Imagine a world where Shakespeare’s characters are real people and the Bard himself is thought of as God. There is a prophecy about Hamlet and depending on whose side you are on he is going to either kill Shakespeare and obtain the magic quill, the source of Shakespeare’s power, or, he will overthrow the oppressive reign of Richard III and bring the power and glory of Shakespeare to the world.

This is a world in which Lady Macbeth is a powerful witch and in cahoots with Richard and Juliet is leader of the rebellion with her trusty companions Falstaff and Othello. Iago of course plays both sides. Hamlet arrives in Britain from Denmark after inadvertently killing Polonius. He travels by ship with his faithful friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who die when the ship is attacked by pirates. Hamlet survives because he falls overboard.

When Hamlet washes ashore he is picked up by Richard who twists things around and makes him believe that in helping Richard kill Shakespeare, Hamlet will be doing a great thing and as a reward, Richard will raise Hamlet’s father from the dead. Hamlet, wishy-washy as ever, sort of agrees, obviously having no worries about a zombie father.

So off they go to find Shakespeare. But Hamlet manages to get himself separated from Richard’s men and is “captured” by Falstaff. When Hamlet meets the hottie Joan-of-Arc-like Juliet, sparks fly. Of course he has to decide whose side he is going to be on. And of course, he can’t decide until the end.

It was a fun romp with several minor Shakespeare characters appearing, a brothel called “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and an inn called “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and an occasional Shakespeare quote or paraphrase. I enjoyed it enough to request the next volume from the library. I should have it in time for the weekend.

The story told in these nearly 700 pages of art and words is about Dodola and Zam. Dodola is married very young, at about the age of 10 or so. Her husband is a scribe and teaches her to read and write. But things go bad and Dodola ends up in a slave market. She escapes and rescues a small boy, Zam, at the same time. They run into the desert and find refuge in a boat stranded in the dunes. Zam’s job is to find water, Dodola’s to get food from passing caravans. Zam finds a spring, Dodola learns that in order to get enough food to survive she must prostitute herself in exchange.

They live in the boat for nine years during which time Dodola tells Zam stories from the Qur’an. These stories will be recognizable to many as they are stories of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Solomon but they aren’t quite the same as the stories in the Old Testement. Dodola also tells Zam about the mysteries of magic squares and a few other mystical charms. She also becomes a woman and Zam reaches puberty and begins to having feelings for her about which he is ashamed.

Events happen that separate Dodola and Zam. Dodola ends up in the Sultan of Wanatolia’s harem. She is, essentially a sex slave. Zam has no idea what happened to Dodola and he goes to Wanatolia looking for her and for a way to survive. He finds a way to keep from starving but it demands a high sacrifice that he eventually decides to give.

Years pass and Dodola and Zam are reunited. Both are adults now with deep scars. Still, they also carry within themselves the children they once were. There is no neat and tidy ending to the story, which is good. However, there is the implication that Dodola and Zam are on the road to healing and wholeness, accepting each other for who they have become and making a new life together.

The art, as I said, is exquisite. Be aware that is not a book for young readers because it has quite a lot of nudity in it. Too much really. Dodola is frequently completely nude even when she doesn’t have to be. There is also sex as well as a rape. The story is not as good as the art. In fact, I didn’t like the story much at all. There were just too many threads, too much going on, and it doesn’t always connect together. A complex story coupled with the complex art was a bit overwhelming. One or the other needed to be simpler. My preference would be for a simpler story.

Great art and a not so great story combine to make a so-so book. Since I loved Blankets I had high expectations for Habibi and was disappointed. I hope whatever Thompson does next is better balanced between art and story and doesn’t take him six years to complete. He’s a fabulous artist and writer but just missed the mark this time around.

Wonderstruck is not your typical graphic novel in which traditional comic format prevails with words and art on the same page. Selznick separates the words and the pictures, and in the case of Wonderstruck the pictures tell a different story than the text narrative for about two-thirds of the book when both stories meet and merge into the same storyline. The pictures tell the story of Rose and the text tells the story of Ben. There is a wonderful parallel between the two stories and a happy twist when they merge.

Ben lives with his aunt and uncle and cousin at Gunflint Lake, Minnesota. I have never been to Gunflint Lake but it is part of the Boundary Waters and reportedly gorgeous. The border between Minnesota and Canada goes through the middle of the lake. I don’t know about from the Canadian side, but from the Minnesota side it is a popular place to go to get away from it all.

Anyway, Ben is about 11-years-old, has never known his father or even who he is, and his mom recently died. His mom’s house is not far from his aunt and uncle’s and one evening he returns to it for the first time since his mother’s death and discovers his mom’s rainy day fund and the name and photo of a man who is probably his father. There is even an address in New York City. One thing leads to another and Ben runs away to New York to try and find his father. And while his adventure is the kind that seldom happens in real life, it is a sweet story nonetheless. But not syrupy sweet. Just sweet enough to make you smile and wish that life were really like that.

