Patrick Radden Keefe is an expert in long-form journalism, and his particular specialty is the so-called “write around,” in which a journalist constructs a profile of an individual, even if that person can’t or doesn’t want to be interviewed. In Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks (15.5 hours), Keefe compiles 12 such essays, originally published in The New Yorker between 2007 and 2019, with updates appended. Among these are portraits of “Survivor” creator and producer Mark Burnett, food writer Anthony Bourdain and the drug lord Joaquin Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo.
The author reads his own work with care and conviction, giving listeners a good sense of why he’s such an effective interviewer and storyteller. Furthermore, each chapter is about an hour long, which makes this audiobook a particularly good choice for fans of true crime podcasts.
Each chapter of Patrick Radden Keefe’s Rogues is about an hour long, which makes this audiobook a particularly good choice for fans of true crime podcasts.
When award-winning health science journalist Linda Villarosa’s New York Times Magazine article on the racial disparities in maternal and infant mortality rates went viral, it was clear her reporting had struck a nerve. In Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation (10 hours), Villarosa expands her research to look more broadly at how systemic racism contributes to health inequities for Black Americans, regardless of income or education levels. She underscores the urgent need for all Americans to understand how this discrimination harms our entire health care system.
Award-winning narrator Karen Chilton’s serious yet approachable tone strikes just the right balance for Villarosa’s writing, clearly outlining the facts and figures the author uses to build her case while also conveying warmth during the many personal anecdotes Villarosa incorporates throughout. This is essential listening for anyone hoping to understand the roots of health care injustice in America.
Recent high school graduate Aria Tang West was looking forward to spending one last summer with her two best friends before starting as an astronomy major at MIT in the fall. But that was before some topless photos, taken by a boy without Aria’s consent, made their way to social media. The slut shaming that followed resulted in the ruin of Aria’s reputation—and the retraction of invitations to her friends’ summer houses.
Instead, Aria makes her way from Massachusetts to Northern California, where she’ll spend a quiet summer with her beloved grandmother, Joan. A well-regarded artist, Joan enlists Aria to assist her in cataloging her late husband’s research files, some of which she hopes to incorporate into a sculpture.
Aria definitely doesn’t have sex or romance on her summer agenda, especially after what happened back home, but she nonetheless finds herself drawn to Steph, an aspiring musician who works as Joan’s gardener. Aria’s attraction to Steph, who is genderqueer, calls into question everything Aria thought she knew about herself, but Aria’s sexuality is just one aspect of her journey of self-discovery during this life-changing summer.
In an author’s note, Malinda Lo reveals that she’s been working on this bittersweet novel of love and loss for a decade. A Scatter of Light functions as a companion to Lo’s award-winning 2021 novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, and though fans will delight at cameos by a few of that novel’s characters, it’s absolutely not necessary to have read the earlier book to understand and appreciate this one.
However, A Scatter of Light is set in the summer of 2013 as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned California’s Proposition 8, an amendment to the state’s constitution that eliminated the right to same-sex marriage. It’s fascinating to compare this novel to the 1950s-set Last Night at the Telegraph Club, and to consider the vastly different experiences of falling in love as a young queer person at these two moments in history. Aria’s story is not just about discovering and embracing your sexuality. It’s also about what it means to be an artist, a friend, a daughter and a granddaughter, and about how identities of all kinds can converge and crystallize as part of the process of growing up.
During a life-changing summer, Aria questions everything she thought she knew about herself as she falls for Steph, a musician who works for Aria's grandmother.
Seventeen-year-old Harper Proulx lives her life on Instagram. Her lattes and lunches, her enviable day trips, even (if she’s being honest) her artsy boyfriend—they’re all curated for maximum appeal to her growing list of followers, whose validation she craves.
When one of those followers leaves a comment about Harper’s resemblance to a person named Dario, Harper is momentarily taken aback but not entirely surprised. Since she was young, Harper has known that she was conceived through a sperm donation, and she soon connects with her doppelganger and confirms that they are, in fact, half siblings. But Harper is stunned when Dario tells her that they have at least 40 more half siblings out there in the world—and that their sperm donor appears to be a beach bum named Beau Zane.
