Graphic-Novel-Loving Librarian Blog

Summary: Statistics have shown that college students change their major at least 3 times over their college career, which means that people are often uncertain about their future and, in many respects, uncertain about who they are. Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel is about a young man, Dennis Ouyang, who has a difficult time deciding where his passions and future truly lie.  His family pushes him into medicine, but he finds a passion for video games. Unfortunately, his addiction to video games gets Dennis kicked out of college and uncertain of his future. Then one day Dennis is visited by four "guilt-driven hallucinations" who help him get back into college and back on a medical career path.  Once he is back on track, everything should be fine and dandy, right? Well, what we find out is that things aren't okay because Dennis struggles in school again and surprisingly discovers that he can actually making a living playing video games. Is this what finall...

Summary: Everyone wants success, but what that success is depends on the individual. However, to find that success many people are willing to make sacrifices in order to attain it.  David, a sculptor, is just such a person. What he sacrifices though makes him unique. David sacrifices his life . . . literally. Frustrated with his lack of any artistic accomplishments David strikes a bargain with Death: his life for success. His passion for that success blindly leads him to what he thinks will make him happy. What he could not have predicted is that he would soon fall in love. Meg is a fellow struggling artist whose emotional state is a fragile one, but David falls for her anyways. One condition of his agreement with Death states that no one can know about their contract. Another condition is that David only has 200 days before he dies. Because of this David finds himself torn between being with Meg, creating for his art, and fitting everything in before his time runs out. Will Dav...