Missouri Boy [Paperback]

Leland Myrick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2006

Firecrackers lighting up an ancient tree on a summer night. Twin boys born the same night their grandmother passes away. Teenagers hanging by their fingertips from the roof of a parking garage. These are the moments of quiet poetry that make up Leland Myrick's Missouri Boy. Happiness alternates with tragedy in these snapshots of Myrick's own Missouri childhood. Filled with startling and at times achingly beautiful images--from a perfect paper airplane flying in the autumn sky to a solitary cross-country motorcycle trip--Myrick's graphic poem brings together the experiences that formed his character, for better and for worse. Poignant, timeless, and gently evoked, Missouri Boy is a unique tribute to a small-town American childhood.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Myrick (Bright Elegy) shares slices of his own childhood in this graphic memoir: his birth at the moment of his grandmother's death; a magical Fourth of July, lighting firecrackers in a tree in the yard; a boyhood ritual of skinny-dipping in a pond in the woods; his first failed attempt at romance. He paints childhood as both simple and complex, mixing the joy of folding the perfect paper airplane with the family tragedy of watching his older brother sentenced to 10 years in prison. The words outline the stories in minimal dialogue and lyrical captions, making each section a visual poem. At the end, Myrick sets out on a cross-country motorcycle journey, leaving behind Missouri and all the places steeped in memories of childhood for California, marking his final journey to adulthood. The block colors and rough outlines of the art evoke unsentimental nostalgia for Myrick's youth. The subject matter is reminiscent of such cartoon memoirs as Chester Brown's I Never Liked You and John Porcellino's Perfect Example, but its episodic nature doesn't really hold together as a narrative, and the end result is more evocative than riveting. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* In this graphic novel, Myrick contributes a heartfelt glimpse of his youth, presenting vignettes that reflect life growing up in a small town. From marveling at the creation of a perfect paper airplane and swimming nude in a nearby lake with his friends to muffing an opportunity with a pretty girl and seeing death close up, the author shares memories of his boyhood and teen years. Even if Myrick's specific memories aren't ours, they touch and connect us as readers, encouraging us to remember our own youth. There are no terrible secrets or great revelations here. It's the tenderness and intimacy of the spare words and pictures that set the book apart. Myrick's art, from the rich colors to the panel layouts, works on a gut level. It seems so simple, yet it speaks independently of the words, providing a subtext and an emotional nuance that create a sense of the wistful hope of childhood. A fine example of the graphic novel. Tina Coleman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Paperback: 110 pages
• Publisher: First Second; 1st edition (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596431105
• ISBN-13: 978-1596431102
• Product Dimensions: 0.2 x 6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #776,033 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Leland Myrick is the Ignatz Award- and Harvey Award-nominated author and illustrator of The Ten (Kingdom of Graves Book One), The Sweet Collection, School Girls, Bright Elegy, Feynman and Missouri Boy. His writing and illustrations have appeared in publications as diverse as Dark Horse Comics, GQ Japan, Vogue Russia, Flight, and First Second Books. His most recent graphic novel, Feynman, written by Jim Ottaviani, is a New York Times #1 Bestseller and named to Horn Books Best Books of 2011. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars When the stars go blue, September 17, 2006

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Missouri Boy (Paperback)

The graphic novel memoir for adults has tentatively established itself as its own particular artform. Books like Marjane Satrapi's, "Persepolis" or Joe Sacco's "Palestine" carry with them the weight of their authors' personal histories alongside a much larger story. For kids, though, the graphic novel memoir has yet to really come into its own. Publishers so eager to embrace manga and two-dimensional storytelling shy away from kid tales attempting any kind of depth. Credit the good folks at First Second Books then with doing their part to change all that. Author Leland Myrick has tried his hand at a very personal story with the quietly moving, "Missouri Boy". Following a boy as he grows to be a man, the book doesn't offer as much insight or interpretation of Myrick's experiences as I would have liked, but it does give the reader a very real series of slices of a single human being's life.

He was born in 1961 alongside his twin brother just as his grandmother died. And from here on in the reader gets a series of brief glimpses of the author's life growing up in Missouri. These are sometimes very simple moments. Creating paper airplanes that fly on winds that may not even exist anymore. The time he hid under a pile of leaves and his friends played a nasty trick on him. Hanging off a hospital parking structure to look up at the girls he likes. Other times the moments in this book would be of the sort we'd consider "important". Witnessing his much older brother convicted of bank robbery and sent to serve ten years. Or not asking out the cute nurse at the hospital when he had the chance. It all works together. It all tells his story. It's life between the years of 1961 and 1985 that begins in the Missouri and ends in the greater world.

I liked very much that Myrick took the time to give each selection in this book its own separate title. The first of these, "Ghost Umbilical", calls attention to the connection between Myrick's mother, bursting with life at her stomach, and his grandmother, dying of the bulge in hers. With expert skill Myrick is able to bring these two great moments in a human life together by saying, "Through a wispy umbilical of ectoplasm we didn't even know we shared, arching between the living and the dead, connecting beginnings to ends, passing memories through the ether one belly to another". "Underwear Pond", in contrast, shows Leland and his friends in a swimming hole where they ritually tend to toss their underwear into the brackish depths before departing. There's a little moment in this section where Myrick as a boy thinks of the pond in the future. "Imagining the day when the pond is sold away - And the new owners drain it ... to find a solid coating of boy's underwear".

You might ask me why I thought this book was better suited for children rather than teens and adults. It's a difficult question to answer. There is nothing in "Missouri Boy" that anyone could really count as "inappropriate" for children (with the possible exception of a section involving a hospital cadaver). And as an adult I appreciated what Myrick was able to say about the small moments that spelled out his time in Missouri. Still, there's much in this story for kids to appreciate and love. Having a twin. Setting off firecrackers. Watching the first streak of gray hair appear on your father's head. It's slow but entirely comfortable. The illustrations themselves are not of a style I would normally seek out but they work beautifully within Myrick's narratives.

As an author, Mr. Myrick is sparing of his words. This is not, by any means, a wordy novel and I'd never wish for it to be one. Still, I would have liked just a touch more connection between the disparate moments in the author's life. We flash from age to age, from the seemingly inconsequential moment when his father buys an easy chair, to the time he helped with the full body x-ray of a crash victim. These are strong moments, but without any sense of continuity. As a result they feel almost too individual to hang together as a whole.

That said, it's an excellent book. A definite keeper and a graphic novel appropriate for all children's library collections everywhere. For those parents who see GNs only as superhero adventures or tales of malarky, try handing them Myrick's quiet little book. It has the potential to win over a couple more fans to the side of the children's graphic memoir.

4.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring, January 31, 2011

By 

Debra D. Rudolph "Bird Goddess" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Missouri Boy (Paperback)

I bought Missoui Boy on a whim, and I'm glad I did. These vignettes, striking memories, from the author's youth, are interesting, moving, and sometimes beautiful in their simplicity. The art work is also wonderful. I wish the book could have been longer because I enjoyed it so well, but I like that the author was so specific about these memories. (As a middle-aged person, I especially liked "Old Man's Chair." As a youth, I had disdain for such things!) Also, this is a very good book for anyone contemplating memoir. The simple storytelling is straight forward, selective, and effective. Missouri Boy is a good tool to study and should inspire those who'd like to tell their own story.