Drawn to Change

Drawn to Change
Author: Paul Buhle
Publisher: Between Lines
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2016
Genre: Labor movement
ISBN: 9781771132572

Canadian labour history and working-class struggles are brought to life in this anthology of nine short comics, each one accompanied by an informative preface. Each comic showcases the inspiring efforts and determination of working people who banded together with others to fight to change the world. The history of working-class struggle is a fascinating story of conflict and coercion, of resistance and triumph. It has the drama of defeat mixed with the thrill of victory, though not always in equal measure. But, working-class history is not just interesting and exciting; it also contains important lessons for labour and social justice activists today. Illustrate! Educate! Organize! Contributors include Jo SiMalaya Alcampo, Althea Balmes, Christine Balmes, Sam Bradd, Paul Buhle, Nicole Marie Burton, David Camfield, Sean Carleton, Conely de Leon, Robin Folvik, Ethan Heitner, Greg Kealey, Orion Keresztesi, Mark Leier, David Lester, Andrée Lévesque, Zenee May Maceda, Dale McCartney, Doug Nesbitt, Bryan Palmer, Andrew Parnaby, Joan Sangster, Kara Sievewright, Julia Smith, Ron Verzuh, Tania Willard (Secwepemc Nation).

Earthling!

Earthling!
Author: Mark Fearing
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1452181217

Every kid worries about making friends at a new school, but when nine-year-old Bud accidentally catches the wrong bus and finds himself launched into deep space, new friends are the least of his problems! At Cosmos Academy, Bud learns that Earthlings are the most feared creatures in the galaxy, and even Earth's location has been hidden! With the help of his new friend, Gort, Bud goes undercover as a Tenarian exchange student. Unfortunately that means everyone thinks he's a pro at anti-gravity Zero-Ball (even though he's really only a pro at watching sports). And with paranoid Principal Lepton threat ening to expel any Earthlings (into outer space) and only Gort's hacked Blip computer to help them determine Earth's co-ordinates, will Bud ever find his way home?

SuperMutant Magic Academy

SuperMutant Magic Academy
Author: Jillian Tamaki
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-04-28
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9781770461987

Unrequited love, underage drinking, and teen angst rule at a high school for mutants and witches The New York Times and New Yorker illustrator Jillian Tamaki is best known for co-creating the award-winning young adult graphic novels Skim and This One Summer—moody and atmospheric bestsellers. SuperMutant Magic Academy, which she has been serializing online for the past four years, paints a teenaged world filled with just as much ennui and uncertainty, but also with a sharp dose of humor and irreverence. Tamaki deftly plays superhero and high-school Hollywood tropes against what adolescence is really like: The SuperMutant Magic Academy is a prep school for mutants and witches, but their paranormal abilities take a backseat to everyday teen concerns. Science experiments go awry, bake sales are upstaged, and the new kid at school is a cat who will determine the course of human destiny. In one strip, lizard-headed Trixie frets about her nonexistent modeling career; in another, the immortal Everlasting Boy tries to escape this mortal coil to no avail. Throughout it all, closeted Marsha obsesses about her unrequited crush, the cat-eared Wendy. Whether the magic is mundane or miraculous, Tamaki's jokes are precise and devastating. SuperMutant Magic Academy has won two Ignatz Awards. This volume combines the most popular content from the webcomic with a selection of all-new, never-before-seen strips that conclude Tamaki's account of life at the academy.

Acting Class

Acting Class
Author: Nick Drnaso
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2022-08-16
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1770466517

From the acclaimed author of Sabrina, Nick Drnaso’s Acting Class creates a tapestry of disconnect, distrust, and manipulation. Ten strangers are brought together under the tutelage of John Smith, a mysterious and morally questionable leader. The group of social misfits and restless searchers have one thing in common: they are out of step with their surroundings and desperate for change. A husband and wife, four years into their marriage and simmering in boredom. A single mother, her young son showing disturbing signs of mental instability. A peculiar woman with few if any friends and only her menial job keeping her grounded. A figure model, comfortable in his body and ready for a creative challenge. A worried grandmother and her adult granddaughter; a hulking laborer and gym nut; a physical therapist; an ex-con. With thrumming unease, the class sinks deeper into their lessons as the process demands increasing devotion. When the line between real life and imagination begins to blur, the group’s deepest fears and desires are laid bare. Exploring the tension between who we are and how we present, Drnaso cracks open his characters’ masks and takes us through an unsettling American journey.

Drawn to Berlin

Drawn to Berlin
Author: Ali Fitzgerald
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2018-10-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1683961323

Her students draw images of tragic violence and careful optimism: rafts and tanks, flowers and the Eiffel Tower. In her eight years in Germany, Ali Fitzgerald experiences the highs of the creatively hopeful, along with the deep depression of the disillusioned, all while waiting to stumble onto her own glory like the great Modernists before her. In the gigantic plastic bubble that is the refugee center, worlds collide and echo, and her drawings are compassionate and unflinchingly intimate, perfectly visualizing the fantasy of her Bohemia crumbling in a globalized city.

