It kind of lost me at the end, and I’m bummed it was a cliffhanger, but I loved the artwork for this. It’s a tough story, and it wasn’t exactly fun to read, but I’m curious to see what happens next. ( )

Gorgeous art, character work, setting, designs, backgrounds..... just gorgeous and lush in general. Love perfectly conveys the swampy beauty and lurking danger of the bayou, and the tensions that result from not fitting in simply because of how you look. ( )

Historical fiction magical realism makes makes for a disturbing story about a little Black girl in Mississippi during the 1930s trying to prevent her father from being lynched. ( )

Creepy fantasy take on the Jim Crow South. *shiver* ( )

I love the fact that this graphic novel was able to take such a horrible time in our history and create it in a way that even the youngest of students to relate to. History can be a hard topic to teach because of the dense subject matter and also because some of the topics can be hard to discuss freely in a classroom. I love the fact that instead of focusing on real world people this book takes readers on a sort of mythical journey. it takes such a hard topic of slavery and recreates this fantasy of monsters roaming about and the main character having to fight her way to protect her father. I think this is extremely valuable even for many adults because now the topic is almost neutralized. Somehow now that is the topic of monsters and not slavery it is easier to express and defend how we feel on the topic. I also really like this for younger students because they have such vivid imaginations and seeing history topics in this format can make them easier to teach because now the concept Is on the students level. I would like to use this book to possibly have my class take a historical event and turn it into a cartoon like this so that they can express themselves creatively but also so that I can see that they have a full understanding of the topic and can relay the information to their peers.