A cute and sad coming-of-age children's graphic novel about friendship, family, loss and grief.
With the characters all being animals, who live, act and dress exactly like modern day humans, 'Dear Rosie' gave me 'Arthur', 'Rupert' and 'The Wind in the Willows' vibes, except the main characters are girls. Four modern middle school girls - Millie (our protag, a deer), Florence (a fox), Gabby (a badger), and Claire (a mouse) - who are dealing with the aftermath of the death of one of their friend group, Rosie (a cat). They try to remain friends forever, and honour and cherish Rosie's memory. But life, being what it is, keeps getting in the way. In the span of a year, they are in danger of being driven apart, separated, via different and painfully realistic means.On top of everything, Millie finds a notebook left mysteriously at her family's laundromat, which might be linked to Rosie. To escape her grief, she immerses herself in the mystery of the notebook and its markings and maps, determined to solve it. To maybe "find" Rosie again, and at last make life make sense again. Millie involves the other girls in solving the mystery, though each are going through their own problems, exacerbated by the sudden, tragic, heartbreaking loss of Rosie.
Can they be truly happy again? And with each other, as friends who stick together, forever?
'Dear Rosie' is kind of a contemporary retelling of 'The Wind in the Willows', with young girl leads. Grief and the strength of friendship are major themes in the slice-of-life, coming-of-age story. Anxiety is also captured and expressed really well. It is loosely based on the authors' own personal experiences, and you can tell.
Negative criticism segment:
• The adult characters don't receive much characterisation, nor character arcs (except for Mr. DeAlba the old eccentric tortoise, perhaps). They barely appear at all.
• The answer to the mystery ends up being somewhat underwhelming; compounded by the underdeveloped adults problem.
• Where are Rosie's family? They are never mentioned, much less appear in the comic.
• I could get behind the idea of telling a story and drawing everyone in it as cute, bipedal, anthropomorphised animals (including some wildlife local to Boehman's hometown of Frederick, Maryland) - when if they were humans literally nothing would change about the whole thing - just fine. Except that "scaredy-cat" is still a term that's used, as a teasing, carefree, childish insult...when cats are people here. Including Rosie, the dead friend! And Florence's dad is a bear. Animals such as cows are just cows, not people. Details such as these are always going to be...weird in an animals-as-humans concept - like, who count as intelligent, sentient, talking beings and civilians and who don't? - especially for a child audience. And what about the meat in this world? "Veggie dogs"!? Is everyone a cannibal?!
• Connected to the point above is a small panel on page 128 where Claire encounters a...real, titchy, nontalking mouse. I'm sure it is supposed to be a funny, nudge-wink moment directed at the readers.
I guess if I think of the characters as humans who merely look like animals to the audience, the animals-as-humans-with-no-thought-to-the-worldbuilding-surrounding-that-whatsoever conceit becomes less of an issue. Or I should stop overthinking it and enjoy the children's comic.
Sad, sweet, soft, winsome and heartwarming, 'Dear Rosie' is a unique and charming little middle grade graphic novel, when those are not usually my cup of tea. It's not among the absolute best graphic novels I've ever read, but it's a keeper. A small, oddly-shaped but rare and novel trinket hidden at the bottom of a treasure chest, giving off its own crooked, yet warm and tantalising bronze light. Its adorable cover, with its twinkle, definitely caught my eye right away when I spotted it in my local bookshop, not having heard of it beforehand.
'Dear Rosie' is a lovely autumn read as well.
Final Score: 3.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment