This One Summer

Tamaki, M., & Tamaki, J. (2014). This one summer. New York, New York: First Second.

This is a young adult graphic novel that follows Rose Wallace as she deals with friendships, faamily, and local drama, while on a summer family vacation at Lake Awago.  Rose has spent summers at Lake Awago as far as she can remember.  There, she met her best friend, Windy, who is a year and a half younger and they do everything together.  Rose and Windy like to watch horror flicks together.  They go rent movies from Brewster’s. Rose’s crush, Duncan, works there

They spend a lot of time at Brewster’s with the teen scene there and hear teenagers cursing and talking about sexual things. Rose’s parents are also going through a tough time.  Her dad ends up leaving for a few days and Rose blames her mother. Duncan gets a girl named Jenny pregnant and doesn’t want to own up to his responsibilities.  Rose and Windy go through a rough patch, but get passed it.  As the summer comes to an end, Jenny confronts Duncan and he tells her to get lost.  Jenny gets drunk and goes into the lake.  Rose screams for her mom and her mom saves Jenny from drowning. Later the same night, Rose learns that her mom had a miscarriage last summer and that why she had been acting that way.  They make peace with each other.  Rose and Windy say good-bye and look forward to next summer. The more graphic novel I read, the more I enjoy them.  Even though the reading level for this book is a 2.4, I would like recommend this book for young adult because of its content and language.  I would say that it is for high school students from grades 9^th-12^th.  The strengths in this book are how the illustrations come to life. It has a lot of small details to it, which helps bring the story to life.  Family is a very important theme is this story.  Rose’s family visits Awago Beach every year.  It is something that her family is accustomed to do.  Rose’s family is going through a difficult time during this time and Windy and her mother have a good relationship even though she is adopted. The vocabulary and word choice of the author is more of a young adult because of words such as “blow job” and the straightforward language used throughout the novel.