11 Books You Never Thought You'd Read (but Will Fall in Love with Instantly)
Like most of us, you've probably heard of graphic novels—but
haven't read too many. Here are 10 new titles (plus one classic) that make you
think, feel and daydream just like any other book.
By Leigh Newman and Abbe Wright
9 of 11
Of Lamb
By Poems by Matthea Harvey, Paintings by Amy Jean Porter
116 pages;
McSweeny's
Matthea Harvey's adaptive retelling of "Mary Had a
Little Lamb" began as an experiment in erasures—a method of
creating a poem from an established piece of text by omitting words or phrases.
Harvey worked with the biography
A
Portrait of Charles Lamb by
David Cecil. She used Wite-Out to erase Cecil's text from the page, leaving
behind a few sparse words that eventually became an irreverent take on the
nursery rhyme. What emerges is a touching new tale about a lonely lamb who "lives
in the background" and Mary, who is "as pretty as a poem." The
two become close and lead each other on fanciful adventures. Harvey has paired
her words with illustrations by Amy Jean Porter, whose drawings are full of
color and give you insight into the lamb's innermost thoughts (for example, we
see him daydreaming about being a baseball player). The result is not a story
about a girl and her lamb; it's a query into the need for companionship and for
someone to understand us.
— Abbe Wright
Published 12/07/2011