Reeling from a breakup and on something of a whim, Harper decides to join Dario and two other half siblings on a summer trip to Hawaii to meet Beau. She’s nervous about the idea, but at least the photos of Hawaii will look stunning on her Instagram, right? But nothing could prepare Harper for what she discovers on her trip, including a new understanding of identity and family, and a renewed appreciation for the world itself.
Deb Caletti (A Heart in a Body in the World) is far from the first YA author to tackle the hazards of a life lived online and the potential toll on teen mental health and relationships. But Caletti’s sophisticated, intricate storytelling brings complexity and richness to The Epic Story of Every Living Thing as the award-winning author explores themes of anxiety, found family and the natural world. Even the novel’s love story plays out in remarkable fashion, with subtlety and insight.
Caletti takes readers on a voyage that unfolds gradually and mirrors Harper’s own journey of discovery as she learns to witness “the whole of it, the grand tapestry.” The Epic Story of Every Living Thing is both deeply introspective and profoundly engaged with the world, making for a novel that embraces imperfection and inspires empathy.
When Harper embarks on a journey to meet her sperm donor, nothing could prepare her for what she'll discover in this rich, sophisticated novel.
It’s just weeks before graduation, and supersmart, beautiful Shara Wheeler—prom queen and daughter of the principal of Alabama’s conservative Willowgrove Christian Academy—has disappeared. But not before kissing her academic rival, Chloe Green, a move that both shocks and intrigues Chloe. Casey McQuiston’s young adult debut, I Kissed Shara Wheeler (9.5 hours), is both a mystery (of sorts) and an unconventional romance, as Chloe’s hunt for Shara shakes up Willowgrove’s senior class.
Readers who have fallen in love with McQuiston’s thoughtful, funny queer romances for adults (Red, White & Royal Blue and One Last Stop) will be charmed to see how the author applies their storytelling skills to the teen milieu. Narrator Natalie Naudus admirably voices more than a half-dozen significant characters, imparting individuality and personality to teens embracing a variety of identities.
Narrator Natalie Naudus voices more than a half-dozen significant characters in Casey McQuiston's young adult debut, imparting individuality and personality to teens embracing a variety of identities.
Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry (12 hours) is a funny, fearlessly feminist historical novel about chemist Elizabeth Zott, a woman who is thoroughly unmoved by the repressive standards of her time.
It’s the early 1960s, and Elizabeth becomes an accidental television sensation as the host of her own cooking show, despite being an unapologetic unwed mother, atheist and (gasp!) scientist. The extraordinary journey of this unconventional and utterly inspiring protagonist is narrated in suitably no-nonsense fashion by Miranda Raison, whose crisp delivery mirrors Elizabeth’s prioritization of rationality over emotion.
Fans who fall for Garmus’ delightful novel will want to stick around for the lively interview with the author, conducted by writer and podcaster Pandora Sykes.
Voice actor Miranda Raison’s crisp delivery mirrors Elizabeth Zott’s prioritization of rationality over emotion in the delightful Lessons in Chemistry audiobook.
Today is a momentous day for young Juan. After years of hearing about his father’s landscaping business, Juan will come along to help for the first time, armed not only with gardening supplies but also with a sketchbook and drawing tools.
During this perfectly ordinary but splendidly memorable day, Juan assists Papi and another worker, Javier, as they rake leaves, mow lawns and prune bushes. He accompanies them to a gardening supply store, where they select plants and flowers for a client. He also joins them at the dump, where the branches and other waste they have collected will be turned into mulch. Finally, the budding artist meets Papi’s new clients, listens to their vision for their overgrown yard and sketches out a design for their future garden. Inspired by his father, Juan is learning how to “make the world more beautiful.”
In a note at the end of John Parra’s heartfelt picture book Growing an Artist: The Story of a Landscaper and His Son, the author-illustrator reveals that Juan’s story is autobiographical. Working with his father as a young boy inspired Parra to consider a career in landscape architecture and design, though he ultimately took a different path and trained as a fine artist. A photograph of Parra and his father accompanies the note, and the book’s landscaping blueprint endpapers contain a designer’s mark for “Del Parra Landscape Constr.”
Parra incorporates Spanish words and phrases into the text and touches on the importance of Latin American migrant workers to the landscaping industry. It’s an underappreciated job that requires creativity and demanding physical labor. An early scene delicately depicts Juan’s growing recognition of such prejudice: Juan waves to a classmate who is neighbors with one of Papi’s clients, but the boy “looks away and pretends not to see me,” and Juan’s “heart sinks.”
