louisa may alcott

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
Lion Forge
Publication date May 28, 2019
ISBN 978-1549304002

Genderqueer author and artist Maia Kobabe, who uses non-binary pronouns e/em/eir, knew from childhood that e didn’t fit traditional definitions of female, and was never completely comfortable thinking of emself as male either. In this graphic novel memoir, e explores big themes like gender, sexuality, sex, relationships, and family side-by-side with specific individual experiences of bullying and misgendering, experimenting with clothing and haircuts, and coming out to family and friends. Kobabe’s journey of self-discovery demonstrates with forthright, heartfelt honesty that gender and sexuality are spectrums that allow for every possible human experience and expression, and that there is no wrong way to be the real you.

Continue reading Great Graphic Novels (#GGN2020) Nominees Round Up, April 19 Edition

I love to knit–I’m very slow at it, and not very advanced, but ever since my husband’s grandmother taught me almost ten years ago, I’ve enjoyed it. The cold temperatures this time of year (especially over the last week!) put me even more in a knitting mood, and the only problem then is deciding whether to spend free time reading or knitting. Audiobooks occasionally help with that dilemma, but so do books that feature knitters!

There seems to have been a resurgent interest in knitting over the past few years, but while there are a ton of great nonfiction knitting books out there, I wanted to stick with a list of fictional knitters. It was hard to find very many, so I’ve cheated a bit by branching beyond YA books. Hopefully, one of these knitters will strike your reading mood this winter:

Mme Defarge from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. To start off with perhaps the most famous literary knitter, I may be veering away from YA lit, but not from a memorable story and character. A Tale of Two Cities presents Dickens’ take on the French Revolution and a British family that gets caught up in the chaos. It’s one of his shorter works and includes enough romance and heroics to make it easy to stay connected with the story–not always so with a Dickens work. Mme Defarge is something of a side character, but her knitting takes center stage when the reader learns that she uses it to keep her register…a register of those she, her husband, and their co-revolutionaries have marked for a date with Mme la Guillotine. Continue reading Literary Knitters