Starred review from September 1, 2014
Award-winning alternative cartoonist legend Barry (100! Demons) returns with the third book in a series of hybrid comics that are both instructional and engaging. This graphic memoir/guide tells the story of Barry’s first three years teaching at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The book includes the syllabi for her courses in interdisciplinary creativity and most of the activities she ran with the students, as well as her personal musings about the classes. She includes student work and explores many fascinating pedagogical subjects, as well as deeper questions about creativity and the brain. She talks about what makes drawing interesting, and how her drawing style has changed as a result of teaching, with surprising results. She also continues her investigation of what an image is. This book is charming and readable and serves as an excellent guide for those seeking to break out of whatever writing and drawing styles they have been stuck in, allowing them to reopen their brains to the possibility of new creativity. Readers can pore over the exceptionally gorgeous graphic mixture of collage, inking, and watercolor for hours. Agent: Liz Darhansoff, Poets & Writers
March 1, 2015
Gr 10 Up-Structured as a handwritten composition book, this title uses prose within a graphic context to serve as a forum to teach aspiring young authors. It's written as though a creatively minded person were keeping a messy journal filled with ideas, notes, and scribbles. This book presents an inside look into Writing the Unthinkable, the cartoonist's highly popular writing workshop. Neither a graphic or prose novel, it requires readers to jump around to different boxed areas of words, which resemble those in a textbook, but attempts to do so in a hip, visual, new way. The end result is discordant and sloppy and may confuse, rather than inspire, young authors. VERDICT Those unfamiliar with comics guru Barry's previous work may find the format and style of this title extremely jarring. Stick with her What It Is (Drawn & Quarterly, 2008).-Ryan P. Donovan, Southborough Public Library, MA
Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from March 1, 2015
Renowned comics artist Barry offers a glimpse into both her ideas about creativity and her teaching process in this enlightening and absorbing collection of pages from her journals and syllabi. By playfully exploring expression, memory, and mindfulness, among many other things, Barry encourages her students to quit trying to achieve good art and instead focus on almost childlike freedom with drawing. There is an aliveness in these drawings that can't be faked, she writes. All the coursework is built on daily diaries to help notice what you notice, a deceptively easy foundation that will capture something vital about art. It's an empowering message, and Barry's gleefully jumbled pagespacked with sketches, personal journal entries, handwritten notes, collage, and some of her students' workare a testament to the usefulness of unfettered experimentation. But despite the doodles and irreverent tone ( Compare my comic strip about being exhausted with the strip about a barbarian sticking his butt out. Which makes you feel more alive? ), this endeavor is serious business. Barry requires a lot of work from her students, but even that is encouraging. Creativity is not bestowed from on high; it can be cultivated (albeit with a boatload of sometimes plodding effort). Anyone trying their hand at creating something artistic would be well served to dip into this lively volume from a true master.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)