The Nightingale That Never Sang

By: Juliana Hyrri, Zach Dodson (Translator)

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Hardcover | 22 February 2022

At a Glance

Hardcover
133 Pages

Age
16+

Grade
11+

Dimensions(cm)
24.9 x 17.6 x 1.91

Hardcover

$39.75

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For children, the world is possibility. But grown-ups would do well to remember that possibility extends to places full of light and steeped in darkness, with plenty of other spaces in between. Children are human after all, and as such, they are sometimes innocent, sometimes cruel, and frequently impossible for others to truly understand.
In her debut graphic novel, The Nightingale That Never Sang, Juliana Hyrri gives us stories that are stolen from real life, seen through a child's eyes--and do not look away when it comes to the scary parts. If it can happen out there, it can happen within these pages, too.
Her visual style comprises the smudged, scribbled, and smooth lines one might expect from a (very) young artist, but also pulsing, boundless backgrounds painted with near-manic energy. If there is any true purity to be found here, it's only in the reflection of how a child feels, before those feelings are tempered with adult ideas of what ought to be revealed in polite conversation.
Nightingale takes us along for the ride as children discover and dream their world, through glimpses of tadpoles and tent forts, field trips and forest ventures, stray cats and sleepovers. On the surface, these are scenes anyone might recognize from their own childhood, but it's really a book filled with the blank spaces that grown-ups won't talk about, scribbled over with childhood logic.

Industry Reviews

"A miraculous achievement, one of the most impressive works of comic art of the year." - The Comics Journal

"The Nightingale has strength and sensitivity, its sound echoes long-hidden secrets and shame of an unidentified nature. The best debut in years." - Ville Haenninen, comics critic and author

"Juliana Hyrri's debut work looks at the world through the eyes of a child and an adult at the same time. The end result is an exceptionally-close blend of innocent beauty and miraculous cruelty. The narrative, which plays with the contradiction between the image and the text, opens the path to the fuzzy logic of childhood for even the middle-aged reader." - Ville Pirinen, comics artist, writer, and musician

"There is poetry and magic and weird ambiance in her work." - David Amram, critic and writer

"Employing ambiguity and narrative gaps, these stories powerfully evoke the voicelessness of childhood." - No Flying, No Tights

Juliana's fearless, brave comics linger like a lump in one's throat; they are lovingly textured, assuredly drawn meditations on all the joy, anguish, mystery, confusion, and abject horror of childhood.

--Ivan Brunetti, author of Schizo

Hyrri's raw and childlike drawing style is evocative. Pass this along to adventurous readers who like the unusual.

--Booklist

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