Susie Anderson
Staff Writer
Young readers might need a dictionary to spell the “word authoritarianism,” but they can recognize its forms in the illustrated tale of a girl trying to achieve citizenship in a fantasy empire and a personified fact standing strong in the face of falsehood.
The CLSC Young Reader Week Six selection is the graphic novel Squire, co-authored by Nadia Shammas and Sara Alfageeh, and the Early Reader selection is The Sad Little Fact by Jonah Winter.
The discussion of Squire will be held at 12:15 p.m. today on the porch of the Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall, led by community members Mary Pat McFarland and Stephanie Dawson. Immediately after the discussion, Play CHQ will host activities on the lawn of Alumni Hall.
The selection of at least one graphic novel for the CLSC Young Readers felt crucial to Stephine Hunt, managing director of Literary Arts, as younger readers are increasingly consuming media across different forms.
“Whether it’s television or movies or video games, this picture and text relationship that graphic novels offer really creates an avenue through which children who may not read a lot will find an avenue into reading,” Hunt said.
Blending artwork and narrative into a cohesive and captivating story, Squire offers an entrance for young readers and an exposure to a different type of critical thinking for readers familiar with novels.
Navigating a week themed “The Global Rise in Authoritarianism,” the fantasy graphic novel stood out as a clear selection for Hunt.
Squire, illustrated by Alfageeh, follows Aiza, a member of the subjugated Ornu people, as she trains to become a knight, her only path to full citizenship in the Bayt-Sajji Empire. As Aiza navigates friendships, rivalries and intense training under an unrelenting general, she keeps her identity a secret. Heightened pressure leads her to face the choice between loyalty to her heritage or loyalty to the empire.
“Aiza’s experience as someone who’s part of a subjugated people trying to become an elevated person in society really highlights an experience that could be likened to people living under an authoritarian regime,” Hunt said.
For Early Readers, resisting power centered in the hands of the few emerges in the personification of fact in Winter’s The Sad Little Fact, illustrated by Pete Oswald. The fact cannot tell a lie. When the truth becomes unpopular and facts are suppressed, the world goes dark. It is up to truth hunters to dig up the facts and make the world brighter.
Released in 2019, the picturebook feels as timely as ever, said Hunt. The modern-day parable transforms the abstract concept of a fact into a tangible character, accessible for both early readers and adults.
“It’s talking about how facts are warped and misrepresented, or how we begin to see facts as something that they are not. Unfortunately, that’s what we’re witnessing in our own society right now,” Hunt said. “… It is really tuned in to those conversations that are happening in society and continued parts of conversations that have been happening since 2016.”