Honoring the great pride that Parra’s father took in his landscaping work, Parra’s characteristically vibrant and finely detailed acrylic illustrations in Growing an Artist depict people and plants with equal affection and respect. The way that Papi points out natural beauties to his artistic young son is tender and moving, and a scene in which he gently lifts a branch to reveal a hidden bird’s nest is especially lovely.
Growing an Artist is a love letter to sons and their fathers, to work done with one’s hands and to making the world more beautiful, no matter what tools are used to do so.
This beautiful autobiographical picture book about a boy who spends the day with his father at his landscaping business is a love letter to those who “make the world more beautiful,” no matter what tools they use to do so.
Twelve-year-old Sai is an assistant to master mapmaker Paiyoon. Sai loves her job and is good at it, but she has a secret mission: to save enough money to escape her home kingdom of Mangkon, where prospects for the future are inextricably bound up with family lineage. But on Sai’s 13th birthday, she will not receive a ceremonial lineal, the chain of golden links that symbolize her ancestry, because her family has no history—at least, not one to celebrate. Her father is a con man, and much of Sai’s skill for duplicating maps and charts stems from helping her father with forgeries.
As Sai’s birthday approaches, the queen issues a new directive: Now that Mangkon has finally achieved peace for the first time in 20 years, it’s time for the kingdom to rededicate itself to exploration. Master Paiyoon asks Sai to accompany him on a southbound ship, which will journey past the 50th parallel, also called the Dragon Line.
Sai soon discovers that everyone on board the ship has a secret, including Master Paiyoon, Captain Sangra and the charismatic Miss Rian, who earned her lineal through wartime heroism. As the voyage gets underway, Sai learns that even the queen’s mission is built on a secret. A rich prize awaits any crew who can locate the elusive Sunderlands, a remote and inaccessible continent where, according to legend, Mangkon’s long-departed dragons now dwell.
In 2021, author Christina Soontornvat received two Newbery Honors for in the same year, one for a novel, the other for a work of nonfiction—a first in the award’s centurylong history (E.L. Konigsburg previously received a Medal and an Honor in 1968, while Meindert de Jong received two Honors in 1954, but all four awards were for fiction). Soontornvat returns to high fantasy to create the Thai-inspired world of The Last Mapmaker, a standalone tale into which she seamlessly incorporates themes of colonialism and environmentalism.
Sai, whose first-person narration keeps the action moving faster than a ship under full sail, is a complicated and compassionately flawed character. It’s easy to sympathize with her dual struggles to identify whom she can trust and reconcile with her family’s past.
If The Last Mapmaker has a fault, it’s a too-quick resolution. Readers who grow invested in Soontornvat’s characters will wish they had just a little more time to spend with them. On the whole, however, the novel is a compelling quest narrative brimming with adventure, surprises and betrayal.
With action that moves faster than a ship under full sail, The Last Mapmaker is a Thai-inspired fantasy brimming with adventure, surprises and betrayal.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is a truly impressive individual: She’s a philanthropist who’s worked in Silicon Valley’s tech industry, and she’s one of the few women to have climbed all Seven Summits, the Earth’s highest mountain peaks. But as her immersive, inspiring memoir, In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage (15.5 hours), makes clear, her accomplished resume only hints at her remarkable story. Scenes from her life—including her childhood in Peru, her sexual abuse by a trusted adult and her later estrangement from her mother following her coming out as a lesbian—are interspersed with scenes from a climb on Mount Everest, where she’s accompanied by fellow sexual violence survivors who, like the author, have found healing and empowerment through physical challenges.
Through her narration, Vasquez-Lavado, whose first language is Spanish, conveys a lifetime of warmth, humor and steely determination.
Eleven-year-old June Yang feels like bad luck follows her family everywhere. First her dad, a bicycle delivery driver, was killed in a tragic street accident. Then her mom, consumed by grief and depression, withdrew from the world, lost her job and June became the de facto caregiver for her 6-year-old sister, Maybelle. And now June’s family has been evicted from their Chinatown apartment and relocated to Huey House, a shelter in the South Bronx for families experiencing homelessness.
