is interactive if you choose the read yourself option; you can click on any image on the page and the word will pop up on your screen and will be pronounced. The app is a sort of animated mini-movie. From the main menu (where the icons of the different stories are shown), you click the story you want to read and then select the way you want to read the book, on your own, read-to-me option or or auto-play. The app automatically uses the landscape setting and rotates your screen, and uses the original illustrations of the book (in this case very few), closing up and down to focus on the action and speeches of the characters. Background noises and musical notes have been added to enhance the experience, but you can switch them off in the settings. You can browse the pages on your own using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were the ones in a real book.

The main downside of the application is not the application, but the fact that the accompanying illustrations were very limited originally, so the mini-movie effect is somewhat washed out. Also, one of the stories was unstable and kept crashing.

Lena Finkle's is the semi-autobiographic novel of writer and graphic artist Anya Ulinich.A priori, the story of a divorced mother of two, late 30s, coming back into the dating world sounds too mundane or uncool to be the subject of a graphic novel. However, Ulinich's alter ego Lena Finkle is not your usual woman. It is Ulinich's multifaceted personality and self, her honesty about who she is, and the way she narrates the story what makes the book the interesting entertaining story it is.

The book is engaging and entertaining. This is a book for adults as there are nudity, sex scenes and adult themes in it. The story is far from linear because Lena's adventures in dating, which are pathetic-kinda-funny and very entertaining for the reader, are accompanied by flashbacks of her past childhood and teens ages in Russia and her first years as immigrant in America, conversations with her mother, best friends and lovers.

Ulinich is both a graphic artist and a writer, so this novel is as much visual as it is readable, with much more words than more graphic novels. I found fascinating the way she incorporates long two-people conversations into an image (even with her alternative thoughts while talking!), with a sort of puzzle-ish composite of bubbles that adjust cosily to each other.

Regarding the illustration system, Ulinich alternates very realistic virtuoso drawing with childish caricature-ish drawing when she speaks of her childhood and teens in Russia. I love the graphic depiction of her anxiety after the final episode with The Orphan, which is just brilliant.

Ulinich is very honest about who she is, how she feels, and how she approaches reality, relationships, love, sex, immigration, gender roles, and Jewish and national identity. She is also honest about her image. She does not beautify herself in the book. She draws herself a bit fatty and ugly at times, with dark circles under her eyes! Ulinich even shares her own bullxt. The little "mini-Lena", a sort of evil on her shoulder, appears when Lena is fooling herself or fooling others, ignoring things she should not, or just to remind herself to follow common sense.

I confess that I expected a closure at the end of the book. However, life is not always a novel or has a happy ending, or has an ending, as living is a process. We don't know what happens to Lena, but we somewhat intuit that she is ready for something good because we see her change and evolve into a more mature woman throughout the book.

I would love a follow up graphic novel!

The Lorax is a metaphoric tale about the dangers of aggressive economical practices and consumerism done at the expense of the environment. The Lorax is also a call to bring forward common sense and tp respect Mother Nature as the only Mother Nature we have. If we destroy it, there is nothing left but devastation. The message of the Lorax is as relevant as ever in our world, and kidos and adults will benefit from reading the book or using the application.

The application is great. Kudos to Oceans and Hay House for doing such a great job with Seuss' books. The app is a sort of animated mini-movie. From the main menu, you select the way you want to read the book, on your own, using the narrator's voice, or you just to leave it on auto-play. The app automatically uses the landscape setting and rotates your screen, and uses the original illustrations of the book, closing up and down to focus on the action and speeches of the characters. Background noises and musical notes have been added to enhance the experience. You can browse the pages on your own using your fingers and the pages flip as if they were the ones in a real book.

Moreover, the app is interactive if you choose the read yourself option; you can click on any image on the page and the word will pop up on your screen and will be pronounced. This being the case, the app is perfect for small children learning to read.

The narrator's voice and interpretation are wonderful, and he uses different voices and intonations for each character, so the whole book is really enjoyable.

A few things that I would have liked to have available in this app are:

1/ Option of female and male voice.

2/ Unlike other books by Seuss, the vocabulary he uses here is more fanciful and creative, not as simple. Some of the words are invented and part of Seuss' wonderful world. A sort of Seuss Wiki would have been a good addition as an appendix section or extra added to the app.

3/ I agree with other reviewers that the application could be more interactive, but Dr Seuss' books are wonderful for the message they convey and, to be honest, I would not want the app to be turned into a video-game either.