Raincoast Books

What Will You Read Next?

The Year of the Beasts

9781596436862

Roaring Brook Press
Available: 05/22/12
6.33 x 9.32 · 192 pages
Ages 12-18 years
9781596436862
CDN $18.99 · cl
With dust jacket

 Canadian Title

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Cecil Castellucci

illustrated by Nate Powell

Alternating chapters of prose and comics (illustrated byEisner Award-winning graphic novelist Nate Powell) are interwoven in Cecil Castelucci's extraordinary YA novel about jealousy and grief, and how they cut us off from the ones we love.

Every summer the trucks roll in, bringing the carnival and its infinite possibilities to town. This year Tessa and her younger sister Lulu are un-chaperoned and want to be first in line to experience the rides, the food . . . and the boys. Except this summer, jealousy will invade their relationship for the first time, setting in motion a course of events that can only end in tragedy, putting everyone's love and friendship to the test.

Deft shifting between straight prose and graphic novel visualize how Tessa processes the events of the summer, seeing herself and her friends as freaks personified by characters from Greek mythology.

Cecil Castellucci's books include Boy Proof (Candlewick, 2005), The Plain Janes (Minx/DC Comics, 2007), The Year of the Beasts (Roaring Brook, 2012), and Tin Star (a 2015 Sunburst Award Winner). She collaborated with artist Sara Varon on Odd Duck, a graphic novel for young readers. She is the YA editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books and a two-time Macdowell Fellow. She lives in Los Angeles. Nate Powell is an Arkansas native and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist whose works include Swallow Me Whole (an Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist), Any Empire, and (with co-authors Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin) the March trilogy, the final volume of which won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Powell is the first cartoonist to receive this honor. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.