The Outside Circle

The Outside Circle
Author: Patti LaBoucane-Benson
Publisher: House of Anansi
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2015-04-25
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1770899383

Winner, CODE’s 2016 Burt Award for First Nation, Inuit and Métis Literature In this important graphic novel, two brothers surrounded by poverty, drug abuse, and gang violence, try to overcome centuries of historic trauma in very different ways to bring about positive change in their lives. Pete, a young Indigenous man wrapped up in gang violence, lives with his younger brother, Joey, and his mother who is a heroin addict. One night, Pete and his mother’s boyfriend, Dennis, get into a big fight, which sends Dennis to the morgue and Pete to jail. Initially, Pete keeps up ties to his crew, until a jail brawl forces him to realize the negative influence he has become on Joey, which encourages him to begin a process of rehabilitation that includes traditional Indigenous healing circles and ceremonies. Powerful, courageous, and deeply moving, The Outside Circle is drawn from the author’s twenty years of work and research on healing and reconciliation of gang-affiliated or incarcerated Indigenous men.

The Best We Could Do

The Best We Could Do
Author: Thi Bui
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1613129300

National bestseller 2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist ABA Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2017 Selection Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Spring 2017 Selection ALA 2018 Notable Books Selection An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family’s journey from war-torn Vietnam, from debut author Thi Bui. This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart of Bui’s story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent—the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home. In what Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen calls “a book to break your heart and heal it,” The Best We Could Do brings to life Thi Bui’s journey of understanding, and provides inspiration to all of those who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.

Drawn to Purpose

Drawn to Purpose
Author: Martha H. Kennedy
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 557
Release: 2018-02-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1496815939

Winner of the 2019 Eisner Award for the Best Comics-Related Book Published in partnership with the Library of Congress, Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists presents an overarching survey of women in American illustration, from the late nineteenth into the twenty-first century. Martha H. Kennedy brings special attention to forms that have heretofore received scant notice—cover designs, editorial illustrations, and political cartoons—and reveals the contributions of acclaimed cartoonists and illustrators, along with many whose work has been overlooked. Featuring over 250 color illustrations, including eye-catching original art from the collections of the Library of Congress, Drawn to Purpose provides insight into the personal and professional experiences of eighty women who created these works. Included are artists Roz Chast, Lynda Barry, Lynn Johnston, and Jillian Tamaki. The artists' stories, shaped by their access to artistic training, the impact of marriage and children on careers, and experiences of gender bias in the marketplace, serve as vivid reminders of social change during a period in which the roles and interests of women broadened from the private to the public sphere. The vast, often neglected, body of artistic achievement by women remains an important part of our visual culture. The lives and work of the women responsible for it merit much further attention than they have received thus far. For readers who care about cartooning and illustration, Drawn to Purpose provides valuable insight into this rich heritage.

The Contradictions

The Contradictions
Author: Sophie Yanow
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2021-04-14
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1770465111

Sophie is young and queer and into feminist theory. She decides to study abroad, choosing Paris for no firm reason beyond liking French comics. Feeling a bit lonely and out of place, she’s desperate for community and a sense of belonging. She stumbles into what/who she’s looking for when she meets Zena. An anarchist student-activist committed to veganism and shoplifting, Zena offers Sophie a whole new political ideology that feels electric. Enamored—of Zena, of the idea of living more righteously—Sophie finds herself swept up in a whirlwind friendship that blows her even further from her rural California roots as they embark on a disastrous hitchhiking trip to Amsterdam and Berlin, full of couch surfing, drug tripping, and radical book fairs. Capturing that time in your life where you’re meeting new people and learning about the world—when everything feels vital and urgent—The Contradictions is Sophie Yanow’s fictionalized coming-of-age story. Sophie’s attempts at ideological purity are challenged time and again, putting into question the plausibility of a life of dogma in a world filled with contradictions. Keenly observed, frank, and very funny, The Contradictions speaks to a specific reality while also being incredibly relatable, reminding us that we are all imperfect people in an imperfect world.

How to Change

How to Change
Author: Katy Milkman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781785043734

'Game-changing. Katy Milkman shows in this book that we can all be a super human' Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit How to Change is a powerful, groundbreaking blueprint to help you - and anyone you manage, teach or coach - to achieve personal and professional goals, from the master of human nature and behaviour change and Choiceology podcast host Professor Katy Milkman. Award-winning Wharton Professor Katy Milkman has devoted her career to the study of behaviour change. An engineer by training, she approaches all challenges as problems to be solved and, with this mind-set, has drilled into the roadblocks that prevent us from achieving our goals and breaking unwanted behaviours. The key to lasting change, she argues, is not to set ever more audacious goals or to foster good habits but to get your strategy right. In How to Change Milkman identifies seven human impulses, or 'problems', that commonly sabotage our attempts to make positive personal and professional change. Then, crucially, instead of getting you to do battle with these impulses she shows you how to harness them and use these as driving forces to help instil new, positive behaviours - better, faster and more efficiently than you could imagine. Drawing her own original research, countless engaging case studies and practical tools throughout to help you put her ideas into action, Milkman reveals a proven, inspiring path that can take you - once and for all - from where you are today to where you want to be.