Take What You Can Carry

Adult/Young Adult Graphic Novel

F/A Pyle, Kevin C.  Take What You Can Carry.  Henry Holt, 2012.  176p.  978-0-8050-8286-9.  12.99.

This graphic novel is composed of two stories told in alternating chapters that eventually connect. The first story is completely wordless and sepia toned. It is set in California during the Japanese internment in the 1940s and follows a family, as they are torn apart and relocated twice. The teenage son feels particularly lost during the turmoil. The second story is blue colored and set outside of Chicago in 1978. It follows a teenage boy who is new in town and out of boredom steals from a convenience store. He is caught and must work at the store to repay what he has stolen. Here we discover that the owner of the store is none other than the teenage son from the alternate story. The artwork is good (although several characters look very alike and are hard to differentiate) and the wordless Japanese internment story is powerful, but the relationship between the storeowner and the teenage boy feels contrived. Although they may have some similarities, they have nothing in common. Loren Spector, LAPL, Felipe de Neve