School Drama Books

 

I read all of these recently and thought I'd combine them into one review. 

Louise Simonson is well-known in comic circles. She's done writing for Marvel, DC and a lot of other things. 

This graphic novel collects the (sadly only) four issues of Junior High Drama. Each issue focuses on a different character with a different problem. 

Kamilla is a very talented singer, but her body image issues are holding her back. Lilly gets caught up in mean girl drama. Lucia is afraid of her first boy/girl party. Allie is a star athlete who learns she has diabetes in a dramatic way, then has to cope with all the changes in her life. 

The art is gorgeous and the writing is great. Definitely a good read for anyone into stories about school-type problems. The cast is very diverse, too!

The next two are by the same author with very minor overlap. I actually read Pipi's book first, though it comes second, so start with The Reckless Club instead. 

Just don't judge Vrabel's writing based only on this. I found her writing for Pipi way stronger. This isn't bad, it's just less polished. 

The Reckless Club is obviously inspired by The Breakfast Club. It's five student stereotypes in detention. Only their detention takes place on the last day of summer before high school and they serve it by volunteering at a nursing home. 

Not all of the characters are likeable and I wish this had been a little longer to give them more development. 

Jason is The Nobody. He actually appeared the most in Pipi's book and he's by far my favorite of the five. 

Rex is The Rebel. I like her a lot. 

Lilith Bhat, the Drama Queen, has one of the best names ever. She's the school's actress, but unlike in most other school-set books, she's not popular. I love that she's Indian, too. 

Ally is The Athlete. I'd say she's the least developed and definitely the least likeable of the five. 

And Wes is The Flirt. The popular guy who leads all the trends, but both gets tired of having everyone follow him and also craves being needed. 

Their adventures in the nursing home are both poignant and fun. I loved the character of Agnes. I want to hang out with her. 

My only real gripe, aside from not getting to flesh out the characters enough, is that there's a very brief  racial discussion that felt 100% forced. Like she was told to cram it in there and it came out terribly. It had absolutely nothing to do with the plot whatsoever and it could easily have been left out. I really hate forcing issues that are relevant to the real world but have no place in the plot into books. There are plenty of books out there about those topics. Don't try to do it if you can't do it well.  

This one was great. Reckless Club is a fun, occasionally emotional, quick read, but Pipi is a journey through one girl's trek to cancel out all the humiliations she's built up over the years. She has a list of one for every year of school and some of them are really bad. 

The journey is a bit predictable. She gets caught up in it and neglects her best friend, who's a really popular athletic girl. Said athletic girl is made more interesting by having her be super obsessed with a fantasy book series, so she's like popular, athletic...cosplaying fangirl? She overlooks another character, who by the end grows to be another good friend. And she's forced to change her views on other characters. 

There's a ton of diversity in this, which I love. And all the characters from The Reckless Club make appearances. You can start with Pipi if you want to, but then you'd know where the Reckless gang ended up before you even get to meet them.