Slip

Gr 9 Up–Heavy with guilt over her best friend Phoebe’s suicide attempt, Jade heads to sleep-away camp at the Art Farm. As Jade attempts to distract herself, she struggles to stay present at the camp and makes novice mistakes with her kiln, which destroys pieces created by her fellow campers. Mary, a romantic prospect, temporarily attracts Jade’s attention and focus in a positive direction, but when Jade’s Phoebe-inspired sculptures come to life and wreak havoc, her mind returns to the dark place she’s been working to escape from all summer. Making expert use of white space and color, Pandya’s sketchy, expressive artwork illustrates McCoola’s shifting tones. Though the layout occasionally makes following dialogue difficult, overall this graphic novel successfully brings the story to life via symbolism and figurative language coupled with deeply developed characters. There are mature, elegant depictions of human anatomy within a character’s portfolio. Mary and Jade appear to be Asian, while Phoebe appears to be white.