Gabi, A Girl in Pieces

Isabel Quintero's Gabi, A Girl in Pieces is a realistic fiction novel about Gabi Hernandez told in the form of diary entries. It is a Young Adult novel, and it was published in 2014. Gabi is a high school senior with a pregnant best friend, a gay best friend, and a plethora of other modern teenage girl problems. Gabi is the oldest child of a Mexican American family. Her mother is a strict woman with conservative values, and her father is rarely around because he is a methamphetamine addict. Her younger brother, Beto, is a normal teenage boy with a propensity for getting into a bit of trouble. And when Gabi's mother discovers she is pregnant, Gabi's aunt, who is much more conservative than Gabi's mother comes to live with the family, who must deal with listening to her judgmental commentary. Throughout the novel, Gabi deals with having crushes on boys (that's right, multiple boys!) and dealing with issues like self-confidence (being, to some extent, overweight with mother and a society that feels the need to constantly remind her of that). Gabi learns to deal with all of her issues (friends, family, romantic relationships) by reading a writing poetry, and a healthy teenage romance blooms out of a mutual love for writing.

So, so much happens in this book. Two different people end up pregnant and having babies. Gabi's best friend comes out to his parents and lives with Gabi's family, then moves a couple more times. Gabi's brother gets arrested at one point. Gabi's father dies of an overdose. Gabi's other best friend (the pregnant one) turns out to have been raped. Gabi deals with one clingy boyfriend. Gabi makes friends with another girl who also gets pregnant, then Gabi drives the girl to get an abortion. Gabi falls for a boy who respects her and her writing, then eventually they start dating and having sex. One of the major events in the book is when Gabi's father dies of an overdose. Gabi and her mother eventually come to understand each other better, and ultimately, it sort of turns out to be a good thing (which sounds awful, but it true) for the family. 

This book does a lot of things right. I love that there are so many feminist themes running throughout this novel. Gabi learns to feel more comfortable with her body despite her mother's constant commentary on how Gabi needs to lose weight. Gabi learns not to feel ashamed for crushing on multiple boys at a time. The idea that a woman shouldn't feel guilty for feeling attracted to more than one person at a time, even if she (SHOCKING!) has a boyfriend. Furthermore, the idea that women have he same rights as men, even in the context of high school girls and boys, is an awesome message to be conveyed to teens. However, this book tries to accomplish so much, that at times the liberal messages are almost overkill. Personally, I'm pro-choice, but I felt the addition of an abortion story-line felt unnecessary in this story. I felt like Gabi's best friend's pregnancy made a good juxtaposition to Gabi's own story. Gabi's best friend got pregnant by a boy who didn't respect her and who didn't use protection. Gabi, on the other hand, first sexual experience was with someone who loved her, and they were careful and used protection. However, I felt that the sudden ending wherein Gabi discovers her best friend was raped, felt like a last minute addition. The abruptness of this particular story-line and the fact that this part of the story wasn't actually given that much page time rendered this a "lesser" subject in the vast range of subjects that this book deals with. This books attempt to tackle LGBT issues, feminism, abortion, drug dependency, safe sex, consensual sex, etc starts to make this book hard to analyze, as one begins to start putting different levels of importance on these different issues, which all deserve the same amount of attention, especially considering the fact that these are issues that not only interest but also are often integral to the lives of teenagers, the intended audience of this book.

Quintero writes Gabi beautifully, creating a funny and relatable character with great ideals, generating open-mindedness and a positive role-model for young girls, but her inability to narrow her scope of themes muddles some of the overall messages in the book into a just massive liberal idealism overload. I think I can genuinely say that this is not a bias (also the huge list of themes in the above paragraph an attest to this point also) because I am incredibly liberal, which may be a huge reason for why I can also say that I loved the book. I really loved Gabi, and her love for reading and writing poetry reminded me so much of myself when I was in high school. I love the positive portrayal of a relationship where two young people can respect each other and have safe sex (which kids should see more of in order to not shame them for their feelings of desire while also reiterating the fact that protection is of the utmost importance). I love that Gabi and her mother have a realistic relationship that isn't always good and isn't always bad, and I love that abortion was made out to be an awful situation, but also a definite option. This book tackled every theme in an appropriate way, but it just tried to cover too much ground, Despite these criticisms, I'd definitely recommend this book. It was a pleasure to read, and there's poetry interspersed that is beautiful and poignant. In fact, I think the book could have shed a story line or two and opted in a few more poems of Gabi's to render the book more straight-forward.

