One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry

Barry, L. (2002). One hundred demons. Seattle, WA: Sasquatch Books.
ISBN 1-57061-337-0
216 pgs
Format: Book
Genre: Realistic
Classification: Fiction
Age level: Young Adult

Reader's annotation
The teen years are filled with demons and Lynda Barry covers quite a few of them in her beautifully rendered graphic novel, One Hundred Demons.

Summary
In Lynda Barry’s autobiographically inspired graphic novel, One Hundred Demons, she takes a cue from an exercise of the same name that she saw reproduced from a 16th century hand-scroll painted by a Japanese monk. Some of the work is collage; most is painted on yellow legal paper. Some demons are head lice, my worst boyfriend, dancing and hate. The demons become to springboard to talk about what is really important, like losing the childhood ability to dance wildly to the self-consciousness of adolescence, and losing a close friend to suicide. She weaves in stories about her family, growing up and going to school in the 1960s. The style is laid out so that each page features two frames and half of each frame is text, a combination of hand drawn capital letters and cursive writing. At the end, the author invites the reader to paint some of their own demons adding that for her, it was an important experience.

Notes
This graphic novel is beautiful to look at while being funny, insightful and heartbreaking in turn. Lynda Barry just captures the equal parts dread and exhilaration of being a teenager. She isn’t afraid to get personal, not in an exhibitionist sense but in service of being real and truthful.