The art is beautifully rendered in detailed pencil drawing. Rose’s story is so well executed that not once did I wish for words. The pictures in this case do all the talking. And when Rose’s and Ben’s stories merge, they do so naturally without any sort of jarring transition.

If you liked Hugo Cabret you will not be disappointed in Wonderstruck. If you haven’t read either of them, get yourself off to the library! You are in for a treat.

The book is a whirlwind tour of the life and work of Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in physics and a great teacher and personality. The book begins in 1964 with Feynman giving a lecture to a packed hall, then skips back to 1923 when Feynman was a boy and his dad is reading him a bedtime story. Then we jump ahead to 1986 and back to 1927. But none of this is confusing and all the jumping around serves to show how past influenced future. Then there is a good long stretch in the middle that is chronological with Feynman in high school, falling in love, going off to MIT, and beginning his work on Quantum Electrodynamics Theory (QED). The theory belonged to the scientist Dirac but it wasn’t complete and Feynman wanted to figure out how to fill in the gaps. He filled in some but not all of the gaps, graduated with a Ph.D. and then shelved his work on the theory for awhile because his fiance, soon wife, became ill with tuberculosis and he was asked to go work at Los Alamos during WWII. He was part of the group that created the atomic bomb.

During his time at Los Alamos, he also taught himself how to be a safecracker. His wife died on June 16, 1945. He was grief stricken but instead of mourning her loss, he threw himself into his work. Not until a year later, after the war, when he arrived at Cornell to take up teaching was he finally able to allow himself to cry.

He was unable to produce any new work for quite sometime. One day he decided he just needed to play like he did when he was younger and not worry about whether what he was doing was important or not. So he began trying to figure out the motion of a rotating plate tossed into the air and the wobble that happened in that motion. This led him back to QED. At the same time there were two other men working on solving QED, Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. They all became aware of the work each was doing and while they didn’t actually collaborate, they did work off of each other and between the three of them they completed QED. For this the three of them shared the Nobel Prize in 1965.

Besides a brilliant physicist, Feynman was also a gifted teacher. He was determined to be able to explain QED to people who were not students or physicists. It took him a long time to be able to do it because, as he explained, even physicists didn’t know why QED worked. But he managed to do it in a series of lectures that he first delivered in New Zealand. They have been printed in a book called QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, or, through the magic of the internet, you can watch him deliver the lectures. If you have time for neither, QED is nicely explained– with pictures!– in the graphic novel. It takes work to follow and is kind of mind-bendy, but it is not impossible.

Feynman eventually goes to teach at Cal Tech in California, remarries and has children. After the Challenger exploded in 1986, he was asked to be on the investigative commission. He was the only one who was not afraid to speak out about the O-ring failure and the other issues at NASA that contributed to the disaster. He wrote a separate report of his own because he could not in good conscious sign his name to the report that the commission wrote. A big argument ensued but a compromise was struck and Feynman signed the commission report and his report was placed, in full, in the appendix. When the report was made public, most people did not even talk about the part the commission wrote but went straight to Feynman’s report.

Feynman died in 1988 from cancer. He had a long and distinguished career and was well-loved by friends, colleagues and students.

Graphic form is well-suited to telling Feynman’s life story. Feynman himself was a visual thinker and would often imagine what the math and theories looked like. He drew pictures and diagrams and some of his QED diagrams are included in the book and they are excellent at helping explain the theory. And while the book is excellent, it is made even more top-drawer by the inclusion of an annotated bibliography. And it is great that this was included because believe me, after reading the graphic novel, if you are like me, you will want to find out more and the bibliography provides a fantastic place to start.

The art is great. It is monochromatic but far from being boring it does well to serve the story. Color would be too flashy and distracting. Monochrome adds a layer of storytelling to the text. Instead of competing with the text for attention it supports it, conveying details and heightening emotion.

The text, the story, is phenomenal. It is about Bechdel’s childhood and coming of age and realizing in college that she was a lesbian. Her story is also her father’s story. She figures out early that her father is a little different, not like the other fathers. Her father is into period restoration of their house, home decoration, gardening. He teaches English but he also runs the family business, a funeral home, or “fun home” in family shorthand. He is always bringing home young men, hiring them as babysitters or to help him in the garden. When she is older, Alison learns her father has had affairs with some of these young men. These affairs have affected his relationship with his wife and his children. The contrast between Bechdel’s ability to embrace who she is and be out about it and how liberating and empowering it is for her contrasts with her father’s inability to be out which leads to his tragic end.

Bechdel and her father both share a love of books and reading. Bookish references run throughout the story with one whole chapter being titled “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.” Bechdel uses the story of Daedalus and Icarus to illuminate the relationship between her and her father. For instance, at one point, she is wondering if her father really cares about his family or if they are only there to lend an air of authenticity to the scene:

Then there are those famous wings. Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure?

By the end of the book, however, Bechdel understands her father better and provides us a moving conclusion.

Okay, that’s enough. I’m done trying to be reviewer-ly. Now I’m just going to gush. I loved this book! Read it, read it, it is really good. Promise.