Well, my New Year’s resolution to keep up with my book reviews has not gone amazingly the first half of the year, but there’s always time to refocus so I’m trying to get back into it. Fortunately this summer of grad school classes hasn’t been as overwhelming as last year, so I have been able to do some reading for fun and have some books to review. I even have had the time to go to the local bookstore twice, which is pretty astonishing versus last year when I barely left my room. I picked up How To Draw A Secret from that local store yesterday — a cute indie store is always a pleasant experience — and read it over lunch, very enjoyable.
How To Draw A Secret is an autobiographical middle grade graphic novel that follows Cindy as she grapples with the concept of what a family is and her desire to have her family return to being a “normal” one. Her father left the family and moved back to Taiwan four years ago, but her mother told her and her two older sisters not to tell anyone and to keep a secret. Cindy longs to have the family reunite and also struggles with her anger at her father. She views her friends’ families as perfect, while her own family’s ambiguous state and her inability to discuss it with friends or teachers leaves her without support. Cindy is a talented artist and has the opportunity to join a district-wide art competition through her school. The theme is “What family means to me,” which sends her into more of a spiral and leaves her uncertain about entering the contest despite her teacher’s encouragement. When her paternal grandfather dies, they have to go back to Taiwan and deal with all of the underlying tension and secrets.
I thought that this was a strong book and it dealt with a variety of viewpoints and struggles in a realistic way. No one was fully demonized and the foibles of the parents were (eventually) openly discussed in a healing manner. I appreciated the complicated realism of her parents’ relationship and how both of them made bad decisions along the way and had room to improve themselves. The messages of learning to speak up for yourself, finding your own place within your family, and the issues of keeping bad secrets, were all well conveyed. The art style was cute and expressive. All in all, a good read! I could imagine that this book would be great for middle schoolers whose families are going through a complicated separation/divorce situation.