Skim /

WHO but a masochist or a cheerleader would want to relive adolescence? For many of us, it's a terrible time, with heavy-duty social pressure to join a clique, opposed by the equally wild desire to rebel. As if that weren't enough, there's sexual identity to deal with, and first love, that gut-wrenching emotion that usually winds up causing so much more pain than pleasure. All these concerns are explored in Mariko Tamaki's graphic novel "Skim," the story of 16-year-old Kimberly Keiko Cameron, known as "Skim" to her classmates. A Wiccan-practicing goth who goes to a private girls' school, Skim is the quintessential outsider, a dark-haired, AsianAmerican in a sea of Caucasian blondes, not skim (slim) like the girls in the popular clique, thus her nickname. Two parallel story lines involving starcrossed love unfold as the book opens: the first concerns the uproar at school over the suicide of the boyfriend of one of Skim's classmates, Katie Matthews. When the distraught Katie subsequently falls off a roof and breaks both arms (it's unclear at first whether it's an accident or not), the school administration goes into anxious overdrive, organizing group therapy sessions and an outdoor memorial service where the girls release white balloons with hopeful messages written on them. The second plot line involves Skim's out-of-bounds friendship with Ms. Archer, a neo-hippie English teacher with wild red hair and a penchant for extravagant costumes. The friendship crosses the line when Ms. Archer, who seems to be hiding something behind her overdramatic persona, acts on their shared feelings and unwisely allows their relationship to develop into a romance of sorts. The black and white pictures by Jillian Tamaki, Mariko's cousin, create a nuanced, three-dimensional portrait of Skim, conveying a great deal of information often without the help of the text The book's most striking use of purely visual communication occurs in a lush and lovely doublepage tableau of Skim and Ms. Archer exchanging a kiss in the woods that leaves the reader (and maybe even the participants) wondering who kissed whom. In another sequence, Skim and Ms. Archer sip tea without ever making eye contact, the pictures and minimal text communicating the uncomfortable emotional charge in the room and the two characters' difficulty in knowing what to say to each other. Tamaki's palette often becomes noticeably darker or lighter to signal a change in mood. Various night scenes communicate Skim's depression, her unhappy moon-face isolated in fields of inky black, streetlights casting long, lonely shadows. In contrast, Tamaki sets the outdoor memorial service for the dead boyfriend on a frozen winter field, the participants drawn in lightly, almost as if they're ghosts, the snowy backdrop and blank white balloons (shown caught on bare winter trees) conveying absence and emptiness. The cover itself, an extreme close-up of Skim's face (and the only picture in color), seems a cross between a Lichtenstein Pop Art portrait and one of those sensual Japanese wood block prints of women from earlier centuries, showing a moody, introspective girl poised on the brink of womanhood. Graphic novels, by the nature of their form, often use as little text as possible; the dialogue is sometimes hardly more than a serviceable vehicle to drive the action. In "Skim," however, the spare dialogue is just right, capturing the cynical and biting way that Skim and her classmates tend to talk to one another. In contrast, Skim's diary entries reveal her vulnerable, innocent side. Here she is describing the almost painful physical sensation that love can provoke: "My stomach feels like it's popping, like an ice cube in a warm Pepsi." "It feels like there's a broken washing machine inside my chest." Confronted by a worried high school guidance counselor, she confides to her diary, "Truthfully I am always a little depressed but that is because I am 16 and everyone is stupid (ha-ha-ha). I doubt it has anything to do with being a goth." "Skim" - a winner of a 2008 New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books Award - is a convincing chronicle of a teenage outsider who has enough sense to want to stay outside. In the final section of the story, titled appropriately "Goodbye (Hello)" Skim defies the shallow, popular clique and walks out of a school dance with Katie. She's cast off her nickname and is "Kim" now, a name more true to the person she is slowly becoming. And Katie is slowly beginning to heal, too. All in all, "Skim" offers a startlingly clear and painful view into adolescence for those of us who possess it only as a distant memory. It's a story that deepens with successive rereadings. But what will teenagers think? Maybe that they've found a bracingly honest story by a writer who seems to remember exactly what it was like to be 16 and in love for the first time. Elizabeth Spires's poetry books include "The Wave-Maker," and the forthcoming "I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings," for children.

