Paul moves out /

Rabagliati follows his coming-of-age story Paul Has a Summer Job0 (2003) with a further work of semiautobiography, in which 19-year-old Paul enters art school in Montreal and moves out of his parents' suburban home. Developments unfold leisurely. Paul meets simpatico classmate Lucie ("A girl who reads comics!!" he marvels), with whom he gradually falls in love. He comes under the influence of a charismatic professor and copes with his realization that his mentor is gay. He shares a run-down apartment and committed relationship with Lucie, and he deals with a beloved relative's death. There is little that distinguishes Paul's experiences from those of many other middle-class, North American, white males, but Rabagliati's skillful, sympathetic treatment makes life's small moments seem big, well conveying the excitement of discovering the wider world and apprehension over impending adulthood. Unlike most autobiographical comics, Rabagliati's are refreshingly angst-free. His deceptively loose style bespeaks his background as a graphic designer, and his breezily cartoonish style more closely resembles European than it does American comics. --Gordon Flagg Copyright 2005 Booklist

This charming sequel to Paul Has a Summer Job continues Rabagliati's heavily autobiographical look at his days as a young adult in Montreal. Here, we see Paul at design school, falling under the spell of a charismatic teacher, and meeting and eventually moving in with Lucie, a fellow student who impresses him with her knowledge of Tintin. Rabagliati covers everything in a nostalgic glow, so even an episode when the teacher makes a pass at him comes off as a simple misunderstanding rather than a sordid event. The story is episodic, following such tiny everyday scenes as a scary handyman who destroys Paul and Lucie's bathroom while trying to kill a rat, the death of a favorite aunt and a weekend spent babysitting some kids. If it sounds pretty low-key, it is. Rabagliati is clearly in love with his own reminiscences and doesn't really shape the material into any kind of dramatic tale. However, the beautifully designed art goes a long way toward adding depth to the story. The simple moments of Paul and Lucie's life are so universal, and the characters so likable, it's easy to go along for the ride on this graphic novel equivalent of a lazy Saturday picnic in the park. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In this follow-up to his widely praised Paul Has a Summer Job (LJ 7/03), Rabagliati advances his alter ego into adulthood and the early 1980s, presenting several more slices of his life. While taking classes in advertising art, Paul finds out that his classmate Lucie reads comics (a rarity for a girl at the time). As a dynamic new teacher introduces them to graphic design and the art world, Paul and Lucie become closer, and before school is out they move out of their parents' homes and into an apartment. Together they fix up the place, make friends with the neighbors, and have many fun and touching moments. A pair of deaths intrude on their happiness, but for the most part the book is cheerful and full of humor. Rabagliati's storytelling style is naturalistic, and his cartoony characters are endearing. Suitable for older teens but more likely to interest adults, this warm-hearted book is recommended for all collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

A Montreal art student finds love and a career in an unassuming graphic novel. As in his Paul Has a Summer Job (2003), Rabagliati doesn't aim for the big targets, and his output is all the better for it. His barely veiled recollections of his younger years--one wonders why he bothers changing his protagonist's first name--are small, tightly focused narratives that eschew the larger world for intimate portraits and yet manage to avoid any sort of navel-gazing. This time around, Rabagliati details what happens before and after his character, well, moves out of his parents' home. In 1979, Paul is a student at a commercial art school, and though he's somewhat withdrawn behind goatee and longish hair, it doesn't take much for fellow student Lucie to work her way into his heart. As their romance shyly blunders forward, the class is reinvigorated in its work by the arrival of a flamboyant and boundary-smashing new teacher, Jean-Louis, who comes bearing the standard of graphic design in all its bold new forms. He takes the class on a trip to New York, an experience that for all the fascination it engenders in Paul, only seems to reinforce his provincial Montreal attitudes. Soon, it's 1983 and Paul and Lucie have moved into their starter apartment and their lives as freelance designers, a period of time that Rabagliati renders in a mood of easygoing whimsy that would be unbearably cloying were the medium straight fiction or memoir. Although there isn't much that really stands in the way of Paul and Lucie's forward movement as a couple--besides the occasional hitch, a relative's funeral, or the unspoken tension that comes from a sudden desire to have children--Rabagliati knows he doesn't have to resort to such measures. His gift for clean, effervescently drawn panels and engagingly innocent narratives more than makes up for the occasional fallow patch. A growing-into-adulthood story told with lovable buoyancy. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.