At first, everything at Huey House seems strange and disorienting, including the hourslong bus ride to school and the practical jokes played by longtime shelter residents Tyrell and Jeremiah. The final straw is the news that June can’t play her beloved viola at the shelter. But June quickly starts to see how the shelter’s residents help one another and how kindness can manifest in surprising ways. And she discovers that Tyrell, whose brash exterior belies a sensitive heart, a fear of abandonment and a love for classical music, might share some of the same dreams that she does.
Author Karina Yan Glaser is beloved for her critically acclaimed middle grade series about the Vanderbeekers, a large and loving family in Harlem. As she does in those books, Glaser infuses this standalone novel with sweetness and optimism (softhearted Maybelle and her overwhelming love for dogs and other animals is especially appealing) while acknowledging the complexities of her characters’ lives.
In an author’s note that opens the book, Glaser describes how the seeds of A Duet for Home were planted when she worked at a family housing shelter similar to Huey House 20 years ago. She incorporates a real-life policy initiative—a drive to quickly rehouse families experiencing homelessness in inadequate, unsafe facilities without sufficient support systems—into the novel as well. Within the story, Glaser brilliantly illustrates the drawbacks of this policy from a child’s point of view and shows the power of political action through her characters’ responses.
June and Tyrell are memorable and inspiring protagonists, and Glaser surrounds them with a cast of well-developed secondary characters. In addition to Maybelle and Jeremiah, there are also supportive grown-ups such as Ms. Gonzalez (aka Ms. G), the bighearted social worker who knows every resident’s favorite food so she can surprise them with their favorite dishes, and Domenika, the lovably prickly viola teacher next door.
As its title suggests, A Duet for Home is also suffused with music. Glaser even helpfully provides a list of all the compositions referenced throughout at the end of the novel. A Duet for Home portrays how an appreciation for music and a desire to make the world more beautiful can give all young people—and perhaps especially the most vulnerable—a way to believe in themselves.
Karina Yan Glaser infuses A Duet for Home with sweetness and optimism while acknowledging the complexities of her characters’ lives.
Young readers who love to paint, sing or write—or just enjoy reading about the fascinating lives of creative people—will find plenty of inspiration in these three biographical books about Black women who made their marks in the fields of visual arts, music and literature.
Ablaze With Color
Author Jeanne Walker Harvey was inspired to write the picture book biography Ablaze With Color: A Story of Painter Alma Thomas after learning that the Obamas were going to display Thomas’ painting “Resurrection” in the White House. The first work of art by a Black woman to receive this honor, the painting was given a prominent place in the mansion’s Old Family Dining Room.
Harvey traces Thomas’ early life as a creative, inquisitive child in 1890s Georgia, where her parents hosted salons for intellectuals to make up for the lack of vibrant educational possibilities in the segregated South. Later, Thomas’ family moved north to find greater opportunities for their daughter, and Thomas began a long career as an art educator in Washington, D.C.
Remarkably, Thomas didn’t pick up a paintbrush and begin focusing on her own art until she was around 70 years old. Her dynamic paintings, many inspired by space exploration and the solar system, were quickly celebrated and selected for exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York City and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.
As the book’s title suggests, Harvey’s text celebrates Thomas’ lifelong love of color, and the book’s illustrations by Loveis Wise reinforce that theme. Every page is full of rich shades of gold, green, red and other saturated hues. Some of the illustrations envision scenes from Thomas’ life, while others pay homage to Thomas’ own artistic style and inspirations.
Ablaze With Color will encourage readers to learn more about Thomas’ amazing works of art. The book’s back matter includes a timeline that juxtaposes significant events in Thomas’ life against notable developments in American history. A list of museums with online and in-person exhibits of Thomas’ work will make it easy for readers to see more of her paintings for themselves.
Sing, Aretha, Sing!
Author Hanif Abdurraqib is best known as an award-winning poet and cultural critic thanks to his writing for adults, but in Sing, Aretha, Sing! Aretha Franklin, “Respect,” and the Civil Rights Movement, he turns his attention to a picture book biography of one of the most celebrated voices of the 20th century: Aretha Franklin.
