| Skim | |
|---|---|
Cover of the first edition of Skim. |
|
| Publisher | Groundwood Books |
| Date | 2008 |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Mariko Tamaki |
| Artist(s) | Jillian Tamaki |
| Original publication | |
| Language | English |
| ISBN | 978-0-88899-753-1 |
Skim is a Canadian graphic novel written by Mariko Tamaki and drawn by Jillian Tamaki. Set in 1993, in a Toronto Catholic girls high school, it is about an outsider girl called Skim.
Contents |
Skim is a "not-slim" student at an all-girls catholic school. She is known as a goth, and practices Wicca. When popular girl Katie Matthews gets dumped by her athlete boyfriend, who days later kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. With the school counselors breathing down her neck and the popular clique (including Katie's best friend Julie Peters) forming a new club in its wake, Skim finds herself in the crosshairs, deepening her "depression". And if things cannot get more complicated, Skim starts to fall for an equally quirky teacher.
Skim was originally thought of as a "gothic Lolita story", and what eventually became part I of the story was run as a 30 page preview in an indie magazine.[1] Mariko Tamaki wrote the story much like a play's script, and Jillian Tamaki illustrated the novel as she saw fit.[2]
Paul Gravett has called it "the most sophisticated and sensitive North American graphic novel debut of the year."[3] Killett says that it manages to avoid the usual cliches of a coming of age story.[4] The Toronto Star has compared the story to Dead Poets Society and Heathers.[5] Skim has been recommended by the CCBC,[6] and they say that Skim's struggles have universal qualities.[7]
The Metro News praised that the narrative voice sounds authentic.[8]
Skim has been nominated for the Young Adult Library Services Association's 2009 Great Graphic Novels for Teens award.[9] Skim has won the 2008 Outstanding Graphic Novel Ignatz Award.[10]
Skim was a finalist for the 2008 Governor General's Awards in the children's literature category. The Canada Council for the Arts, the award program's administrator, faced some criticism around the fact that the nomination was credited to Mariko Tamaki, who wrote the graphic novel's text, but not to her cousin and co-creator Jillian Tamaki, who drew the illustrations. Jillian later said she was "extremely disappointed" that she had not been included in the nomination.[11]
Two prominent Canadian graphic novelists, Seth and Chester Brown, circulated an open letter to the Canada Council asking them to revise the nomination[12], arguing that unlike a more traditional illustrated book, a graphic novel's text and illustration are inseparable parts of the work's narrative, and that both women should accordingly be credited as equal co-authors. Their letter was also endorsed by other prominent Canadian and American graphic novelists, including Lynda Barry, Dan Clowes, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware and Julie Doucet, as well as by Chris Oliveros of Canadian comic and graphic novel publisher Drawn & Quarterly and Peter Birkemore of Toronto comic store The Beguiling.[13]
Melanie Rutledge, a spokesperson for the Canada Council, responded that it was too late to revise the nominations for the 2008 awards, but that the council would take the feedback into account in the future.[14]
Later, both Jillian and Mariko Tamaki applied for and received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts to launch Skim in Spain.[15]
Skim was nominated in four categories in the Eisner Awards 2009[16], and has won Best Book at the 2009 Doug Wright Awards[17].