New at The Beguiling: SKIM and PAUL GOES FISHING

Newly arrived at The Beguiling are two great Canadian graphic novels, Skim and Paul Goes Fishing.

Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, is a wonderful graphic novel about teenage longing and the kind of delicate relationships we form with the people around us in high school. This one will likely be rare down south as it’s published by Groundwood Books, an excellent Canadian book publisher without many inroads into the comics direct market. Author Mariko Tamaki has a graphic novel coming in the MINX line this fall, and Jillian Tamaki is a well-known illustrator. Her art book Gilded Lillies is shown in the background.

Meanwhile, Michel Rabagliati’s new graphic novel Paul Goes Fishing is the next in the series of autobiographically-tinged Paul books, following on Paul Gets A Summer Job and Paul Moves Out, also published by Montreal’s Drawn + Quarterly. This one is much more intensely personal and tragicomic graphic novel than the other Paul material, but I guarantee it’ll please fans of the books as well as newcomers to Rabagliati’s work.

A nice boon to both graphic novels is that Skim and Paul Goes Fishing have been recipients of Doug Wright Awards, Canada’s graphic novel awards, so you can be assured of their quality. Both books are now available in The Beguiling online bookstore, at http://www.beguiling.com/bookstore.asp.

– Chris @ The Beguiling