Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol (my graphic novel example)

Anya’s Ghost (New York: First Second, 2011) is a 221-paged young adult graphic novel written and illustrated by Vera Brosgol. Anya is a curvy immigrant girl who is self-conscious about her body and her Russianness. She wants to fit in and be popular at her American high school, and she spends a lot of her free time dreaming about dating Sean, the most popular guy at her school, and wishing she looked like Sean's popular girlfriend Elizabeth. But in reality Anya’s only friends are Dima, a geeky Russian immigrant who Anya tries to distance herself from in order to be seen as “normal” and American, and a rebel teenaged girl named Siobhan who smokes cigarettes and hates school, which are two of Anya’s favorite things.

On the way to school one day, Anya falls into a hole and finds a skeleton. And a ghost! The ghost is named Emily who died ninety years earlier after breaking her neck from the fall. Emily appears shy and friendly and tells Anya that unfortunately she cannot leave the hole because her ghost is attached to her skeleton. Eventually Anya is helped out of the hole and does not think anything of her ghostly encounter until Emily appears in her house days later. Anya learns that she had a small part of Emily’s finger bone in her school bag, which allowed Emily to leave her grave. Anya decides to let Emily stay since Emily seems fun and harmless, but very soon Anya learns that things with Emily are not at all as they seem. At first Emily is a new friend who helps Anya succeed at school, become popular, and date Sean. But in the process of fitting in, Anya alienates Siobhan and learns at a party that Sean and Elizabeth are not perfect. And when Emily learns that, despite her efforts, Sean and Anya will not end up together forever, she lets her real self out. Emily goes from a nice and quiet ghost to a possessive, jealous, controlling, and murderous ghost that Anya no longer likes or wants to be around. Emily’s personality change lets Anya come to the realization that fitting in at school is not worth all of this craziness.

Anya’s Ghost is simultaneously funny and creepy in a good way. Brosgol’s narrative is fast-paced, witty, and amusing, yet her black, grey, and white illustrations and her tale of a ghost who goes from Casper to evil spirit give this graphic novel a dark and grim quality. What I liked most about Anya’s Ghost is that it is easy to relate to Brosgol’s characters, Anya in particular. Anya starts off unhappy. She hates a lot of things with her life and her body, and she is willing to do whatever it takes to be thin, American, and popular. But by the end of the novel, Anya stops trying so hard. Over the course of the novel she learned that no one is perfect or has a perfect life and that nothing is worth being popular if it means doing immoral things and changing who you are. This realization leads Anya to come to the conclusion that having a loving family and a few close friends who like her for her is the best option she could have. This message of loving yourself is not only a powerful one for teen girls to learn but for many adults as well, which is why Anya's Ghost is a graphic novel that is appropriate and necessary for people ages 14 and up to read.  

           --Ashley Cleeves