Wilfrid Lupano

Canterbury, Connecticut, 1832: a charming female boarding school has found success among the locals, with two dozen girls enrolled. Some in town question the purpose of educating young girls—but surely there's no harm in trying? At least not until the Prudence Crandall School announces its plans to start accepting black students. Thirty years before the abolition of slavery in the United States, in the so-called "free" North, these students will be met by a wave of hostility that puts the future of the school in question, and their very lives in peril. Even in the land of the free, not all of America's children are welcome.

White All Around

Camila Eduarda Vilela Lobianco

100% ★★★★★ 

I can't do this. I was supposed to do an objective review about this book, but all I can do is cry and wanted to do this now because what I'm feeling is too strong right now. For all of you that don't know, I don't cry that usually, I have this barrier between me and the books that make me can read and not bring too emotional experiences to my life, but, man, I cried like a kid. Feral, you have my heart and I think this is my favorite character of all times, but I can't explain why because I don't want to ruin people experience with this book. 150 pages of pure beauty. The art is pure beauty, the story and all characters.

I can't do this the way I'm used to, because I wasn't waiting for this to impact me so hard, something that haven't happened for years. Just... this is the best thing I ever read by now, and I consider myself quite an old reader.

Read this, guys, is really important. Thanks for that, NetGalley, you made my day such better!

Kim Tyo-Dickerson

I received a review copy of this comic via Netgalley and Europe Comics Library News.

The story of Miss Prudence Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color, the first racially integrated school in the United States due to a fateful day in 1832 when Crandall chose to admit a 20 year-old Black woman named Sarah Harris who was studying to become a teacher, is an important one in American history. Crandall's Quaker, abolitionist background and commitment to educating Black young women and girls in a predominantly white village in Connecticut is a matter of gripping historical record. It is a story that continues to inspire and has been shared in a nonfiction biography The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students and a stunning historical Novel in Verse Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color by Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson.

I was totally captivated by the cover of this graphic novel, the parade of girls in hats likely on their way to church, and was eager to read a graphic novel that would round out my nonfiction and poetry reading about Crandall's school. I was not expecting the book to begin with a scene centered on a homeless Black boy living wild in the woods near Crandall's school quoting verbatim violent lines from Thomas R. Gray's The Confessions of Nat Turner, describing how Turner and the men with him killed white people, including infants, in their beds.

I couldn't shake the suspicion as I read the whole story, that this boy's character and his wildness was important as contrast to the civilized and civilizing force of education for young women. He even brings a freshly killed partridge to the Black servant at Crandall's school, a gesture that is at odds with his "monster" behavior and lands uncomfortably toward the "noble savage" stereotype. Both gender and racial codes here are problematic, despite the stunning art and beautifully complex browns, ochres, greys, the almost Mary Blair style that grounds every page. This troubling fictional connection between Crandall's school and the history of Nat Turner weighs the pages down even further than they would have been if they had centered more on the school and students.

Leonie

Pros:
- gorgeous artwork
- interesting plot

Cons:
- some confusing parts that weren’t really necessary


[I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.]

White All Around

Reviews