Skim

So I wrote the post for this one a few weeks ago, and published the whole thing (I thought), but somehow most of it got lost so I deleted it and forgot about blogging for a while.

Now that I have taken a break, I would like to be more active on here again.

So let's talk about Skim by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki.

This is a graphic novel written for teens. The author is from Toronto (yeah Toronto!) so the story is also set there.

Skim is about an Asian-Canadian teenaged girl dealing with depression and the isolation that comes from being different. Her race has always made her stand out, and her interest in Wicca has made her an outsider at her Catholic high school. Furthermore, she has a broken arm so she is unable to do what the other girls can do.

The storyline is centred on the death of a star volleyball player from a nearby all-boys school. His recent ex-girlfriend, Katie, is one of Skim's classmates. His death begins to change a lot of things in Skim's life and in her school. There are rumours that the boy was gay, and it is suggested that this may have had something to do with his suicide.

Katie comes to school a few days later with injuries to both arms and a leg, supposedly from a fall, but she is very depressed and people think that she may have tried to end her own life over the loss of her boyfriend. Due to their injuries, Katie and Skim begin to spend more time together. They are also the only ones who can relate to one another.

Simultaneously, Skim falls for her English and drama teacher, Ms. Archer, who seems to reciprocate the feeling. This is of course unacceptable because of their student-teacher relationship and the Catholic morals of the school.

Skim struggles to understand her emotions and to figure out what love is and how how it affects her life. She must also grapple with being different, and with  figuring out who she is and who her friends are as they grow up.

One really neat feature of this story being told in the comic medium is that mental illness is represented visually through broken limbs. Skim and Katie both suffer from depression and they both spend the duration of the story wearing class. The gym teacher punningly calls them "outcasts". I loved the use of this visual.

Sometimes there are images given to readers without any context, such as graffiti on the newspaper clipping about the auicide or the page with Skim kissing Ms. Archer. It is left to the reader to interpret the image's place in the story.

Reading this book made me appreciate the comic medium more. It was also a really good commentary on being different and growing up and how these things affect our relationships with others through our teenage years.

This was an easy read, and really good for analyses of themes and symbols both in the story itself and in the images.