Abdurraqib begins by discussing Franklin’s roots and the time she spent singing gospel in her father’s church. He devotes most of the book, however, to tracing Franklin’s connections to politics. She joined Martin Luther King Jr. on a civil rights campaign tour, and her song “Respect” was widely adopted as an anthem by the civil rights and women’s movements. Readers who are only familiar with the song from the radio or at karaoke nights might be surprised to learn about how the song galvanized civil rights marchers even as the struggle for Black rights grew increasingly dangerous: “Sometimes the right words and the right sound could open a window and let a small bit of freedom through.”
Ashley Evans’ digital artwork depicts key moments from both Franklin’s life and the history of the civil rights movement with bright colors and simple lines. She also illustrates more contemporary scenes, such as a Black Lives Matter march and a young Black musician at a keyboard, to demonstrate how Franklin’s influence continues to inspire present-day artists and activists.
While young readers might only be familiar with Franklin through her most famous songs, Sing, Aretha, Sing! positions her as a pivotal figure in American popular music, one whose political and cultural influence goes far beyond her familiar hits.
Star Child
An inventive biography of the influential science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler is intended for older readers but touches many of the same themes as Harvey’s and Abdurraquib’s books.
Author Ibi Zoboi focuses primarily on Butler’s early life. She describes Butler’s childhood during the 1950s and her initial creative pursuits, and traces intersections between Butler’s experiences and broader historical events and political and cultural issues of the time, from the Cold War and the space race to the beginnings of the civil rights movement. Zoboi also explores the obstacles Butler faced as she grew up and started writing. Butler contended with structural racism and grappled with a literary and educational establishment that didn’t take Black women’s writing seriously, particularly the kind of science fiction and fantasy literature that Butler was creating.
Zoboi, who is best known for her award-winning young adult novel American Street, alternates straightforward biographical narration with sections written in verse that utilize a variety of poetic devices to delve deeper into the factors that shaped Butler’s life and work. The book also includes numerous archival photographs and documents as well as quotations from Butler’s writing and interviews.
Zoboi movingly highlights the importance of empathy in Butler’s work and her role as a mentor and source of inspiration for countless other Black creatives—including Zoboi herself. The book’s final chapter describes Zoboi’s interactions with Butler over the years, from a book signing in Brooklyn, New York, to time spent as her student at the Clarion West Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop in Seattle, Washington. This personal connection makes Star Child even more compelling. Although readers of this biography might be a little too young to read Butler’s work for themselves just yet, Zoboi ensures that they won’t forget her name.
Three books about Black women who left their mark on the arts offer plenty of inspiration for young creative visionaries.
Squad is the first graphic novel from YA and picture book author Maggie Tokuda-Hall (The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea), and it features eye-catching illustrations by comics artist Lisa Sterle. It’s the story of Becca, the new girl at Piedmont High School, who is invited to join the most popular clique of girls at school. Then she discovers that they’re not so much a squad as a pack. Of werewolves.
Maggie, tell us a little bit about Becca, the main character of Squad. What ideas were you hoping to explore through her story?
Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Becca is someone who wants to fit in so badly. She’s a try-hard who doesn’t have a natural knack for making friends. She thinks that if, somehow, she just does everything right then maybe, MAYBE she’ll fit in and everything will be OK, and she won’t feel so lonely anymore. And so when she has a group of friends, she’s willing to overlook anything about them: their microaggressions, their casual racism, their cruelty. The fact that they’re straight-up murderers. They’re bound by a sense of having been wronged, and they have been wronged. All of us have been. Rape culture hurts everyone.
Becca is meant to be a stand-in for the rest of us. It’s so human to want to fit in. It’s so human to want justice. But are power imbalances ever the way to seek justice? Is the death penalty ever right? What does punishment accomplish, really? These are things Becca allows us to ask ourselves, even if she makes decisions we may disagree with.
What challenges did you encounter as you worked on this story?
Tokuda-Hall: The hardest thing was trying to find the right frame to tell this story. Ever since I graduated from the real Piedmont High, I’d been trying to figure out how to write about what I saw and experienced there. I didn’t have the language yet, but now I know it was rape culture. I was furious. Heartbroken. And it took me more than 15 years after graduating to be able to craft the right story in the tone I wanted to address it.
When Fred Rogers defended PBS’ funding before Congress, he read the lyrics of a song he sang to children to help them cope with being mad, and there’s a line from it that I think about a lot: “What do you do / with the mad that you feel / when you feel so mad / you could bite?” Sorting through my own anger was the hardest part of writing Squad, and the hardest part of talking about it.
