Roller Girl

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Despite her pleadings, Astrid is unable to convince Nicole to attend roller derby camp with her. Instead, Nicole attends dance camp and this creates a severe severance in their friendship once Nicole begins hanging around with a girl named Rachel. Rachel takes great delight in bullying Astrid and manages to get inside Nicole's head and effectively turn her against Astrid.

I'm also very glad that this energetic child has this outlet. She's tough, like her role models, like many boys & unlike many girls. Imagine if she had to behave like a little lady! My lastest graphic novel (April 2020) is co-written with Omar Mohamed. This book tells the story of Omar's childhood spent in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. Omar and his younger brother Hassan fled their homeland of Somalia when civil war broke out, and spent the next 18 years in Dadaab. Sophie Escabasse’s art brings to life the story’s emotions as well as the humor and camaraderie. Even readers who know nothing about roller derby will feel comfortable with this book’s easy explanations of the sport and accompanying illustrations—just take a glimpse at the dynamic cover.

Even if I scratch my head particularly hard, I'd still be hard-pressed to find a topic of less interest to me than women's roller derby.

But she was also really interesting and it was quite realistic to see her change. From not knowing what to do, to be unsure about herself, to rising up and coming out a stronger version of herself. Roller Girl is a young adult graphic novel written and illustrated by Victoria Jamieson, published by Dial Books for Young Readers in 2015. It is set in contemporary Portland, Oregon and details how the hero, Astrid, becomes a roller derby skater. It was named a Newbery Honor book in 2016.This was an eye-opener for me especially with regard to the roller derby sport. I didn’t even understand what it was or how it worked before reading this. I’m still not a fan of the sport and I honestly don’t get the point, but I liked that Astrid was able to work at it consistently and eventually find success and community doing it. It also definitely improved her self-esteem overall.

This book came to my attention because of the subject matter (roller derby!), because of the cute cover, and because the blurb compared it to Raina Telgemeier. I love Telgemeier, and I'm happy to report that the comparison was fitting. La historia esta exquisitamente estructurada, para que cualquiera que la lea se sienta identificado. Llena de mensajes, algunos simples, otros muy muy complejos. At the beginning of the story, it is abundantly clear that Nicole and Astrid are inseparable. They are the closest of friends of the sort that you have in elementary school. Nicole has tagged along with Astrid on Astrid's mom's evening of cultural enlightenment when it meant going to the opera or a modern art exhibit. The roller derby is exotic and quite different, but Nicole's reaction is not quite the same as Astrid's. Astrid's stubborn persistence to be what she wants-the team's jammer-is a great inspiration to everyone who reads the story "including me as an adult" to know that practice makes perfect, or at least near perfect.For most of her twelve years, Astrid has done everything with her best friend Nicole. But after Astrid falls in love with roller derby and signs up for derby camp, Nicole decides to go to dance camp instead. And so begins the most difficult summer of Astrid's life as she struggles to keep up with the older girls at camp, hang on to the friend she feels slipping away, and cautiously embark on a new friendship. As the end of summer nears and her first roller derby bout (and junior high!) draws closer, Astrid realizes that maybe she is strong enough to handle the bout, a lost friendship, and middle school… in short, strong enough to be a roller girl. In that beautiful Graphic novel, "Astrid" was extremely dazzled by Roller Derby-a sport that I just knew about it in this book-when her mother takes her to watch that game. Being inherited her fierce mom's genes, she excitedly decides to start practicing this tough game. So the stage is set for the shift so many girls - and maybe boys, though I don't know how this particular piece of boy's life works - experience in their transition from elementary school to junior high/middle school: Losing the best friend while moving out of childhood and into teenagehood, trying to find out who they want to be. If you like or love roller derby, this is a comic book you need to be reading. Hardcore derby fans will enjoy it. People who have seen Whip It a few times will like. Anyone who enjoys a fun comic book with strong female characters will enjoy it.

One thing that I would love to have? A sequel. About Astrid's time in Junior High, how the Derby is going and how her friendships are going. ROLLER GIRL follows the story of Astrid as she navigates the hard-hitting worlds of junior roller derby and middle school friendships. It's based on my own struggles fitting in in middle school- as well as the home I found while playing roller derby as an adult. Roller Girl wasn't the first graphic novel to win a Newbery Honor—that was Cece Bell's El Deafo in 2015—but it duplicated the feat only a year later. Victoria Jamieson had illustrated for other authors and done a few picture books of her own, but Roller Girl put her squarely on the map in children's literature. She had become one of the best at appealing to reluctant readers with her spunk and colorful sense of style.

But this is not, of course, just about derby. It's about friendship, about growing away from old friends and towards new ones. Astrid's best friend isn't interested in roller derby. She wants to go to ballet camp. And it's part of Astrid's journey in this book to realize that she and Nicole don't need to be attached at the hip. They can be different people. Maybe they won't be friends the way they once were, but that doesn't mean they have to be enemies, either. Astrid is the first-person narrator and protagonist of this graphic novel. In the very first line of narration, she tells the reader that the story takes place when she was in fifth grade. The story begins on a rainy night when Astrid's mother takes her and Astrid's friend Nicole out for an evening of cultural enlightenment. Unexpectedly, this turns out to be her first encounter with the roller derby.