I can’t wait to find out what Mirka will do with her sword.įind this review on Sonderbooks at: Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site. This book is funny, magical, insightful, and a joy to read. You can see she has the heart to fight a troll as well. I love the prosaic nature of her first nemesis - the giant talking pig. The setting is utterly unlike any other book I’ve read (a small orthodox Jewish community in the country), but I can relate to Mirka’s fairytale dreams. I don’t read a lot of graphic novels, but I know that I will want to read absolutely anything Barry Deutsch writes about Mirka. I was hugely entertained, even as one tender scene brought tears to my eyes.” “Wit and irony also abound in the text: a monster pig eats Mirka’s homework, Mirka and her clever, loving stepmother engage in wonderfully funny debates, and some Orthodox traditions are gently poked fun at (“preparing for all that non-working takes a lot of work!” and “In Hereville, kids aren’t allowed to have non-Jewish books. There is lots of very clever stuff here: visual jokes such as an illustration contained within an exclamation point, table legs morphing into trees, and a deliciously horrid troll.
Rather than learning such “womanly arts” as knitting, she wants to fight dragons. Seemingly we are in the middle of a Hansel and Gretel pastiche, a fairy tale, in which the characters sprinkle their dialogue with Yiddish words, “A klog iz mir: Woe is me!” as well as expressions like “Yaaaah!” ”Mumph!” and “Aaak!” Mirka, one daughter in a large family of sibs and step-sibs, rebels against the traditional role expected of her in the Orthodox Jewish community of Hereville. “The story plays with genres, tilting them on their sides using incongruity, it skewers conventions. Every page is vibrant with energetic pictures, dialogue, sound effects-and extremely minimal exposition. Thick, shiny, paper painted in shades of coral, brown, black and white-changing to deep purples and grays in the scary night scenes-feel silky to the touch. “Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl,” it proclaims. “ Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, a graphic novel by Barry Deutsch, must be the only book ever whose outside front cover made me laugh.
Hereville gained high praise from Judge Susan Patron in Round One of the Battle: I don’t read a lot of graphic novels, but when I saw the caption on the cover of Hereville, I knew I had to try it: “Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl.” I’m sorry, but that’s one caption I can’t possibly resist. I hope I’ve convinced my readers to follow the Battle next year! Here’s one more review of a book from School Library Journal’s Battle of the Kids’ Books.
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