This One Summer and the Art that Makes it Memorable

This One Summer, by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, perfectly encapsulates the feeling of a childhood summer. The story, narrated by the main character Rose, follows eerily familiar characters as they dance through a myriad of plotlines and misadventures. Stories about childhood are difficult because there is inevitably a spectrum that spans the gap between what is childish and what is adult – and every single child experiences countless situations and dilemmas along that continuum. The Tamakis, however, walk that line with impeccable skill. Most notably, there is a panel towards the end of the graphic novel in which Rose is walking along a clean, clear path in one half of the panel, while the other half is occupied by the fenced off backyard of the store in which Dunc worked; at this point in the story, Rose was finally able to extract herself from the “Dud’s” chaotic relationship, and is thus removed from the clutter of more "adult" problems. This is not the only instance in which the art proves to be an absolutely superb vehicle of This One Summer. Jillian Tamaki’s decision to render the panels depicting scenes from extremely familiar movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jaws more realistically helps to keep the audience immersed in the story; if they had been drawn in a style similar to the rest of the story, readers would be jolted out of the narrative as illustrations of famous scenes would be too far removed from how they are preserved in memory. There is even an instance where, when a child falls, the action word "Trip!" is placed so that she is very literally tripping over it. Through this graphic novel, the Tamakis succeed in lifting a familiar feeling of summer and rendering it into something that can observed and appreciated by all who read it.