Being a preteen and teenager is often difficult. To be frank, it usually sucks. Your body is changing in weird ways, you both think you know everything, while the World reveals how little you truly grasp. Cliques and friendships seem like they matter more than anything in the microcosm of school and such--it is all a lot. "Tsunami," from Pow Pow Press, is a fantastic coming-of-age graphic novel by Ned Wenlock that examines how tricky teenage-dom can be. It isn't some grim-and-gritty yarn or overly schmaltzy. It instead focuses on a handful of characters and the highs and lows they experience over a chunk of the year. We have 12-year-old Peter, who is a misfit and headstrong, Gus, who acts tough to the point it could be his downfall, and Charlie, a new girl from the UK who puts up a badass front but has her own insecurities. By the end of, "Tsunami," they all find they've impacted each other's lives in a drastic fashion.
Set in New Zealand, Wenlock illustrates everything in a fascinatingly minimalist style that imparts exactly what is going on in the story but eliminates much extraneous visual information. It results in a vaguely cartoony style that at the same time allows a reader's brain to absorb a scene quickly and directly. I like it. Throughout the book, we get a lot of slice-of-life scenes that show how hard adolescence can be. One character's parents are clearly in an unhappy marriage (Peter), another hates having to move all the time and adjust to new settings (Charlie), and one isn't sure if they're tough and edgy or just miserable and putting up a front (Gus). Nobody is a villain or hero in this story--they're all just messed-up kids with little adult support.
"Tsunami," is charming with its unique art style despite some heavy thematic content. It has some funny moments interspersed with the heavy stuff too, and revisits the highs and lows of pubescence quite expertly. I'd highly recommend acquiring a copy directly from the website of Pow Pow Press or from your preferred bookseller/library/etc.
5 out of 5 Stars.
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