Alisa Kwitney

Joelle Jones

Shira, a fifteen-year-old whose best friend is a bawdy eight-year-old, turns to shoplifting when her father starts dating his secretary, and when she is caught by a dark-eyed, streetwise boy from Spain, they become more than just friends.

Token

Maggie Gordon

Token was a surprisingly emotional piece that I thought had a lot of potential until it very abruptly ended before dealing with its own climax. The story is about Shira, a young women whose life is undergoing several major changes. Not only is she on the cusp of adulthood, her father is getting remarried and can't seem to handle the fact that she's growing up, she acts out by shoplifting, getting in trouble at school, and dating for the first time, and her best friend, an elderly lady, has a stroke. The book deals with all of these topics in a sensitive and emotional manner, but just as all of these problems come to a head in Shira's life, the book wraps up with a denouement that doesn't properly address any of the issues that it brought up. How do Shira and her father sort out their personal problems? Why did the narrative bring up the racism being faced by Rafael but never actually deal with it? What about Shira's stealing habits? How exactly does she heal her emotional problems? While I quite enjoyed reading this short graphic novel, it just doesn't deliver a very impacting story overall. The art in it is great, and the beginning is very powerful, but it feels like there's a half of the book that's missing.

Token

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