Skim (Tamaki / Tamaki)

Skim
Mariko Tamaki / Jillian Tamaki (2008)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a graphic novel that was donated to me from FreeCycle by a woman in Carol Gardens, Brooklyn. Thank you. I picked it up one Friday to be my Friday read after the other students had chosen theirs. (Nearly none of the students brought their own comic.)

The story takes place in 1993 at a private Catholic girls school in Toronto. I'm curious if the writer has a connection to that particular time (as in, that's when they attended) or if they just wanted it to take place before cell phones were a thing. Or both.

Kim is Japanese-Canadian, and she is on the heavy side. She's called Skim, right from the start of the book, like it's already a thing, but it's not a joke that she finds amusing. She's goth, practices Wicca, and has an arm in a cast because she tripped over her altar in her room.

She's friends with Lisa, who is also into Wicca. They go into the woods to attend a ceremony that appears to be a bunch of aging boomers more than Wiccans or goths. Since it's 1993, they could all be aging Hippies, I guess, close enough that maybe they attended Woodstock. Those details aren't important but Kim and Lisa find the outing to be a bit of a bust.

There's one teacher who Kim respects, Ms. Archer, who is the English and drama teacher, and here's where the drama starts. Kim is infatuated with her to the point of looking up her address in the phone book (another reason to set it in 1993, I guess) and then goes to her house. Ms. Archer stops her and says that she never gave Kim her address. However, she doesn't chase her off. In fact, the two start to become close in a situation that I would realize even if I were not a teacher crosses a line. The only resolution to this is that Ms. Archer is dismissed, off-screen, sometime in the middle of the book and doesn't play a role in the rest of the story. We don't even see her when she drops out Kim's Tarot card deck before leaving for the last time. (We don't see her, either.)

As Kim and Lisa start to grow apart, Kim starts getting closer to Katie Matthews. Katie's ex-boyfriend, John Reddeer, broke up with her and then committed suicide. No one knows the reasons, but the speculation is that John was gay. This is not confirmed, but it is the prevailing theory among the girls. Katie falls off a roof and winds up with her arms in cast (like Kim). Some of the girls believe that she tried to commit suicide over John Reddear and keep her close. She can't stand it.

There were times that I confused Katie and Lisa, because it's a black and white book and the biggest difference between them is their hair. That's on me, though, especially since I was only reading this on Fridays during class.

I found the book to be okay, but I'm not the target audience for such a book. It was a bit disturbing with the inappropriate relationship, which was never really addressed before the teacher was dismissed. I don't know the queen bee/wannabe culture of girl schools or teenage girls in general but there's a lot of drama. (I never saw Mean Girls, and watching it at this point would be silly.)

I enjoyed the artwork, and the use of diary entries for the narrative. I'll likely skim through the book (I see the pun) to find some pages to use in class to talk about the technique in story telling: use of background, graphic weight, contrast, etc.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.