Jane, the Fox & Me

Without melodrama, Fanny Britt quietly and thoughtfully evokes the fear and shame that Hélène experiences as a result of her schoolmates’ relentless teasing and bullying (they repeatedly call her fat although she is not; for a time Hélène comes to believe them). The joy and comfort Hélène finds in reading are eloquently transmitted. Jane Eyre provides an escape for Hélène, and a reason to believe that her suffering, like Jane’s, will one day end. Isabelle Arsenault’s illustrations powerfully underscore the emotional elements of the story, both in their use of color and through characters’ postures and facial expressions. The bold, simplified renderings of scenes from Jane Eyre are especially memorable. The resolution, when it comes, is plausible as well as hopeful. It relies on a rather quotidian event: Hélène’s introduction to a new student, who becomes her friend.

Britt and Arsenault's powerful picture book-sized graphic novel about bullying, self-image, imagination, and (ultimately) hope centers on Helene, ostracized by her former friends and now a loner at school persecuted via washroom wall scribbles ("Helene weighs 216!") and acts of public humiliation ("I stuck a fork in your butt, but you're so fat you didn't feel a thing!!"). With her shattered self-esteem and (mistaken) belief that she looks like a "big fat sausage," Helene escapes into reading, specifically Jane Eyre?; in Jane, Helene discovers an outcast kindred spirit. Arsenault uses varied page layouts and a mix of illustrative techniques to pace the story and express emotion; monochromatic sketches depict Helene's unhappy existence as well as surreal scenes that reflect her feelings, while pages in warm colors relate Jane's story. Britt's poetic prose captures Helene's heartbreaking isolation, nowhere more acutely than on a class camping trip, when her desperation climaxes in an encounter with a vivid red fox: "Its eyes are so kind I just about burst. That same look in another human's eyes, and my soul would be theirs for sure." But it is after the fox has been chased away (and when even Jane Eyre can't help) that she makes a new friend, the ebullient and compassionate Geraldine. This relationship transforms Helene's world, as color begins to appear on the final spreads, highlighting her road to recovery. It's a profound ending to a brutally beautiful story. cynthia k. ritter