This week, I've hopped from book to book - sampling a few pages here and there and then abandoning them all because it was too slow or too boring or too dry or too character-oriented or too-plot-oriented or... You get the drift. Life We had another one of those sick-kids-and-Covid-tests week. My daughter came home from school one day with a runny nose that quickly became chills and tiredness. She had no issues with smell or taste, nevertheless we took her for a test as neither she nor my son would be able to get back to school without a negative test. Thankfully, the test results came negative. This time around, we were all ready for what needed to be done, unlike the first time a month ago. Other than that, my week has been very quiet. My parents and my father-in-law got their first shots of the Covid vaccine in India, so we are finally trying to confirm my parents' travel plans to the US - a year later than originally planned. It's quite exciting to realize we will soon
Sisters is being advertised as a sequel to Smile, but you don't have to read Smile to be able to follow Sisters. Since I had already read Smile, Sisters was like a return to a family I enjoyed reading about so much. When Raina was fourteen and her sister, Amara, nine, they go on a road trip along with their six year old brother, Will, and their mother, from California to Colorado. Their road trip turns out to be as eventful as you would expect it to be with three restless kids in the car, two of whom, Raina and Amara, have something to fight about every five minutes. But when they arrive at Colorado, after about a week, their cousins aren't exactly the playmates they hoped to meet.
There is a lot to love in Sisters. For one, the sibling rivalry is something almost anyone will relate to. All that meaningless bickering, the apparent disregard for one another's feelings, the desire to win any argument, and the secret wish to feel accepted by the other is both humorous and endearing to read about. Raina is at an age where makeup and looks are a big deal. Amara is at an age where all that pretty business is a bucket load of crap. They obviously don't see eye to eye.
The narration of the road trip is interspersed with a lot of flashback, starting with toddler Raina's deepest wish to have a baby sister only to be very disappointed by how long it would take the baby Amara to be old enough to play with her and how often the baby bawled. Anti-climax. These flashbacks were quite adorable to read - they did get along a lot better when they were very little, only to have sporadic fights now and then, and later full-blown arguments over everything.
If you haven't read any of Telgemeier's books, you are missing a whole lot. Even newbie comic book readers will enjoy the clear beautiful art, the humor lacing the book, and the sibling wars. Sisters releases on August 26th in the US, but if you don't have your hands on this book yet, there's Smile and Drama to fall in love with.
I received this book for free for review from the publisher, Scholastic Graphix, via NetGalley. Sisters by Raina Telgemeier releases in the US on August 26th.
Comments
Back to the book though. This author got my kid to read. I thank her for that.
books too. The comics are really refreshing and cute, and something even adults can read and relate to, easily.