The Hidden Dominion of Geordie James

Gr 5-8–Geordie is a loner with a big, red pompadour and a love of the online game, Dominion. Well-constructed foreshadowing introduces how the online game becomes, in some ways, prescient of Geordie’s new and healthier engagement with the real world. Meanwhile, well-placed flashbacks of a trip to a pig farm reveal the story of his mother’s death, seemingly from COVID-19. Dawson’s middle grade graphic novel takes on a cadre of real-world issues, including peer relationships, unacknowledged grief, and ways to address human destruction of the natural ecosystem, with both genuine emotional insight and fluid storytelling. The art is bright and cartoony, in counterpoint to what could be a heavy tale. Geordie and his family are white (his father with a distinct Scottish accent), his new friend Samesh is South Asian, and other kids mostly present as white. An illustrated afterword describes how and why domestic pigs’ bodies change if they become feral.