Honor Girl

Reviewed by: Jill O'Connor - North Yarmouth Academy, Yarmouth, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: October 14, 2015

Review

This graphic memoir, primarily set at Camp Bellflower in Kentucky during the late nineties, is the coming-of-age story of Maggie Thrash. It tells of her sexual awakening for another camper, senior counselor Erin within the constraints of a camp built on Christian rhetoric. Maggie is supposed to be a "good girl" and "stay away" from the temptation and allure of the accepted deviant, Erin. She is so afraid of her own feelings that she mostly does stay away from Erin, but the experience and feelings resonate so much that, while on a trip to visit her brother in New Mexico, she contacts the older counselor in an attempt to further explore her feelings or maybe to get some closure. The story is compelling and the depiction of girls at camp is spot-on. At the same time that Maggie is dealing with her attraction to Erin, she also has to maintain her friendships with the other girls, and to focus on acquiring camp skills, particularly that of shooting a rifle. There are confrontations with a mean girl who is competing with Maggie for her Distinguished Expert Badge in shooting, but the story is really Maggie and Erin. The story is great, the artwork is good, but not quite great. It was often tough to tell one girl from another as they all had the same faces with each girls' hair being her one distinguishing feature. In the end, Maggie earns the highest camp award "Honor Girl" but the price is her silence and her adherence to the "values" of Camp Bellflower no matter what she might be feeling in her heart. Recommend for high school graphic novel collections.

Overall Book Score: very good