"Get Your Excorcise On, Girl!": A Review of *Anya's Ghost*

Anya Borzakovskaya attends a private school even though her mother can barely afford it. Despite being curvy in all the right places, Anya worries about her body and that she might one day be obese like her mother. She also worries about being seen as an outsider and has worked hard to eliminate any trace of her Russian accent. She's been in America since she was five, and all she feels she has to show for it is fitting in slightly better than the only other Russian immigrant at her school, the "fobby" -- to use a word that First Second apparently wants in everyone's lexicon -- and nerdy Dima.

But when Anya falls down a well and discovers the spirit of a girl about her age who died at its bottom, a typical teen angst narrative takes a tantalizing turn for the weird and creepy. By story's end, Anya has to grow up a bit and realize what is most important about family and self.

Or, to put it in cheesy film preview language, "A girl so worried about her weight is about to get some exorcise!"

Vera Brosgol's Anya's Ghost (2011, First Second) has been compared to Gene Yang's American Born Chinese, and surely Brosgol is paying homage to First Second's most commercially successful graphic novel to date. While the story is creepy cool and Anya is an attractive, relatable main character who deals with similar feelings as did Yang's, I do not see this book earning a National Book Award nomination. Maybe a Printz, and most-likely high praise from ALA.

Neil Gaiman has called the book a masterpiece, and certainly its themes and integration of the uncanny appeal to him. They appeal to me too, and I do think this is a very good, well-written, compelling graphic novel that meshes elements of the typical teen bildungsroman, the immigrant narrative, and the ghost story. While I do not think it will come to be seen as one of the best graphic novels ever published, as many consider American Born Chinese, Anya's Ghost holds its own and may be even more interesting to read to its target audience than ABC.

But, you know, there's nothing wrong with not being considered the best by everyone but still being considered among everyone's favorites. And as end-of-narrative Anya will tell you, even that isn't all that.

Comparisons to other texts aside, Brosgol has crafted an engaging narrative that nails the teen experience while adding a supernatural twist that should keep this graphic novel on the minds of adolescents and teachers for years to come.

January's *Language Arts* (88.3) Features TWO Articles on GN's!

Peter Gutierrez has an article on fans, fandom, and points of view regarding those constructs and comics in the classroom in this NCTE publication. His "The Right To Be a Fan" is an intriguing read. While I do wonder if it doesn't give enough attention to those who might be willing to see multiple types of texts as equals (and I hope I'm not being naive to assume there are such folks out there), I dare you not to find his assertions well-written, compelling and provocative. (He was also very nice to me and the contributors of Building Literacy Connections in this writing, and I'm appreciate of that!) Gutierrez's article certainly adds to the conversation about textual primacy, textual consideration, and textual equality, and I highly recommend it.

Carmen M. Marti´nez-Rolda´n and Sarah Newcomer have another exciting article with a GN connection in the issue as well. Their work in "'Reading Between the Pictures': Immigrant Students' Inteprretation of The Arrival" (The Arrival is S. Tan's excellent wordless graphic novel) is described in abstract as such:

...the authors share findings from a study in which immigrant students responded to the wordless text The Arrival in small-group, bilingual literature discussions. The interpretive processes of two of the children with different ethnic backgrounds, levels of English proficiency, and styles of response are highlighted as exemplary and contrastive case studies. Additionally, the social nature of the students’ interpretive work is illustrated by showing how the students drew upon their experiences of immigration, engaged in inquiry, and incorporated each others’ strategies as they co-constructed their responses and their own version of The Arrival. In a time when students’ language and reading abilities are defined by test scores, the authors propose that the use of wordless books provide an alternative perspective. Children’s ability to read between the pictures and make meaning of visual texts reflects a sophisticated interpretive activity that can offer teachers insight into what their immigrant students can do as readers. Access to high-quality wordless texts that address themes to which they can relate offers immigrant children, who are often also English language learners, the opportunity to enjoy the right to read and talk about books.

This is the second or third essay on GN's and immigrant experiences I've seen debut in the last few months, and I'm glad to see folks exploring these issues. I haven't read this particualr article yet (If anyone has a copy or PDF, please send it to me), but it looks great too!

Good for the progressive editors at Language Arts, and good on these authors for their excellent contributions to the contemporary conversation regarding sequential art narrative's use in schools!