“These girls aren’t role models, and they aren’t heroes. . . . They’re girls who have been beaten down by a world that will never love them back, no matter how ‘perfect’ they are.”
Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Can you talk about the way that consent is represented in Squad, and what you hope readers take away from it?
Tokuda-Hall: Squad is about rape culture, obviously. And so of course there are terrible boys, exactly who you’d expect. But the girls also have a really unhealthy consent praxis. They think they’re these white knights riding against predators, and yeah, they are, I guess. But they also threaten to kill Becca if she doesn’t join them. Becca is so chuffed to be invited that she doesn’t think about it that way; she was going to say yes, but she couldn’t have said no if she wanted to and lived. The girls enforce horrible body standards that are, in my view, an extension of rape culture, this effort to always keep the female body obedient for the male gaze. They do this without questioning themselves, without seeing the ways they’re enforcers of the very culture they purport to destroy.
These girls aren’t role models, and they aren’t heroes. They’re murderers. They’re also victims. They’re girls who have been beaten down by a world that will never love them back, no matter how “perfect” they are.
Squad is equal parts revenge fantasy and a question of what justice is in our world, which is so deeply entrenched in patriarchy, rape culture, racism and misogyny. Law enforcement doesn’t help with any of these things—in fact, it is very much an extension of them. Revenge feels good, but that isn’t justice, is it? I don’t know what justice is. But I do know that I’m not equipped to dispense it.
Werewolves are usually portrayed as masculine creatures—but not so here. Where did the inspiration for your “squad” of werewolf girls come from?
Tokuda-Hall: I think anything that’s been arbitrarily gendered is begging for subversion. And honestly, who looked at werewolves and periods and didn’t connect the dots? Uterus-havers experiencing something secret and bloody once a month? I couldn’t possibly think of any real life situation that’s analogous to that.
There’s also something inherently camp about werewolves. They’re human/dog crosses. Even if they’re scary, they’re still goofy. I love that about them, how ripe they are for comedy.
“No matter what we do, we’re somehow monstrous. So fine. Let’s be monsters.”
Maggie Tokuda-Hall
What werewolf tropes—or general horror tropes—did you hope to challenge? Did you intentionally preserve any tropes?
Tokuda-Hall: The one werewolf trope that I love is that they’re monsters born out of trauma. Typically, a werewolf doesn’t ask you if they can bite you, at least in most of the stories I know. I’m a person who’s been sexually assaulted, and I know that feeling of monstrous violation leaving me with consequences I was ill-equipped to handle. It made werewolves an apt cipher. I don’t mean to say that everyone who’s been assaulted is made a monster by it, but I do think it can create a craving for revenge. At least, it did for me.
The trope I was most interested in challenging was that, in horror, female monsters only get to be scary if their power comes from sex or age. Making them disgusting bloodthirsty dogs was sort of a middle finger to that. Even when we’re monsters we’re supposed to be hot. If you’re a woman, people are going to judge you and find you wanting. There’s no “right” way to be a woman in our world. You should be smart but not a nerd! You should be hot, but you shouldn’t act like you’re hot! You should look presentable and good all the time, but you shouldn’t try too hard! Be skinny, but not anorexic! Be one of the guys, but don’t fart! It’s impossible. No matter what we do, we’re somehow monstrous. So fine. Let’s be monsters.
From its inception, was Squad always going to be a graphic novel?
Tokuda-Hall: I have wanted to tell some version of Squad for a very long time, but I wasn’t able to crack it until I decided it needed to have werewolves, and it needed to be a graphic novel. As soon as I did, it flowed really easily. It was a complete joy to write, and it was similar to writing a picture book in that you want to leave room for an illustrator to make it their own, too.
Can you give us a little behind-the-scenes glimpse at how Squad was made?
Tokuda-Hall: I wrote the script like I was possessed, then my fantastic agent, Jennifer Laughran, helped make it make sense, and then the marvelous Martha Mihalick at Greenwillow gave it a home. We edited it together and passed it to Lisa, who had a couple of smaller notes that I added in. Lisa and I didn’t get to collaborate much directly, but watching her take this book and make it her own amazing vision has been both humbling and career-affirmingly rad.
