Brian Freschi

Gorgeously drawn (painted?). This slice of life contains the story of India, an elementary school teacher in Italy who struggles with panic attacks. The people around her are universally distrustful and cruel, to that someone (presumably a parent) spray paints "Die Whore" on her front door.

Inter-stitched are fairy tail stories that India tells her students, that seem to dramatize her struggle and how mental illness does not follow a classic hero's journey of quest and triumph.

Meanwhile, show more India's parents are skeptical India can manage, her relationship with her boyfriend seems to strain to the breaking point, and her colleagues are vicious and judgemental.

When she is finally fired from the school, her boyfriend appears, they reconcile and agree to leave.

That's a four or five star book.

But then the epilogue undoes all India's growth. Somehow the children misbehave so badly that somehow India is brought back to teach again. And I just can't buy it. In the eyes of the principal and parents, she was the problem until suddenly she was the solution? As she tells her therapist, everyone's laziness and desire for consistency leads them back to her. Really? And she chose to return to a place where she felt so attacked? Oh and by the way, she's done taking meds and will manage on her own with a half dozen exercises she's jotted in her notebook.

If there was some hint that the epilogue is actually a break with reality, that it is her fantasy and not her life, maybe then I'd love the book even more. Instead in veers so outside of the life, career and mental health experiences I have seen in the world that I'm knocking it down to 2 starts. Pretty as the pictures are, I can't believe the story. show less

Iconographics - David Bowie, by Brian Freschi, is a fun romp through a very important period of Bowie's life and career.

This is not a complete biography so anyone who doesn't have some idea of Bowie's career timeline will feel like they've been dropped into the middle of the story, mainly because they have. That isn't a weakness of the book, it is true of any book that focuses on one specific period. You can only give so much contextualization without turning it into something else. That show more said, you don't have to be a Bowie expert to appreciate it, just have some idea what came before this period.

My first Bowie album was David Bowie (Space Oddity), so 1970, and I bought his albums thereafter shortly after release. When the albums of his Berlin period were released I remember, along with many of my friends, being unsure how to approach them. Low took us a little by surprise but most of us kept spinning it. I think it was the release of "Heroes" that really brought us back into the fold. Fortunately they were released fairly close together and most of us hadn't stopped being fans. But even through all of the interviews and books since then, this period has been endlessly fascinating.

For older fans like me, this graphic novel takes you back to that time, the work that had been brewing in Europe and just periodically bubbling up in America. Growing up near military bases (I was a Navy brat) then joining the Navy in 1976 gave me the opportunity to hear a lot of music that didn't always make it onto the radio stations, so Bowie's new direction, while still startling, wasn't completely foreign to me. I met some people in the Navy who weren't from military families and hadn't scrounged the import record stores who found these albums simply incomprehensible. Now, everyone who likes Bowie has at least some appreciation of the music and a lot of understanding about how this period helped influence the rest of his life and career.

There are certainly things one can nitpick but on the whole this volume does a good job of giving the reader some idea of how and why Bowie ended up working in Berlin and with the people he did. If it piques your curiosity and you want to know more, there is a lot of more in depth writing available, only so much can be presented in graphic form.

Highly recommended for Bowie fans and for those who have some understanding of Bowie's career, before and after this period. Yes, the drawings do often show him with a brown eye, but the point being made is that because of the pupil dilation the iris wasn't able to process light correctly so did, in fact, appear as a different color. Even one or two of his album covers showed the eye leaning very close to brown while others highlighted the bluish color but just a little darker. In other words, if the shading is what is most important to you, you might want to read something else, this book is more about his life and career and not exactly what color his eye appears in different lighting environments.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

This enchanting graphic novel follows the days of Electra, or Ellie, as she goes from a klutzy would-be athlete to a graceful ballerina. But Ellie can’t let her mother know about her dancing. Since her parents separated, Ellie, her older brother Robbie, and her mother have moved to an apartment away from her musician father. Her mother wants Ellie involved in a sport to keep her busy and make new friends, but Ellie wants to dance, which her mother is oddly against. Ellie doesn’t show more understand why.

Every sport she tries, she fails at, gloriously. Her best friend, Chloe, goes to the same middle school she moves to and they share classes and make new friends together, friends who encourage Ellie to be true to herself and dance. From her first crush to getting in trouble for hitting a mean girl, to sneaking into ballet lessons, the reader wants Ellie be her true funny, quirky yet graceful self.

The illustrations are perfect for this story, the colors are bright but not overpowering, and the style is befitting the story of a young girl and her family, even the visual elements that depict Ellie’s quirkiness and emotions are just right.

This book was originally written in Italian, but the theme of trying to find your gifts is universal. It’s a nice way to share translated books with younger readers. show less

This book was really frustrating to read. It's basically just about an elementary school teacher who experiences panic attacks and there's a lot of stigma about mental health. Her coworkers and students'. parents want her to get fired or quit because she "isn't fit to be around students". It all just made me angry (on her behalf) and although she eventually figures it out and works it out with her boyfriend and keeps teaching I just didn't enjoy reading this. There's also a fictional story show more that she's writing and telling her students to try to explain her experiences. It was fine, but sometimes confusing. I'm *also* a teacher who has depression and anxiety. I've had panic attacks (although never at school and not in a long time) so I would have thought that this story would speak to me more, but it didn't. I didn't especially relate to her although I had empathy towards her. I just didn't really enjoy it. Also, I read this on a plane around other people and kept getting surprised when there were so many panels of her naked! It didn't bother me necessarily, but I thought it was super weird. I don't get why you would waste time showing me her boobs like 5 times. It felt like it was just trying to be "artsy". It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. show less