Amy Unbounded: Belondweg Blossoming (Paperback)

~ Rachel Hartman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hartman self-publishes her mini-comic Amy Unbounded on a copy machine, but the deliciously imaginative series about a medieval nine-year-old girl and her friends and family has built up a devoted following. Last year, Hartman won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish this collection of stories as her first book. It's a gently paced ensemble comedy of manners, in which Amy observes business intrigue, culture clashes, class machinations among grown-ups (which she doesn't entirely understand), has her first crush and begins reading Belondweg, her fictional country's national epic. Hartman has a historian's eye for the realities of preindustrial life (her characters spend a lot of their time preparing food), and a storyteller's gift for making them fresh and funny. She makes even the standard elements of fantasies set in the Middle Ages seem hilariously normal. In Amy's world, the knight in exile is an uncle who stops by for dinner once a week and the dragon disguised in human form is a grad student researching local customs. Hartman draws the characters in a bold, cartoon style (dots for eyes, bulbous noses), but illustrates her kitchens, churches and peasant outfits with real care. While the story is set in medieval times, Amy and her playmates think and act like contemporary kids. Hartman's stories are driven by her elegant writing. Even minor characters are memorable and vivid, and the story proceeds with the casual verve of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Amy Unbounded: Belondweg Blossoming collects issues 7-12 of Rachel Hartman's award-winning comic book, and includes an introduction by Linda Medley, a dramatis personae for new readers, and a few extra pages of silliness at the back.

Belondweg Blossoming follows the lives of Amy and her neighbor Bran Ducanahan the summer they turn ten. Amy has begun reading the national epic, Belondweg, about a semi-mythical queen of the same name who united Goredd and saved her people from invaders. Amy only wishes her own life were half as exciting. But how is life supposed to live up to literature when your mother is a semi-domesticated barbarian, all the knights you know are banished, and the only dragon you have ever met is a geeky grad student?

Join Amy as she dances the Two-foot, wears a really ugly bridesmaid's dress, becomes friends (in spite of everything!) with Bran, imitates the patron saint of ducks, flees from rampaging sheep, learns that love doesn't always conquer all, chugs buttermilk, and begins to understand that even Belondweg didn't have to save the world all by herself.

Winner of the 2001 Xeric Grant.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Pug House Press (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971790000
• ISBN-13: 978-0971790001
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #976,346 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just for comic readers, April 26, 2002

By A Customer

I'm not a big fan of graphic novels, or comics in general. But when a friend told me that Hartman's "Amy Unbounded" had the literary merit of Dickens, in spite of being full of cartoons, I had to try it.

First of all, this is not a cheap flimsy comic. This is a *thick*, 200+ page paperback, professionally bound and printed. It's the sort of thing meant to keep for years, or give as a gift.

"Amy Unbounded" tells the story of a somewhat precocious 10-year old girl living in the fictional medieval land of Goredd. Amy's friends include Bran the Icky Boy Next Door, a scholarly dragon travelling incognito, her uncle the exiled knight, and a plethora of fascinating Goreddis.

Through the eyes of young Amy we see the hopes, disappointments, limitations, and human character of women and men living in a medieval society.

In spite of its fictional setting, the book seems packed with extremely well-researched tidbits on medieval life, farming, clothing, and society.

I approached this work as a novel, and not as a comic book. The story is outstandingly strong on its own. But for those who are more visually oriented will enjoy the carefully rendered artwork.

I would give this book an even higher rating if the web site would let me!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!! This is great!!, May 8, 2002

By	L. Hartman (Charlottesville, Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I love Belondweg Blossoming, I wish there were ten more books just like it. I'm showing it to all my friends and making them buy copies!

I love the characters -- real people, good people, with complex lives that have profundity and humor. I love the drawings. I love the writing -- poetic, real, able to spin that web of good literature, where the words feel magical.

This is great! I'm in love! (With Foughfaugh, gosh what a hunk!)

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The graphic novel as legitimate literature! Brava!, June 6, 2002

By	Stephen Richmond "Librarian/Teacher/Reader an... (Newton, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The subtly wry humor and wit of this collection will charm even the most hidebound traditionalist. There are echoes of Dickens, Austen, even Chaucer here. Hartman's characters, lively on their own and only in text, vibrantly dance with solidly human expression across the panels of this graphic novel. Amy herself is a heroine cut from the same fabric as Anne Shirley, Hermione Granger, Dorothy Gale, Lessa, and, as Linda Medley points out in her nostalgic introduction, Jo March; yet uniquely a 21st Century girl living in a mostly medieval fantasy. This is absolutely the book for those who shun and dismiss the graphic novel as a legitimate literary form; minds will change! A must-have for any comic art or graphic novel collection, readers of Neil Gaiman, Terri Windling, Ellen Datlow, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Patricia Wrede, and Anne McCaffrey, to mention only the merest few, will love this effort. We must have more from Ms. Hartman and soon.