Historical Fiction / Graphic Novels / Historical & Biographical Fiction Graphic Novels

A harrowing and deeply affecting recounting of a series of events and issues revolving around the Prudence Crandall School’s announcement to accept “black students” thirty years before the abolition of slavery in the U.S.

Told through pointed dialogue and lavish illustrations, White All Around explores a nexus of historic racial injustices and prejudices, as well as tensions between genders, classes, religion, beliefs, ages, and teacher/student relationships.

I especially appreciate the factual historic information at the end of the book, including condensed biographies of Sarah Harris (the first official African American student of Crandall’s Canterbury Female Boarding School), Mary Harris (Sarah Harris’s sister and teacher-turned-principal), Canterbury student Mary Elizabeth Miles, and others involved in the school and the issues surrounding its significance.

From the publisher (Europe Comics):

Canterbury, Connecticut, 1832: a charming female boarding school has found success among the locals, with two dozen girls enrolled. Some in town question the purpose of educating young girls—but surely there’s no harm in trying? At least not until the Prudence Crandall School announces its plans to start accepting black students. Thirty years before the abolition of slavery in the United States, in the so-called “free” North, these students will be met by a wave of hostility that puts the future of the school in question, and their very lives in peril. Even in the land of the free, not all of America’s children are welcome.

If you’re interested in White All Around, then you might like Nathan Hales’ The Underground Abductor—a brilliant and chilling depiction of Harriet Tubman, “one of the most daring leaders of the Underground Railroad”.

If you’re interesting in learning how to write and draw your own comics, check out my book Let’s Make Comics! An Activity Book to Create, Write, and Draw Your Own Cartoons.

A light-hearted interactive guide to comics and cartoon-making that uses an activity book format and creatively stimulating prompts to teach the fundamentals of cartooning in a fun and easy-to-follow fashion.

From a working cartoonist and comic book making instructor, this all-ages activity book uses humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers (and readers who are young at heart) through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics. The activities cover a range of essential comics-making tasks from creating expressions for characters to filling in blank panels to creating original characters and placing them in adventures of their own. Each exercise can stand on its own or work together with others in the book to stimulate creativity via the comics medium. In the end, readers who complete the activities inside the book itself will have created several comics of their own, and will have generated many ideas for more sequential art creations.

If you’d like to read my next graphic novel for FREE and before it’s published, sign up for my First Readers Club here.