Author: E Paul Zehr
Publisher: Entertainment Culture Writing
Rating: WORTHY!
Illustrated by Kris Pearn
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.
How can you not love a novel which has the good taste to mention Emma Peel, the fictional but powerful female character in the now rather antique British TV series The Avengers (which has nothing to do with the Marvel comic book characters). The movie taken from the TV show really did a disservice to Diana Rigg's outstanding character. I love Uma Thurman, especially in Kill Bill, but she failed to capture the quintessential Emma Peel, I'm sorry to say.
Reading this was an odd experience. I don't know what it was about the design but it took literally thirty seconds to move to the next page in Adobe Reader. At first I thought that this was because the pages were actually images rather than print (graphic novel ebooks tend to take a few seconds to turn the page, but not thirty!). It turned out that they're evidently not, since it's possible to do a text search. After I read this novel, I read a non-fiction ebook which was extensively populated with color images, and this book turned pages instantly, so clearly there's something seriously adrift with the design of this particular novel.
I solved the page-turning issue by getting into the habit of clicking for the next page as soon as the new page appeared. In that way, by the time (give or take a bit!) I'd finished reading the current page, it flipped to the next one with little or no delay, but it was really annoying. Chalk this one up to the 'print books are better' side of the comparison chart!
What was very irritating was that if the page flipped too early and I'd caught something in the last paragraph which attracted my attention, I couldn't simply flip the page back and check it out, then move on. It was an exercise in frustration, involving several minutes just to turn the page back and forth. So I skipped a lot of things I would have had no problem taking care of in a more user-friendly environment. Yes, it was really annoying, but fortunately the novel itself overcame this and really won me over.
The text is sparsely-printed on each page, so despite the 250-some pages, this novel is a very fast read. Apart from the wait for the page to turn, that is. Turning 250 pages at thirty seconds per turn is actually a straight two hours doing nothing but turn pages! Eek!
The novel also seemed fast in the way in which it was written - like the story was being told by a breathless and excited teen, which didn't thrill me, but which may appeal to the right age group. It's written in diary form, which also didn't charm me because it's such an artificial medium. No one actually writes a diary in the way a diary is written when it's written as a novel; however it wasn't bad overall, except that I did find myself wondering why, given that she was so up for being a journalist, the girl hadn't started keeping a journal long before this.
The diary's author is fourteen-year-old Jesse (which can also be a guy's name, so this seemed strange to me in a female-empowerment novel!), who is excited at school one day when her teacher announces that there will be a super hero project. Each student is to choose a super hero and discuss and debate their chosen subject in a series of presentations in the form of a knock-out competition, but with no literal knock-outs! This is why she starts the diary, in an effort to marshal her thoughts on her chosen subject, which is Batgirl.
Personally I think Spider-Woman could take Batgirl, but just in conjuring up those names, it occurs to me that one thing Jesse didn't explore in all her research was why it's Superman but Supergirl, why it's Batman, but Batgirl. What's with this diminution of women here? Male super heroes can be men, but female super heroes have to be girls?! I wish that Jesse had wondered why we've had so very many movies from comics which feature superhero men, but virtually none which feature superhero women.
Off topic here, but it occurs to me that DC's way out of their largely disastrous efforts to take their comics into the movies is to focus on their female heroes (which even Marvel, for all its success, has sadly failed to do) and start bringing those to the big screen; then I could get with Batgirl (begrudgingly)!
Since Jesse is a comic-book fan, she's thrilled about this school project, as is her best friend Audrey, also a comic book fan, and her other friend, Cade. The teacher wants to broaden their idea of a hero, too, so she invites a retired NYPD officer to talk about his experiences on 9/11. This part, I have to say, dragged a bit, and I don't really know why. Perhaps it was because a 14-year-old's excited voice is hardly the best one to deliver the gravity, tragedy, and import which that day represents.
From there, the novel enters refreshing and interesting territory. The young superhero researcher starts writing to various lesser-known, but no-less-accomplished celebrities (see list below) asking them about their superhero favorites and their experiences in their chosen activities. These are real people who really responded as though they had been asked these questions by a young girl. Kudos to all of them. There's also some life, health, and exercise advice imparted, too, which is a really sneaky way to do it, but one which hopefully will leave a lasting impression on young readers.
So here are the celebrities:
Mike Bruen NYPD (retired)
Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer Captain Marvel and Avengers Assemble)
Clara Hughes (Canadian Winter and Summer Olympic medalist)
Brian Miller (writer Batgirl and Smallville)
Christie Nicholson (contributing editor, Scientific American)
Nicole Stott (Engineer and US Astronaut)
Jessica Watson (sailed solo around the world at the age of 16)
Hayley Wickenheiser (ice-hockey player and Olympic gold medalist)
That's an impressive selection, although it does seem to be rather biased towards the physical and hardly at all towards the cerebral (per se), or to the engineering or scientific fields. I would have liked the idea of being a hero to include a broader base, but I do think this novel did a great job of bringing a lot of lesser known but worth-knowing people to the fore.
So, overall, this novel is a very worthy read despite some minor quibbles I had. I recommend it for girls and boys, women and men!
