Well, if you take out all the bad words this might go over with a third-grader. I honestly can’t imagine a teenager reading this outside of required reading to find the literary value in it.
Scott McCloud has some great information in his books about how the comic strip is an art form and how it works in narrative structure. The simpler the illustration, the more relative it becomes. Porcellino’s drawings are simple, yet I do not believe that they are minimal yet offer the most impact. There are often places where many frames are sequenced to indicate a mood whereas a frame or two might have better served the emotion.
I will be reading it again and looking forward to class discussion to hopefully discover what I am obviously overlooking in the value of this story.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology