Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | GRAPHIC SHI | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Jimmy is a stereotypical geek who works at the library in Oakland, California, and is trapped in his own torpidity. Sara is his best friend, but she wants to get a life (translation: an apartment in Brooklyn and a publishing internship). When Sara moves to New York City, Jimmy is rattled. Then lonely. Then desperate. He screws up his courage, writes Sara a letter about his true feelings, and asks her to meet him at the top of the Empire State Building (a nod to their ongoing debate about Sleepless in Seattle). Jimmy's cross-country bus trip to Manhattan is as hapless and funny as Jimmy himself. When he arrives in the city he's thought of as "a festering hellhole," he's surprised by how exciting he finds New York, and how heartbreaking--he discovers Sara has a boyfriend! Jason Shiga's bold visual storytelling, sly pokes at popular culture, and subtle text work together seamlessly in Empire State, creating a quirky graphic novel comedy about the vagaries of love and friendship.Praise for Empire State:"He [Shiga] displays a wicked sense of comic timing." -Publishers Weekly "Empire State: A Love Story (Or Not) is funny, sweet, geeky and affecting, and definitely worth a read." -Wired.com "Shiga's illustrations . . . are unique and endearing, and his images of NYC are instantly recognizable." -am New York "If Woody Allen grew up in Oakland rather than Manhattan, he'd most likely see the world, and especially New York City, as Jason Shiga does in Empire State." -Big Think.com
Author Notes
Jason Shiga is a cartoonist from Oakland, California. His comics have a geeky side, and often feature exciting uses of math, mazes, puzzles, and unconventional narrative techniques. In his 25-year career, Shiga has created eight graphic novels, 20 comic books, over a dozen magazine and newspaper strips, and the world's second-largest interactive comic. He has won two Eisner awards, two Ignatz awards, and his work has been featured as an official selection for the Comics Festival in Angouleme.
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Jimmy, an Asian man, and Sara, a Jewish woman, are best friends. They live in Oakland, but Sara dreams of working in the publishing industry and moves to New York. They have a long-distance friendship at first, but when Sara sends him a tote bag from the Strand bookstore, Jimmy decides to travel across the country to see her again. He has romantic ideas about Sara, and about New York itself. He wants to meet her at the top of the Empire State Building at sunset, just like in Sleepless in Seattle. He takes a bus rather than a plane because he wants to see more of the country, but the trip and the destination don't turn out to be what he expected. At first Jimmy is a young man who signs his paychecks over to his mother, who then gives him an allowance. He is happy with his library job, and happy in Oakland. But Sara inspires him to be brave, and to make choices he never would have made before. Shiga uses a simple, cartoon style to illustrate this book. The story is alternately saturated in red and blue tones that don't make sense at first, but readers will soon realize that the colors of the pages indicate chronological shifts in the story. This is a semiautobiographical book that was inspired by a cross-country Greyhound bus trip, and it will be most appreciated by readers who are ready to savor this quietly emotional journey.-Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Jimmy's first crush/best friend Sara has moved to New York to encounter the wider world. So Jimmy, a socially awkward man-child who likes reading hard sci-fi (the kind with rocket ships) and has no idea what a latte is, embarks on a perilous bus trip from his home in Oakland to Brooklyn to profess his love to her. He soon learns that the only thing worse than sharing a small bus with random ex-cons comparing notes on their prison experiences is crashing on a couch in a small Brooklyn apartment with Sara and her new boyfriend, Mark. Sara and Mark do their best to welcome Jimmy to the grown-up world, showing him different parts of the city and trying to broaden his limited horizons, but there's a real question as to whether their gentle coaching will take. Shiga (Meanwhile, Double Happiness) walks a fine line between sappy rom-com and maudlin love-lost tale, but largely succeeds in maintaining a balanced middle. He's aided by a crude yet geometric penciling style that draws the reader very effectively into Jimmy's point of view. He also displays a wicked sense of comic timing, which is equally effective at portraying awkward pauses and slapstick physicality. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Shiga, creator of the mind-exploder Meanwhile (2010) and the hard-boiled, library-cop pastiche Bookhunter (2007), offers a more personal story here. With loosely arranged panels populated by Shiga's distinctive, hunched-over figures, this dialogue-driven comic stars nerdy young Oakland librarian Jimmy, whose blatant inexperience with this whole being-grown-up thing isn't limited to just matters of the heart. I'm an adult. I should have a newspaper subscription. I should be smoking a pipe and attending the opera regularly. When his one friend moves back to New York, he goes on a surprise cross-country trek to see if just maybe he can inspire a Sleepless in Seattle moment with her. The mildly disastrous results might have been soul-crushing if they weren't handled with Shiga's terrifically wry wit and Jimmy's cheery ability to roll with the punches, even when they land a bit harder than expected. Though the sweet spot for this geeked-out graphic novel's readership is probably early twenties, readers well on either side should also find plenty that speaks to them.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2010 Booklist
