Girl on a Motorcycle

Gr 6-10–Based on Anne-France Dautheville’s solo ride around the world in the 1970s, this poetic journey follows an unnamed young Parisian of that era who makes good on her dream “to go Elsewhere.” In two epic overland segments she travels across Canada, and then from Bombay to Paris—across vast prairies, deserts, and mountain ranges—stopping for warm encounters with local residents in many lands or (a realistic recurring theme) to repair her motorcycle, but mostly spending long hours alone: “Time passes. And doesn’t.” Using varied layouts and a shifting monochrome color scheme that lends her unframed panels a retro look, Morstad begins by depicting each tool and personal item the traveler carries in her minimal luggage, then goes on to place gracefully posed figures with expressive, delicate features in settings ranging from looming hills and barren, distant vistas to busy cityscapes. Following a climactic, or at least epiphanic, visit to the towering Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan (with a poignant mention of their later destruction), the young woman makes her way home at last, arriving “sunburned, bruised, and beaming.” Novesky quotes Dautheville’s “I want the world to be beautiful, and it is beautiful./ I want people to be good, and they are good,” then concludes the spare narrative with a biographical note illustrated with photos.