10/01/2020
Gr 6 Up—Kantorovitz tells the story of how her family emigrated from Morocco to France. Young Sylvie explores her home, navigates new friendships, and discovers a passion for art, while facing hurdles such as fighting with her brother and being part of the only Jewish family in town. As Sylvie gets older, her concerns likewise become more mature, from dealing with a difficult relationship with her mother to struggling to balance her love of art with the need for a responsible career. The cartoonish art style is enchanting, and Kantorovitz makes effective use of color and panel layout to convey mood. While not as heartbreaking as Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, this title will also allow young adults to see their own challenges reflected on the page. The only flaw is an abrupt ending that leaves readers wanting to know what happens when Sylvie leaves for college. VERDICT Readers, particularly those who grapple with challenging parental relationships or escape into art, will find that this witty memoir speaks to their own experiences.—Tammy Ivins, Univ. of North Carolina at Wilmington
02/01/2021
This tightly composed illustrated memoir spans Kantorovitz’s childhood from the late 1960s through the 1970s, when her family emigrated from Morocco to France and lived at a teachers’ college where her father was the director. As a girl, Sylvie sketches while paging through the encyclopedia, later refining her ink and watercolor techniques. These anecdotes reinforce Sylvie’s love of illustration, lending suspense to years of pressure to choose an education career. Like a photo album, chapters distill ordinary events, glossing over them without erasing troubles: Sylvie attempts to conceal her Jewish identity, questions her parents’ strained marriage, cares for three younger siblings, sees her misbehaving brother depart for boarding school, and weathers rocky times with her judgmental mother. High school brings a chaste heterosexual relationship and baccalaureate anxieties. Throughout, airy layouts allow for reflection; a crayon map of the walled grounds early on implies the pleasures of childhood expeditions, and chestnuts from local trees become a nostalgic visual motif, reminding readers of Sylvie’s formative moments. Introspective, this chronicle traces a winding path, concluding with optimism and promise. Ages 9–12. (Feb.)
Kantorovitz tells the story of how her family emigrated from Morocco to France. . .The cartoonish art style is enchanting, and Kantorovitz makes effective use of color and panel layout to convey mood...Readers, particularly those who grapple with challenging parental relationships or escape into art, will find that this witty memoir speaks to their own experiences.
—School Library Journal
In charmingly illustrated panels, readers are invited into the small triumphs and sorrows of cartoonist Kantorovitz’s youth. . .the overall tone of this story is comforting, warm, calm, and deeply satisfying. Quietly appealing for young readers with a taste for realism.
—Kirkus Reviews
In this graphic memoir, Sylvie shares her experience growing up on the grounds of a small French teacher’s college where her father served as principal, and quietly blazing her path toward a career in art. . .The graphic format and the years-long span of Sylvie’s narrative coverage invite a broad range of readers—those looking back from the border of independence, and those looking forward to life of their own making.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
This tightly composed illustrated memoir spans Kantorovitz’s childhood from the late 1960s through the 1970s...Like a photo album, chapters distill ordinary events, glossing over them without erasing troubles... Introspective, this chronicle traces a winding path, concluding with optimism and promise
—Publishers Weekly
Author-illustrator Kantorovitz’s graphic memoir is an engaging and thoughtful story of an observant child who grows into a young adult eager to pursue teaching and art. . .The book’s design is open and friendly...Even at a hefty 350-plus pages, the book looks so approachable that it will likely attract a wide range of readers who will discover a strong story about navigating family, school, and friendships while finding one’s purpose.
—The Horn Book
The portrait that the modern child encounters in this illustrated autobiography is enviable, really, even if in the author’s life, as in every life, a little rain does fall. . .Children of gentle and artistic temperament will find a kindred spirit in Sylvie Kantorovitz and perhaps take encouragement for their own moments of travail and independence.
—The Wall Street Journal
2020-11-27
Scenes from a girl’s everyday life.
In charmingly illustrated panels, readers are invited into the small triumphs and sorrows of cartoonist Kantorovitz’s youth. Born in Casablanca, Morocco, in the 1960s, when she was 5, her parents moved back to France, and her father took a job as a school principal. Sylvie and her three siblings grew up on the grounds of the all-boys school, and brief vignettes explore her relationships with her parents and siblings as well as her friendships, romances, and developing creativity. At first each story seems disconnected from the rest, but as Sylvie grows up, a central narrative around her desire to pursue art coalesces, especially after her family moves to a town near Paris. Kantorovitz uses a muted palette, mostly greens, browns, and yellows, with bold lines and pleasingly stolid figures. Similarly, her life is interesting but fairly straightforward—this is not a memoir of war, abuse, or extreme marginalization. Sylvie, a White Jewish girl, is the target of some prejudicial labels for those born in North Africa and experiences mild anti-Semitism, something her mother is always on guard against; her mother is similarly obsessed with Sylvie’s being appropriately feminine. But the overall tone of this story is comforting, warm, calm, and deeply satisfying.
Quietly appealing for young readers with a taste for realism. (Graphic memoir. 9-13)