Hello all!
I have recently been on a graphic book kick! I love reading quick things as it gets my TBR pile down. And also I feel that illustrators need some love too. 
Lumberjanes volume 1 is a bind up of the Lumberjanes comic book series, following a group of girls who are attending camp Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp For Hardcore Lady Types. Yes, seriously! It’s a very badass take on Girl Scouts/Girl Guides which I really enjoyed, as I used to be a Brownie (which was the younger version of Girl Guides). Lumberjanes is the creation of an amazing team of women, including Noelle Stevenson who illustrated for Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, which is reflected in the main characters. As this is the first volume, the bind up only contains issues 1-5 of Lumberjanes but it was a great introduction into the main characters. Lumberjanes follows Jo, April, Ripley, Mal and Molly and I really love their friendship and can’t wait to learn more about them and follow their journey together. Also, I really love Ripley.
The Fox & The Star – Coralie Bickford Smith.
The Fox & The Star is a highly acclaimed picture book written and designed by Coralie Bickford Smith, well known for designing the Penguin English Library classics. The Fox & The Star won the 2015 Waterstones Book Of The Year and since then I’ve been very intrigued by the picture book genre as a whole. This book follows a Fox who loses his star and tries to find them again. It’s a really beautiful story about love & loss and it warmed my little heart so much. The designs are so beautiful and the story packs such a punch in only a few pages. A worthy investment, in my opinion!
El Deafo is a graphic novel, based on the authors experiences, follows CeCe who develops loss of hearing at a young age and how she deals with wearing hearing aids during her time in school. She has to wear a hearing aid called the “Phonic Ear” which allows her to hear her teachers properly at school. Sometimes she hears a lot more than she should…
It’s a really eye opening graphic novel. I had never read a novel about a character with hearing loss and I didn’t even realise the type of hearing aids that are available such as CeCe’s Phonic Ear and I really liked reading about how it worked. It’s also a graphic novel about friendship, and especially how friendships at such young ages can really help you grow as a person. I also liked reading about CeCe’s family too. The artwork is also really well designed too. This is a real hidden gem of a story and I really hope more people read it!
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Hayley.
Hayley Sprout 