Lisa Sterle: I signed on as the illustrator after Maggie already had the pitch and the first draft of the script finished, so I got to read the whole thing pretty immediately. To be honest, I was sold at the first mention of girls turning into werewolves. I love supernatural fantasy, so this was a concept that hooked me in fast. After reading the first chapter of the script, I immediately had such a strong idea of who these girls were, and I hadn’t even really visualized them yet. The dynamics between the squad felt immediately familiar, and I related so much to shy Becca’s desire to fit in and her sense of longing to belong somewhere. I think it’s a familiar narrative to anyone who’s been a teenage girl. The horror aspect of boy-devouring werewolves was icing on the cake.
“I had a whole mood board full of outfit ideas for the squad, because I wanted them to each have their own sense of style and yet feel like they all coordinated.”
Lisa Sterle
Though the script was completed before I started on the artwork, I did a lot of the directing myself as I formatted it for a graphic novel. I figured out the page breakdowns, panel breakdowns, which scenes needed to be splash pages or needed more breathing room, when to focus on characters or the surroundings and so on. So even though the story was done, I definitely appreciate that I got the opportunity to put my own special stamp on it through the art and the comics medium.
Maggie, what’s different about working on a book with a collaborative partner like an illustrator versus working on a novel where you’re the sole contributor?
Tokuda-Hall: IT WAS THE BEST. It is 100% better than working on your own. Illustrators are perfect magical creatures, and we don’t deserve them. She drew! So many! PICTURES! And they are all amazing! I cannot fathom what it’s like to live in her head and to be able to breathe life into drawings and to make characters come alive. But I can say that I am a huge fan of her work, and I cannot wait for her to achieve the unbearable fame her talent deserves.
Writing a novel is like being trapped in a room with yourself. You may be great company to yourself, but I know that to my own taste, I am not. Working with an illustrator relieves some of that great loneliness that comes with being a writer.
Lisa, you’ve illustrated lots of interesting things, from comics and comic book covers to a tarot deck. How did working on a graphic novel compare?
Sterle: Working on a graphic novel was a new experience for me! It was wonderful to not have to feel rushed by a monthly delivery schedule like in comics, and to really be able to take my time on each step of the process. Sometimes it was challenging to keep the momentum, though! 200-ish pages is a LOT, and at times it can feel like it never ends. I found ways to stay inspired and motivated though, such as inking a couple pages during the pencils stage to switch things up creatively.
What were your inspirations for the overall look and feel of the book?
Sterle: I knew going into this project that I wanted to do something bright and colorful, as it was the first comic I’d really fully colored myself. My Modern Witch Tarot was actually a bit of an inspiration, because through those illustrations I really uncovered a palette that spoke to my pop sensibilities.
Fashion was also a big inspiration. I had a whole mood board full of outfit ideas for the squad, because I wanted them to each have their own sense of style and yet feel like they all coordinated as well. The Chanels from “Scream Queens” were an inspiration, as were Cher Horowitz from Clueless, Lirika Matoshi’s dresses and Cara Delevingne’s style, to name a few others.
I love how you differentiated the girls, even when they’re in their werewolf forms. What techniques did you use to give the werewolves their individual looks?
Sterle: Figuring out the werewolves was one of the first big challenges! I definitely went with a more wolflike approach than humanlike, and that meant that they could have been hard to tell apart from one another. I considered differentiating them with jewelry or some kinds of accessories at one point, but I landed on the surprisingly simple approach of just having their fur color match their hair for the most part. I did have to tweak slightly since two of the girls have black hair, but I think it worked out in the end.
“Lisa is a marvel at creating the emotional world of a character in their body language and on their faces.”
Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Can you talk about how you used color in these illustrations?
Sterle: I love bright colors, especially when paired sparingly with pastels—kind of an ’80s/’90s vibe. I tend to stay away from earth tones, and I feel like that was an easy solution to unifying colors throughout the book. The daytime and school scenes are all very bright and warm, while the nighttime scenes tended to have a cooler, blue-green scheme, which worked out perfectly to really make the red POP when the werewolves and gore show up.
How did you approach illustrating those violent scenes?