Canadian essayist and adult-books author Tamaki and her cousin, an artist, dive into the graphic format by using high school as a fertile setting for pungent commentary on racial, cultural, and sexual issues. Pudgy Asian American Skim suffers the contempt of the popular crowd at her all-girl school and ponders the repercussions of the recent suicide of a local boy. The source of her greatest anguish, however, is her intense love for her drama teacher, Ms. Archer, an affection only briefly requited before the teacher leaves without explanation. The narrative, mainly in diary form, feels accurate and realistic, drenched in a sense of confusion and nihilism, and the art, influenced by Craig Thompson's Blankets (2003), reflects the spare, gloomy emotional landscape in which Skim exists. This story will appeal to many female comics fans, though readers may, in the end, be slightly turned off by a resolution that awkwardly introduces some odd sunlight into the otherwise dark world.--Karp, Jesse Copyright 2008 Booklist

This auspicious graphic novel debut by cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki tells the story of "Skim," aka Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a goth girl in an all-girls school in Toronto, circa the early '90s. Skim is an articulate, angsty teenager, the classic outsider yearning for some form of acceptance. She begins a fanciful romance with her English teacher, Ms. Archer, while nursing her best friend through a period of mourning. The particulars of the story may not be its strong suit, though. It's Jillian's artwork that sets it apart from the coming-of-age pack. Jillian has a swooping, gorgeous pen line-expressive, vibrant and precise all at once. Her renderings of Skim and her friends, Skim alone or just the teenage environment in which the story is steeped are evocative and wondrous. Like Craig Thompson's Blankets, the inky art lifts the story into a more poetic, elegiac realm. It complements Mariko's fine ear for dialogue and the incidentals and events of adolescent life. Skim is an unusually strong graphic novel-rich in visuals and observations, and rewarding of repeated readings. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A pudgy Asian American out-group teen tries on goth, checks out Wicca, and falls in love with her free-spirited English teacher, Ms. Archer. This portrait of intense high school experiences is crafted with well-tuned dialog and drawn in beautifully expressive pen and ink. A Doug Wright awardee, YALSA top ten winner, and Eisner nominee. With sexual references and swearing; for older teens up.-Martha Cornog, Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Gr 10 Up-Kimberly Keiko Cameron-aka "Skim"-is a mixed-race high school student struggling with identity, friendships, and romantic yearning. After her parents' divorce, she turns to tarot cards and Wicca to make sense of life but finds herself disappointed with the lack of answers they provide. She finds herself increasingly intrigued by Ms. Archer, her free-spirited English teacher. Her interest becomes obsessive and it begins to drive a wedge between her and her best friend, Lisa. Although Skim originally makes light of the half-hearted suicide attempts of popular Katie, whose ex-boyfriend committed suicide, the two of them begin to open up to one another. Skim soon realizes that "perfect" Katie is far funnier, more genuine, and more traumatized than she originally thought-particularly when it comes to light that John shot himself due to his homosexuality. Drawn in an expressive, fluid style and with realistic dialogue, this work accurately depicts the confusion of teenage years, with its rejection of previous identity and past relationships and search for a newer and truer identity; additionally, insider/outsider status is a reoccurring theme. Skim's internal monologue is diarylike, with an interesting use of "scratched-out" words. This is a good but somewhat standard work.-Dave Inabnitt, Brooklyn Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(High School) This stunningly emotional graphic novel charts a season of change in the life of Kim (nicknamed Skim "because I'm not"), a thoughtful, brooding misfit facing questions of life, death, friendship, and identity. Kim's sole friendship gradually crumbles; her surreal smoking breaks with Ms. Archer, the young, dramatic English teacher, evolve into unsettling romance; and a suicide rocks the all-girls school she attends. The narrative also touches, though doesn't dwell, on Kim's exploration of Wiccan spirituality and the issues she faces as a biracial teen and a child of divorced parents. These many threads connect and diverge in equal measure, coexisting in an artful jumble that is as true-to-life as it is diffuse. The free-flowing combination of dialogue, internal narration, and diary entries is unfussy and immediate, and the delicately lined art alternately expands and contradicts the prose to achieve layers of meaning, tone, and irony. Dark space and perspective are used to great effect, grafting emotion onto every scene, and the simplest details of body language -- Kim's creased brow and hunched shoulders; Ms. Archer's serene, vaguely secretive countenance; a new, wounded friend's pinched mouth and suspicious eyes -- project fully developed personalities. With honesty and compassion, this innovative narrative communicates a life just beginning, open and full of possibility. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.