Illustrated Books for Young Adults

Starry.ai is not killing it here...

Myers, W. and Grifalconi, A. Patrol, (2009), New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. 

Preston, C. The War Bride’s Scrapbook, (2017) New York, NY: Ecco, HarperCollins Publishers.

Reynolds, J. and Griffin, J.  Ain't Burned All the Bright, (2022), New York, NY:Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books

These were an interesting collection to read together. 

Patrol is a straight-up picture book by the great Walter Dean Myers that is based on his time in Vietnam. He also touched on his experience in his work Fallen Angels, which, likely due to its verisimilitude, is on ALA’s frequently challenged book list. 

The text reads like a sad, sad poem and even though it isn’t text heavy, it conveys a great deal. The collages by Ann Grifalconi are powerful and emotionally evocative. At first, I thought it would be easy for this work to be mistaken for a children’s picture book, but on the second page, the reference to how the enemy “knows I am here to kill him” would hopefully put off any kids too young to understand the context. 

Speaking of brief text, Ain’t Burned All the Bright has only three sentences. And yet there is a tremendous amount of power in them. I read this book in a brew pub waiting for a librarian meet-up to start and when my first colleague showed up, he found me with tears streaming down my face. The combination of the covid-era lock-down setting with the background of the ill father, the tense mother, the older sister who is longing to change the world, the little brother falling behind and the narrator observing it all makes for a tsunami of emotions in a beautifully illustrated package. 

Call me shallow, but The War Bride’s Scrapbook was my favorite in this very strong field. I first encountered Caroline Preston through the delightful Jackie by Josie and her work as an archivist was visible in that work. Here she takes her collection of WW2 era ephemera and turns it into a compelling and informative story. This and her other visual novel The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (equally adorable, but without as much emotional heft) are both cataloged in my library consortium as adult graphic novels, but I believe they both have teen appeal.