Review by New York Times Review
The lonely heroine of this graphic novel finds a kindred spirit in Jane Eyre. THE first illustrations in the Canadian author Fanny Britt's graphic novel, "Jane, the Fox and Me," are of a school's large campus, with buildings, stairways, paths, shadows, scattered trees, even a far-offforest and this line : "There was no possibility of hiding anywhere today." We've entered the sad, graytoned world of young Hélène, who must endure another day of toggling between the fear of being noticed and the fear of being ignored that is existence for the recently shunned adolescent girl. Students roam the campus in twos and threes. Not Hélène; she's alone. She used to have friends, but they've turned on her. They write about her on bathroom walls, saying nasty things about a weight problem she doesn't appear to have, and a body-odor problem I can neither confirm nor deny since this is a book. As we've been told, school is big but also small, so around every corner lurk the girls who were once her friends. And Hélène is small but also big, so she can't disappear completely behind her middle-parted sheets of hair or beneath her slouch. No, she must withstand the insults and deal with the fact that the other girls have crinoline dresses, which are all the rage in Montreal at this particular moment, and she does not. Hélène's mother, who is exhausted and overworked, spends all night making one for her, but not in time for it to matter. And we all know that it's never really about the dress, is it? But there's some good news. Like so many loners before her, Hélène finds refuge in a book. Hers is "Jane Eyre," and when Hélène discusses the book, the magnificent, deeply sad illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault (the winner of a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books award for "Migrant" ) go from stark, wintry colors to bold vermilion and blush rose. The handwritten text suddenly changes from brutal block letters to a curvy italic hand. Jane Eyre! Now here is someone Hélène can get behind! See, like Hélène, Jane is.... Well, she's.... To be honest, I'm not sure why Hélène falls in love with Jane Eyre, except that perhaps she's actually fallen in love not with Jane Eyre but with the refuge that a great book gives you in a time of struggle. When we're young and unpopular, we need a hero most valiant, as gallant as Rapunzel's prince, to rescue us from the horror of our daily life (and to deliver us to a semi-happy ending, even when it includes blindness ). Sometimes that hero is the book's protagonist, and sometimes it's the book itself. The tragic twist - no sarcasm here, as I, sadly, am an alumna of the teenage friendless - comes when Hélène is forced to accompany her class on a four-night trip to a nature camp. There's no getting out of it. Trust her. It's as awful as she thinks it will be. The boys burp at her. A girl brags that she stuck a fork in Hélène's rear and laugh laugh laughs that Hélène's so fat she didn't even feel the poke. But one night in the woods Hélène meets the fox of the book's title, and has a moment of communion. Soon after, she finds a friend, a human named Géraldine. Life becomes tolerable, even happy, for Hélène. She walks, more confidently, from her old gray world into a green and leafy one. There isn't anything revolutionary about this quiet book, translated by Christelle Morelli and Susan Ouriou. But there doesn't really need to be. The magic of a story like this is that it's a hand stretching from Hélène's school to ours to let us know we're not alone. Loneliness is a language that doesn't need translation. It's understood by anyone who has prayed that a dress could transform her into a different person; by anyone who has been destroyed by worry over whom to sit beside on a bus to an overnight trip; by anyone who has ever stared at a classroom clock in disbelief at just how long a day can last, how long childhood can last. It's a language understood by anyone who has endured the interminable wait for a Géraldine of her own. * Reason to smile: A chance encounter in "Jane, the Fox and Me." JANE, THE FOX AND ME By Fanny Britt Illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault Translated by Christelle Morelli and Susan Ouriou 101 pp. Groundwood Books/ House of Anansi Press. $19.95. (Graphic novel; ages 10 to 14) Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, has also written for The Los Angeles Times, O, GQ and Salon.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 25, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
Pubescent Helene sees herself as fat and beleaguered by her more popular and social classmates, so she turns to Jane Eyre to find a model for setting her prospects both high and anywhere other than her immediate circumstances. Britt's well-constructed narrative is achieved sensitively through Arsenault's impressionistic artwork, in which we see that Helene is a pretty-ordinary-looking little 11-year-old in spite of her self-image. While her everyday life which has become further burdened by an all-class camping trip appears in a gray palette, when Helene daydreams about Jane's life, pastel washes and a vivid red appear. During the camping trip, Helene comes across a red fox in the woods and begins to make some human friends. After a post-camping trip weigh-in, where she sees she's perfectly normal, Helene's everyday world also takes on color. An elegant and accessible approach to an important topic, for readers of Erin Dionne's Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies (2009) and other novels about girls learning to cope with their own expectations of themselves.