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel

Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, first published in 1962, is considered a classic today and has been in print ever since its first publication. Hope Larson's graphic novel, published in 2012, follows the exact same story in a different format. It is a science fiction novel about the Meg Murray daughter of two scientists. Meg's father has been missing. Meg's beautiful mother knows that father is not dead, but missing. Meg's youngest brother Charles Wallace is a prodigy of sorts who introduces Meg and their mother to Mrs. Whatsit, who mentions a tesseract, which is something that their father was working on before he went missing. Meg and Charles eventually meet a boy named Calvin, and the three of them stumble upon a haunted house, which they enter to find Mrs. Whatsit, and her strange friend Mrs. Who, and they promise to help the Murray children find their father. That night Calvin eats dinner with Meg and her family, and they form a bond. Later in the evening, Charles Wallace declares it time to find their father. They meet a third strange being Mrs. Which, and Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin learn that Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which are supernatural, time-and-space-traveling beings who take the children to a dark planet, Camazotz, that has been taken over by an evil presence, referred to as "The Black Thing" that is attempting to take over the universe. It is explained to the children that they must stick together and not succumb to the evil presence in order to come back whole and safe and save their father. The children do find their father, though Charles Wallace had to succumb to the evil to find him. Father takes hold of Meg and Calvin and "tessers" them off the planet to a strange planet where they are cared for by a group of loving "beasts," one of which Meg refers to as Aunt Beast. Aunt Beast restores happy, loving thoughts to Meg, who must return to the evil planet to save Charles before the group can go home. Meg is successful when she realizes that the evil can be fought off with love. The family is then happily reunited back on earth, including Calvin, whose relationship with Meg has turned into young romance.

Hope Larson adapts L'Engle's classic novel into a graphic novel; so, it's the same material, but in a different format. Having never read the original, this was an entirely new story for me. At times, I felt the science of the science fiction portions of the story could have used a better explanation, and I wondered if the adaptation suffered from losing some explanatory bits in exchange for a new format. However, none of this really took away from the story too much for me. It was still easy to follow and enjoy, despite not really understanding tesseracts (but then again, I don't know that I would despite lots of explanation because it's not like quantum physics is an easy science to understand). The artwork is done entirely in black, white, and blue. For me personally, I love a simplistic color palette for a graphic novel. I believe it has a way of keeping the words and dialogue of equal importance to the pictures. The artwork itself isn't particularly intricate or beautiful in my opinion, but it works. The pictures of space and fantastic creatures have a sort of simplistic beauty that doesn't overwhelm the story and keeps your eyes moving across the page, from picture box to picture box, making the book an incredibly quick read. This book makes me want to read the original because the story is so good. And I can see the artwork being a really great way to get reluctant readers more interested in the story. I love that the main character of this story is female (despite the fact that I find her character annoying at times; she complains a lot) because science fiction stories are overwhelming lead by male characters.

This is a great story with a good, typical fantasy message ("love trumps evil"). Larson's graphic novel format gives the book a refreshing new face and way to read the classic. The cartoon style artwork is simple and not distracting from the dialogue and prose pieces in the story. Meg Murray was one of the first female protagonists created for a science fiction novel, which is a great trivia tidbit to add when suggesting this story to young readers. I'd definitely suggest this version (and the original) to other readers, but this graphic novel version is especially a great suggestion to those readers of graphic novels and comics who need to ease their way into reading more classics.