Crush

Svetlana Chmakova

Publisher: Yen Press

Release Date: October 30, 2018

Date Read:  September 10, 2018

Genre: Graphic Novels, Children’s Fiction, Middle School

Grade: B-/ 3.5 Stars

***This ARC was given to me from Netgalley. That does not change my views on the book. I was not told to review it or to write a positive review. I was given the ARC in the hopes of writing the review. ***

Crush is a graphic novel about a giant middle schooler named Jorge. Jorge is a athlete who uses his big size to stop people from bullying other kids and is generally just nice to everyone. Through one of his friends, Olivia, he meets a girl who he starts to develop a crush on. This graphic novel is a middle school story about fitting in and showing the growth that a few simple years can make.

Being someone who just recently graduated high school reading this graphic novel was like looking back at the sweeter memories of middle school and high school. I can’t give my review as a kid in middle school reading it but I can on an adult reading it and as someone who didn’t really like school, for the reasons in this book, it did make me smile remembering school, which is an achievement in it’s own. It made me laugh reading the kids feel like it was the end of the world with the little drama that was going on. It made me laugh because I do remember being in middle school and thinking all the little drama going on was so much bigger than it actually was and worrying about it for days when in reality it didn’t even matter at all. There were so many little memories of school tied into a 240 page book. It was worth the read for that alone. There was also a bunch of little other details that made this book very cute and something I think children, especially middle schoolers should read.

 

Pro

• The diversity. They put in so many diverse characters and put them in there like they belonged, because they do. The kids didn’t question that their female teacher had a wife, or that their coach was wearing a hijab. To the kids it was normal, which is what we should be teaching our kids.
• The coach taught the kids that our bodies are ours and no one else has the rights to touch or speak about your bodies. That it is not ok to touch someone without their permission. It’s something we never thought we would have to teach kids but i’m glad the book did it how it did. It showed how uncomfortable and wrong it is to even as a ‘joke’ touch someone when they didn’t want to be. I remember people doing this as a ‘joke’ in high school and when I told them I didn’t want to be touch they would do that manipulation thing where they tell you, “It was just a joke”, trying to make you feel ridiculous for being upset about it. This happens in the book and the way it was handled shows young readers how it should be handled.
• They expressed how you should never wear or do something just because someone else likes it. That if you want to wear something, but don’t because you know people won’t like it, that you should wear it anyways because if someone has a problem with it then they are not for you.
• I know a lot of people think the jocks in school being jerks is just a stereotype and for some people, it might, but I remember in my high school the stereotype fit a lot of the jocks. And I know people think it’s not because they’re jocks, it’s just how they are, and to a degree that might be right, but the jock part does also make a play into it. There was a part of the book where they talked about a certain kid who was a jock and did things such as, bullying, playing ‘jokes’ on people, and just being a jerk, just to see how much he could get away with it. And he did get away with it. People let him because he was the popular jock. The kids in school gave him special privileges for it when they shouldn’t have. It turned him into a person who thought they could get away with anything and people don’t matter. I was forced to be around people like that all day. The school idolized them and acted like they could do nothing wrong when they did all the time. I remember a bunch of athletic kids bully a girl in my class out loud in the middle of a class discussions. They wouldn’t let her speak and just downed her every time. The worst part was our teacher was a coach and let them do it. He let then shut her down to the point where she wouldn’t try speaking anymore and then laughed at her when she said it was because she was tired of them picking on her like that. I know people get tired of the cliche that jocks are jerks but stop acting like they can do no wrong and giving them a narcissistic personality.by doing so.
• Lastly the relationships, not just the romantic ones but the friendships. It showed the bad parts and the goods parts and what relationships with anyone should be like and what they shouldn’t be like.
• The art is cute.

 

Cons

 

• It’s pretty short since it’s only 240 pages but it’s a graphic novel and they don’t tend to be long. That did make it hard to elaborate on things.
• A lot of things did seem to happen for convenience. It was very easy to tell what was going to happen because of it, and i will admit that it seemed like the diverse characters were there just to have them there.

 

Despite the convenience, it was a fun read and if you want something fun and quick to read this is a good one. It took me only around a hour or so to finish it. It was an easy read that had me smiling as I read it. It did middle school in such a cliche, but also real way that will make anyone reminiscence on the time they had in middle school.