Sterle: I’ve always been a fan of horror, so I’ve formed thoughts on what I like and dislike when it comes to gore and violence. I tried not to go too far into the realism, but I do think that in certain scenes it was important to show what these girls were really doing. No sugarcoating here! But I’m not a fan of gore for its own sake, so I tried to make sure I wasn’t going over the top unnecessarily.
Maggie, what are some things you love about what Lisa brought to the book?
Tokuda-Hall: The facial expressions. There would be direction in the script, like “Marley looks annoyed.” But then Lisa would imbue these facial expressions with so much depth and complexity. She’s annoyed, yes, but she’s also disappointed and a little embarrassed now that Lisa is done with her. Lisa is a marvel at creating the emotional world of a character in their body language and on their faces.
It is also worth noting that Lisa is like . . . a cool person. And I am not. And so she was able to lend the aesthetic a coolness that I wanted but in no way could have created on my own. The girls’ fashion is so correct and current. They’d all be dressed the way high schoolers dressed when I was in high school if I’d had to do it myself. Which, needless to say, wouldn’t be right. I’m almost old enough for all my teen fashion to have come back around, but not quite.
Do you have a favorite illustration of Lisa’s from the book?
Tokuda-Hall: All of Lisa’s work is exquisite. But probably the seemingly silliest thing that I really, truly, deeply love is that she added sound effects. I didn’t write any of those. So, for example, when Bart O’Kavanaugh gets eaten, there’s a “SPLORCH” sound effect. Has there ever been a word as onomatopoetic as splorch? Anyway, it lends the book the correct, campy, comic book-y vibe to help cut through the trauma. It’s really important for that reason, I think, because otherwise the book’s tone is a little off. This is a horror comedy. Splorch helps drive that home.
What are you most proud of having accomplished in Squad?
Sterle: I brought to life four very unique characters, each with hopes, dreams, insecurities and faults. I think we told a pretty complex story, disguised as a fun supernatural horror teen drama.
Tokuda-Hall: I wrote the first draft of Squad in the summer of 2018, just before Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings were held in the Senate. Like many other people who’ve been sexually assaulted, I was inspired by Christine Blasey Ford’s courage, and I confronted the man who sexually assaulted me. He was a friend from Piedmont. Someone I trusted, someone I’d grown up with. The publication of Squad feels like the end to the time when I felt afraid or victimized or disempowered because of what he did to me. Men like him can’t scare me anymore. I’m the scary thing in the woods now.
And as the goddess and prophet Beyonce Knowles-Carter said, “Always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper.”
Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall (The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea) and illustrator Lisa Sterle discuss their first graphic novel collaboration, in which teenage girls are never quite what they seem.
High school junior Becca has always been bookish and smart, the kind of girl no one really notices. So on her very first day at Piedmont High School, she’s surprised when she draws the attention of beautiful Marley and her megacool friends, and she can’t quite believe their interest in her is authentic. Granted, Arianna can be a little blunt, and Amanda and Marley make not-so-subtle attempts to tweak Becca’s personal style to match their own, but they all seem to genuinely enjoy spending time with her. But when they take her to a party, Becca realizes in the most disconcerting way possible that Marley’s clique isn’t a squad—it’s more like a pack.
Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall upends many classic werewolf tropes in Squad, her first graphic novel. Werewolves are typically hairy and muscular, but they’re also governed by the full moon, and Tokuda-Hall imbues them with feminine power. Squad is a revenge narrative and a quasi fable about consent, but beneath its supernatural premise, it’s also a classic teen drama that will disrupt readers’ assumptions about fashion-conscious teenage girls.
Illustrator Lisa Sterle’s bold, energetic artwork perfectly complements the novel’s themes of friendship, loyalty, betrayal and the possibility of love. Her palette ranges from muted jewel tones in nighttime scenes to rich reds as bright and bold as blood. Her depictions of the werewolves are particularly skillful, as she uses color and shape to connect each girl’s human and wolf forms. The book’s layouts are varied and dynamic, with small panel groupings occasionally interrupted by spreads that highlight moments of drama and emotion. Be forewarned: Squad’s most violent panels are fairly graphic, and these scenes of uncontained carnage can seem especially jarring when juxtaposed against the candy-colored, meticulously polished personas that the girls project in their human forms.
Squad is a story of dramatic contrasts and surprising transformations, and both its words and images underscore the notion that underneath their carefully cultivated surfaces, teenage girls might not be precisely what they seem.
