Summer Spirit

Pubescent Louise, her older sister, and their two older cousins take their annual summer visit to their Tunisian grandmother’s estate in this horror-inflected graphic novel about childhood’s end. While the three older cousins plan to spend the summer tanning, exploring romantic attachments, and drinking, Louise seeks more age-appropriate activities for herself: building sandcastles, playing with Rodin the dog, and getting ice cream. After Louise meets Lisa, the perpetually young ghost of her grandmother’s dead sister, the growing friendship proves a welcome distraction from the older girls’ activities and their grandmother’s worsening dementia. As the two grow closer, spending time in a tree house that the others never seem to visit, Lisa demonstrates the variety of powers at her disposal, including creating horrifying illusions and possessing small animals, and hints at her own loneliness as the book builds to a frightening end. Employing thick line work and saturated beachy hues, debut author Holleville uses subtle blue overlays for more sinister events, thoughtfully twining experiences of lonely childhood alongside experiences of teenhood and aging. Ages 14–up. (May)■