Teo Degas' Books & Decks

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.

This is a remarkable honest graphic memoir by graphic artist Ellen Forney. With Marbles we are given a free ticket, no restrictions, to Forney's life. We witness her sexual innuendos, mental states, family and friends relationships, and intellectual queries. We become part of her psychiatric treatment, mood swings, professional work, medication adjustments and side effects, and ways of coping with being a bipolar in the real world.

I found amazing how Forney is able to convey to the non-bipolar reader, or to anybody for that matter, how it felt in her head to be bipolar, which sort of images, mental pressure and mood state she had to endure. She is also brilliant, and very didactic, at translating scientific and pharmaceutical facts into easy to understand images. See, the effects on medications (pp. 182-185) or when are emotions out of control? (p. 15), just to mention two examples.

The illustration style changes depending on what she is narrating: it is vignetted with a predominance of black over white, and a bit chunky in style, when she narrates her visits to the psychiatrist, and some of the events happening in her daily and family life. On the contrary, the style changes dramatically, is freer, more fluid, expressive and creative, less "blocky", with a predominance of white over black, when she moves from the world out there to the world inside her. There also some pages where the text (no image) is the illustration. She also reproduces some of the images from her personal sketch notebook, in which she painted her self-portrait in depressive phases, which are very artistic, and very different from the rest. Forney is truly versatile.

The memoir is not only engaging and entertaining (I read it in a seating), but it is also full of good practical knowledge about bipolar disorder: what bipolar disorder is, different sub-types, treatment and medication applied, the effect on your brain and mood, Cognitive Behavioural Techniques, bibliography, the social stigma among other things.

Perhaps the most interesting part of her journey is related to her query about who she stands as an artist, whether her brilliance is due to the highs of her bipolar disorder, or not. She asks herself, "are bipolar disorder and creativity actually linked?", or "If I take meds to prevent my mood swings, am I choosing to be less creative?", and gives an honest answer - her answer. She examines the lives of man famous bipolar painters and writers to see if there was a connection between their work and their malaise, as well..

The arrival is a must for any graphic book lover, a wondrous piece of Art that engages the reader from the very cover.

There are many reasons why I consider this a jewel and a must have. The first one, is the quality of Tan's drawings and artistry. Each page, each image, each vignette is a masterpiece of its own regarding technique, detail and creativity. The drawings and images are drawn with a chilling beautiful virtuosity. The illustration is done in a very warm dark-brown and cream duotone, which conveys the overall faux-vintage feeling of the book.

The second one is the fact that the book has a narrative that is universal in nature that uses multiracial characters and alien beings (the tiny monsters). I think it can be understood no matter your culture of origin. The images convey meaning with the need of any word being uttered. Tan does so in a masterly way.

The third is the story itself. This is a story of immigration and challenges in a new foreign land. A story that million of people have lived, are living and will live. I am an immigrant, so the book directly speaks to me. Many of the images reminded me of the early 1920-1950s when million of emigrated from Europe to the States or Australia. Tan's land of arrival is incomprehensible and mysterious. The story is universal because Tan has the ability of distilling real immigration stories and experiences into something that is full of meaning, respects the reality that immigrants face but is full of hope, and shows well how the arrival is also a process of inner transformation and learning to relate in different ways.

The fourth is the wondrous mix of real and surreal elements in the story in a very functional way. This is Tan's speciality and he does so with great easiness and mastery. Tan creates wonderful magic creatures that interact with humans with normality, and vice versa, as if the world was an harmonious mismatch of all sort of beings.

I truly love this book. I don't get tired of it. I revisit it often. Wonderful.