A Glance Backward

Gr 4–6—On his way home from school one day, 11-year-old Joey decides to purchase some firecrackers and cause some mischief. As he hurries to his bedroom to hide his contraband, he notices a statue moving in his living room. When he approaches to investigate, he falls through the wall and into a fantasy world full of strange and surreal sights. Since he cannot return back through the wall, he decides to look for another way home. Along the way, he encounters many bizarre scenes and characters, some wonderful, some menacing, and some violent. Much of the story line of this graphic novel involves Joey's thinking out loud about his adventures, along with brief dialogue with a few of the odd characters he meets. The vivid watercolor artwork effectively conveys Joey's swings in emotion from terror to love to anger and everything in between, and the violence depicted in several scenes makes this graphic novel more suited for mature readers, despite the age of the main character. Although this beautifully dark volume accurately represents the wide-ranging emotions felt by some adolescents, the audience for such a story will be limited.