--Goldsmith, Francisca Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The pain that cruel schoolmates inflict on solitary, book-loving girls is familiar territory, but Britt and Arsenault's take on it is worth a second look. Tormented by her classmate Genevieve-"I stuck a fork in your butt, but you're so fat you didn't feel a thing!!"-Helene retreats into the pages of Jane Eyre. "Everyone needs a strategy," she observes, "even Jane Eyre." Arsenault (Virginia Wolf) uses velvety reds and blacks for Helene's ruminations on Bronte's novel; elsewhere, she renders landscapes, interiors, and portraits of Helene and her classmates in delicate grays. A small miracle presages change as Helene is approached by a wild fox on a school camping trip: "Its eyes are so kind I just about burst." Then a classmate named Geraldine absconds (not entirely believably) from the mean girls and befriends Helene. Arsenault signals the change by introducing the fragile green of new leaves into her monochromatic landscapes. Subordinate characters are lovingly drawn, and time and place references (the McGarrigle Sisters, the Bay department store) add piquancy. More than a few readers will recognize themselves in Helene and find comfort. Ages 10-14. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Helene is unhappy with her life and prefers to escape into books. At school, she is tormented by the insults of her former friends. The book shifts back and forth between Helene's reality and the world she enters whenever she reads Jane Eyre and begins imagining herself in the character's place. Helene admires Jane, who is "clever, slender and wise," who is loved by others even though she is not a traditional beauty. The style of Arsenault's artwork varies if Helene is in the real world, in the fictional world of Jane Eyre, or if she's inspired by something that makes the real world better. The illustrations are expressive and accomplished, shifting back and forth between urban and natural environments, between black and white and radiant colors. Readers will be delighted to see Helene's world change as she grows up, learning to ignore the mean girls and realizing that, like Jane, she is worthy of friendship and love. The large size of this book might be off-putting, but it is a special one for special readers.-Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Britt and Arsenault's powerful picture book-sized graphic novel about bullying, self-image, imagination, and (ultimately) hope centers on Helene, ostracized by her former friends and now a loner at school persecuted via washroom wall scribbles ("Helene weighs 216!") and acts of public humiliation ("I stuck a fork in your butt, but you're so fat you didn't feel a thing!!"). With her shattered self-esteem and (mistaken) belief that she looks like a "big fat sausage," Helene escapes into reading, specifically Jane Eyre?; in Jane, Helene discovers an outcast kindred spirit. Arsenault uses varied page layouts and a mix of illustrative techniques to pace the story and express emotion; monochromatic sketches depict Helene's unhappy existence as well as surreal scenes that reflect her feelings, while pages in warm colors relate Jane's story. Britt's poetic prose captures Helene's heartbreaking isolation, nowhere more acutely than on a class camping trip, when her desperation climaxes in an encounter with a vivid red fox: "Its eyes are so kind I just about burst. That same look in another human's eyes, and my soul would be theirs for sure." But it is after the fox has been chased away (and when even Jane Eyre can't help) that she makes a new friend, the ebullient and compassionate Geraldine. This relationship transforms Helene's world, as color begins to appear on the final spreads, highlighting her road to recovery. It's a profound ending to a brutally beautiful story. cynthia k. ritter (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Lonely young Hlne begins to get out from under her body-image issue with help from a new friend--and Jane Eyre. Weighed down by cruel graffiti ("Hlne weighs 216!"--a figure belied, later, by the "88" on a doctor's scale but not before the damage is done) as well as looks and snickers from her former circle, Hlne walks slump-shouldered and isolated through a dreary world rendered in sepia wash. A class trip to nature camp brings no relief, as it entails a painful expedition to buy a swimsuit ("I'm a sausage") and then exile to the "outcasts' tent." Only following Jane Eyre's growth into a woman "clever, slender and wise" lightens her spirit. Then a brief encounter with a fox and the arrival of Graldine, an extroverted fellow camper, signal at last the beginnings of a brighter outlook. Hand-lettered but easily legible, her sparely told narrative suits the swiftly drawn look of the art. Ably capturing Hlne's emotional tides, Arsenault portrays her (as a child of plainly average build) in dark sequential panels that give way when she's reading or dreaming to full spreads, usually in subdued tones of orange and blue. Those colors and others show up as highlights in closing scenes that are capped by a final glimpse of the bright fox amid burgeoning greenery. A sensitive and possibly reassuring take on a psychological vulnerability that is all too common and not easily defended. (Graphic novel. 10-13)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
