Nowhere girl

A young girl entering adolescence struggles with the stress of school and loses herself in the music of the Beatles. Magali is determined to be a great student in sixth grade. On her first day at the Marsillon school in Paris, she notices that her classmates are quite different from their elementary-school days. Magali's best friend, Agatha, is a comfort, but school starts to make Magali literally sick to her stomach. Her parents, who are both therapists, get her the help she needs, and she does her schooling at home. Magali narrates her history of difficulty in school as well as her various obsessions with movies and music. When Magali discovers the Beatles, her whole world reorients around them, and she turn to their music whenever she's scared of growing up and out of childhood. Through the beautiful watercolor art, readers fall into Magali's dreams about the Beatles and will easily understand the chaos she feels going through early puberty. Le Huche deftly handles complex feelings about growing up in a soft visual style, similar to Reimena Yee's Séance Tea Party (2021).

All aboard the yellow submarine with Le Huche, an illustrator of children's books (the Poppy Music series), who delves into her coming of age against the soundtrack of the Beatles in this charming debut graphic memoir. As an 11-year-old Parisian, Magali is about to start middle school but worries about living up to her sister's high marks, and finds the tween schoolyard vibe alarming ("No one's playing," she observes of the tweens loitering before the bell). She develops a school phobia and feels like "everything became a matter of life or death." But when Magali stumbles across the Beatles and falls for their sound, she starts to gain control over her anxiety, " to them like a new security blanket." She writes that she was "always a groupie at heart," and John, Paul, George, and Ringo offer Magali "an outlet for all anger and despair." Le Huche's art style has a quick and lively quality that lets the characters move freely on the busy pages, which can recall Pénélope Bagieu's. Floating narration can make some scenes hard to read, but her use of color to distinguish Magali and the British rockers is wonderfully executed. As Magali conquers her fears, readers may even be inspired to rock out to the oldies themselves. (Sept.)