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"Funny, well-observed...contains immense daring and depth...Sattouf has drawn a portrait of a generation." —Observer, "Graphic Novel of the Month"
Once a week for three years, the comic book artist Riad Sattouf had a chat with his friend’s outgoing young daughter, Esther, in which she told him about her family, her school, her friends, her hopes, her dreams, and her fears. After each meeting, he would create a one-page comic strip based on what she had said. Esther’s Notebooks gathers 156 of those strips, spanning Esther’s life from ages nine through twelve, giving us a delightful look into the daily dramas of this thoughtful, intelligent, and high-spirited girl.
As The Guardian noted: “Each page of Esther’s Notebooks is self-contained—there’s usually a neat punchline—but read them all, and you come to see that Sattouf has drawn a portrait of a generation: their hopes, dreams and cultural references; the way that their personalities, backgrounds—many of the children portrayed have parents who are immigrants—and preconceived ideas about sexuality begin to play out even before they’ve begun secondary school. The result is a bit like a cartoon version of Michael Apted’s landmark TV series, Up. These funny, well-observed comics are fantastically daring.”
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 24, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593316931
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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August 1, 2022
In Good for a Girl, two-time national champion Fleshman chronicles her life as a runner while arguing that the current sports industry is failing young female athletes and needs reform. In Warrior, Guerrero tracks her rise to chief investigative correspondent for Inside Edition despite harassment and pushback (35,000-copy first printing). In fall 2019, Atlantic senior editor Hendrickson limned Joe Biden's struggle to conquer stuttering (and his own) in a story that went viral and is expanded in Life on Delay, which highlights key issues stutterers face like bullying and depression and the support systems that mattered. ANew York Times best-selling author (see A Small Furry Prayer, my favorite) and human performance expert (he's executive director of the Flow Research Collective), Kotler explains how he pushed passed his limits to become a crack skier at age 53 inGnar Country (50,000-copy first printing). In Unraveling, the New York Times best-selling Orenstein (Cinderella Ate My Daughter) ends up touching on key social issues (from climate change to women's rights) as she explains how she coped with big life changes (a mother's death, a father's illness, a daughter's departure for college) by learning how to knit a sweater from scratch (shearing a sheep, spinning and dying yarn, and more) (75,000-copy first printing). In a series of weekly cartoon strips, celebrated French cartoonist Sattouf (The Arab of the Future, 4 vols.) recounted the life of his friend's daughter Esther from ages 10 to 12; Esther's Notebooks offers 156 of these strips, taken from the first three volumes of a series that appeared in Europe and has sold over 900,000 copies. Raped at age 11 by a neighborhood boy, Taylor was sent to live in an aunt's substandard household in rundown East St. Louis; The Love You Save recounts how she survived and thrived, finally becoming a Daily Beast editor at large (150,000-copy first printing).
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from November 21, 2022
Sattouf (The Arab of the Future series) captures the unsentimental, wickedly funny realities of childhood in this collection of his inspired weekly comic, first serialized in the French news magazine L’Obs. The strip is based on conversations with a talkative young daughter of Sattouf’s friends. Esther, a self-possessed Parisian who grows from nine to 12 over the course of the volume, all but leaps from the page, dishing dirt from the school playground and sharing wisdom like “if you’re blonde and bendy, you’ll succeed” (exhibit A: Beyonce). Esther’s preoccupations change over the years, from playing pretend and feuding with boys to crushes, pop culture, politics, and her own future life; she tries her hand at writing and dreams of becoming a YA editor. Sattouf draws her dispatches with wry humor, crowding the pages with busy, squiggly characters (they are bendy) and dialogue that curlicues around the art. The comic is, above all, ruthlessly honest about childhood: kids are casually cruel, adults are unimportant much of the time, society is obviously shallow and materialistic, and terror sometimes descends out of nowhere, but so does joy. As Esther progresses from losing teeth to getting zits, she remains an unforgettable guide through the perilous world of growing up. Readers will laugh through tears as they follow her eye-opening exploits. (Jan.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated how the author came to know Esther. -
December 1, 2022
A collection of 156 installments of a weekly comic strip by cartoonist Sattouf that follows the everyday life of a real Parisian girl--his friend's daughter--from ages 9 to 12 as she shares her thoughts on issues both timely and timeless. Young Esther lives with her mother, father, and older brother (and eventually a baby brother) in Paris' 17th arrondissement. They are of modest means but nevertheless send Esther to a private school--a decision Esther doesn't quite understand but her beloved dad attributes to wanting to keep her safe from "little punks." Being a working-class kid in a private school--where she is popular and does well in her studies--informs Esther's perspective as she amusingly and insightfully narrates her thoughts on family, gender, celebrity, wealth, terrorism, religion, racism, politics, love, and flies. She also explores her fantastical dreams and aspirations to be a book editor. Sometimes Esther has the misunderstandings of a child (she mishears adult terms, like the name of a pornographic website), and sometimes those misunderstandings are more complex, like Esther's feeling that homosexuality doesn't make sense because having two dads would mean no one would be around to cook or clean the house, a belief based on her own family's domestic dynamics. Esther's opinions can be controversial, and she is obsessed with people's appearances, but the innocence and bravado with which she explains them are reminders that the decency of the person is more important than the opinions they hold. Sattouf is a superb cartoonist, and each strip is a master class in the form. The serialized nature of the original makes some information repetitive, and the plot meanders with the seasons and discoveries of adolescent life. But the overall effect is a treat. Insightful, amusing, and elegant.COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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December 2, 2022
Growing up is complicated, painful, and weird as seen through the eyes of a French 10-year-old girl named Esther. Over the course of three years, Esther shares glimpses of her everyday life attending private school in Paris with a mix of naivete, casual cruelty, and hormone-induced awkwardness. Experiencing flashes of sexual harassment, misogyny, and xenophobia without understanding the deeper meaning behind these incidents, Esther serves as an unwitting narrator to things that would outrage a more experienced person. Sattouf (The Arab of the Future) uses his pen to illustrate a dark satire of life as told to him by a young girl. The cartoon seems loose and light-hearted at first glance, but the ugly underbelly of growing up in the French political landscape appears beneath the ink. This has been adapted as an animated series in France, where it was originally published. VERDICT Readers seeking to experience a strange, yet at its core, familiar slice of life in a country steeped in multiple cultures will enjoy the perspective provided in this collection.
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from November 1, 2022
Sattouf, renowned for his Arab of the Future autobiographical series, is just as famous in France for Esther's Notebooks, which began as a weekly newspaper comic spotlighting the observations and experiences of a friend's daughter. The comics' popularity inspired best-selling books and an animated series. This is Esther's first appearance in the U.S., with her 10-, 11-, and 12-year-old selves translated in three parts by Taylor, who proves especially adroit in bringing the French wordplay into English. Esther is an utter delight--smart, independent, imaginative, and self-aware. She's the middle child in a Parisian family, sandwiched between an annoying older brother and adorable baby brother. Their father is a trainer at a gym, their mother in insurance; Esther's close to both, but she particularly adores her father. She attends a private school ("there's lots of violence in free schools"), which admittedly is a financial strain; nope, she can't have an iPhone. By part 3, she successfully tests into a "free, posh" secondary school. Her evolving relationships include multiple best friends, ex-husbands, boyfriends. She "prefers girls," even if she's not gay like her aunt. She's already realized "we would be perfectly fine without any boys at all." Despite Esther's youth, terrorism, racism, and politics (as president, she'd never take Trump's calls) are all quotidian details of her growing maturity. French editions continue into Esther's fifteenth year; English editions will hopefully follow.COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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