This book needed to come out of the closet more, on this issues it skirted on the edges about, al least for me. The weirdly shaped faces of the while girls really bothered me, while Skim's face was right out of Japanese art.

This reminded me a lot of Ghost World, being about a misfit girl, nicknamed Skim, and her best friend, whose paths are starting to diverge. There's not much story here, but to me, that felt true to life in high school. I, like Skim, watched from the sidelines, and when something does happen to you, it can be overwhelming and life changing, as when Skim's teacher kisses her. I liked the sly humor - the coven meeting that was also an AA meeting, the costume party with all the girls except Skim and...

I was absolutely blown away by the art style! Seriously seriously seriously loved it.

i had really high hopes for this graphic novel because, hello, queer young asian girl who struggles with her mental health and Isn't Thin! which, tbh, i think was an unfair burden of an expectation.it's a quiet kind of read, and tamaki really captures the quiet emptiness of depression/growing up/feeling like an outsider bc of ur queerness.that said – the teacher/student relationship made me REALLY uncomfortable. i had a moment where i was like 'wtf did u tag for this shit??' before remembering t...

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | |Who knew that I would come across something that would make me feel nostalgia for the mid-2000s? Skim is a compelling coming-of-age story that is bound to make you feel nostalgic for the mid-2000s (even if you, like me, didn’t strictly ‘come of age’ in that time). Skim captures the angst, confusion, heartache, and loneliness experienced by its titular character with empathy and insight. Kimberly Keiko Cameron, who goes by the nickname of ‘Skim’, is an aspiring Wicc...

This book is interesting. Did I really enjoy it? Not really that much. I did appreciate all the high school angst and the characters. Everyone seems to be turning on you and being your friend all wrapped into one. There are the popular girls and parties with them and then the Asians get kicked out. Black and White art. The art was ok. The story was ok. I was not impressed really. It could be just me.

Absolutely fantastic! One of the most honest comics I’ve read in a while.

uhhh i really like the whole concept which is a sort of diary in the form of a graphic novel but the characters were pretty uninteresting and the student/teacher relationship made me uncomfy i didn't really get the point of it

This is one of my new favorite graphic novels. It is _so_much_better_ than the Minx graphic novel by the same author (Emiko Superstar). The art is beautiful, great lines & strong white spaces. The emotions are pure. The cover art did not really engage me at all, but don't judge this book by its cover. The cover doesn't really do justice to the story and illustrations inside. It's about a teen girl in high school (Skim) who dabbles with Wicca, tries to make sense of her sexuality, and navigates t...

this was a great coming of age story, and definitely one of the better graphic novels i’ve read!cw: suicide, depression

I mean, there's heartbroken and then there's all the stuff that comes each second after that, depending on who broke your heart. There's something purifying about this book: the monochromatic color scheme, the fine lettering, the whispered polyphony of words and images. The reader drifts, leaf-like, through a chilly autumn at a Canadian all-girls school in the early 1990s. The ex-boyfriend of one of the popular girls had just killed himself, sending the community on an upward (but actually downw...

I love this book, a graphic novel for teens, with a twist that might make it difficult for teachers to use it in some schools (I'm a teacher, so this matters, what might get censored), but I would push to use it. In a private/Catholic girls school, Skim (for Kim, but they meanly nicknamed her Skim, which she explains she is NOT--i.e., she's a little chunky) is bff with Lisa, and are sorta wannabe goth girls, into Wicca, (and that is already for me unique in YA stories). The moody relationship sw...

You know, I enjoyed this when I read it. I found the story compelling and truly feel that it was an honest depiction of teenage life in high school. I found the illustration style a bit creepy and unsettling, but that went along with the story. My only problem is that now that I'm writing this review, two months after finishing it, I realized that I haven't thought about this book once since reading it. So personally it didn't have any long lasting staying power!

Man, I am so tired of reading every-graphic-novel-I-should-have-read-but-didn't in preparation for a course I start teaching in a month, but it was all completely worth it to read Skim. It's the kind of good that makes you realize as you're reading it that you're only getting a tenth of what's going on, and then when you put the book down it starts unfolding, like you're still reading it, and man is that a warm, strange, velvety feeling to have going on in your head. I don't think I've ever read...

It's 1993 and Kimberly Keiko Cameron, aka Skim, is in grade 10 at a Catholic girls' school. She is: Wiccan, biracial (Japanese-Canadian/white), sort of an outcast, overweight, falling in love with her English teacher, Ms. Archer.[return][return]I really loved this. It's so...ordinary. It's not a message book, even though there are lots of things (being Asian, homophobia, being queer, bullying, teen suicide, rumors, divorce, being overweight) that could be turned into big Issues to Teach a Lesson...

This was a gently flowing, sweetly drawn and written graphic novel from Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, the artist and writer behind the equally wonderful This One Summer. Skim's real name is Kimberly Keiko Cameron and she's called "Skim" because as she puts it "I'm not." She spends her days skipping classes at her all girls high school with her best frenemy Lisa reading Tarot cards and experimenting with Wicca. Things change suddenly when the boyfriend of a popular girl at school, Katie, suddenly co...

I can’t get enough of stories about depressed teenage girls who don’t know where they fit in. Probably because I was that girl. When I hear people talk about high school with actual fondness, I am always deeply suspicious of their character, even though it’s totally possible (and even likely) that some people had a grand ole time. Skim is on my team, and I loved her, not just because of that, but because she’s also smart and funny and does the unexpected. All of the girls in this book were so fi...

When I started down the wonderful path that is reading graphic novels last year, This One Summer by Mariko & Jillian Tamaki was one of the first works I checked out. So to have now finally read through Skim from cover to cover is beyond gratifying for me."Skim" is Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a not-slim, would-be Wiccan goth who goes to a private girls' school. When Skim's classmate Katie Matthews is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. As c...

Being neither a teenage girl nor overly sympathetic toward the needlessly mopey, I am pretty clearly not the target audience for Skim. I’m sure that if I were of like age, culture, and circumstance with Skim‘s lead, Kimberly Keiko Cameron, I might find the book soul-piercing and intelligent. But I’m not and so I don’t.There is one singular obstacle facing any author who hopes to present a story featuring realistically portrayed teenagers: teens are uninteresting. Their problems are generally ove...

Love the angsty, nostalgic vibe of this graphic novel. Skim follows Skim, a girl in high school who practices witchcraft and thinks a lot about life and death. She’s sad a lot, perhaps depressed, and that’s where Mariko and Jillian Tamaki draw strength in this graphic novel – the way they capture this sadness with intimacy, poignancy, and subtlety. I know I had an emo phase as a preteen and had lots of angsty moments throughout my teen years (and I still have those moments, lol) and this book he...