THE 2020 ONE must be out already, although I haven't seen it. The 2019 volume was not one of the very best, but was still enjoyable.
The memoir/autobiographical vein is well-represented (Sophia Foster-Dimino, Jerry Motiarty, Lauren Weinstein), but there are also some items that are quite far from being realist or representational (Xia Gordon, Noel Freibert, Erik Nebel). An excerpt from Nick Drnaso's prize-winning Sabrina appears, but we also have some self-published entries by E. A. Bethea and Jed McGowan.
The real find, for me, was an excerpt from Vera Brosgol's Be Prepared, which I promptly acquired in order to read the whole thing.
In this graphic memoir, the 11-year old Vera, daughter of Russian immigrants, struggles to fit in with her new small town America peers but has high hopes when she learns of a summer camp devoted to Russian language and (pre-Bolshevik) Russian culture. Here, at last, she hopes, she will find her community. Hopes are dashed minutes after her arrival, and dashed again repeatedly for good measure by cliques of older girls, arrogant entitled boys, and the horrific stench of the outhouses.
You half expect that all this will be redeemed--Vera will make a good friend, discover unsuspected abilities, connect with the outdoors, or all three, and it will turn out to be a wonderful experience. And she does make a friend, discover new abilities, and connect with the outdoors (seeing a moose in the wild one night), but no, she does not really have that great a time, and she is immensely relieved when her mother says no, Vera does not have to return next year.
Summer camp can be a great thing, and most kids love it or learn to love it, but still it's great to have a candid, crisply drawn, and moving account from one of the kids who did not love it.
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