Year of the Beasts - Paperback

by Cecil Castellucci (Author), Nate Powell (Illustrator)

Alternating chapters of prose and comics (illustrated by Eisner Award-winning graphic novelist Nate Powell) are interwoven in Cecil Castelucci's extraordinary YA novel about jealousy and grief, and how they cut us off from the ones we love.

Every summer the trucks roll in, bringing the carnival and its infinite possibilities to town. This year Tessa and her younger sister Lulu are un-chaperoned and want to be first in line to experience the rides, the food . . . and the boys. Except this summer, jealousy will invade their relationship for the first time, setting in motion a course of events that can only end in tragedy, putting everyone's love and friendship to the test.

Castellucci's deft shifting between straight prose and graphic novel visualize how Tessa processes the events of the summer, seeing herself and her friends as freaks personified by characters from Greek mythology.

Author Biography

Cecil Castellucci is the two-time MacDowell Colony fellow and award winning author of books for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, and Beige. She is also the young adult and children's books editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Castellucci's books have been on the American Library Association's (ALA's) Best Books for Young Adults, Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, and Great Graphic Novels for Teens lists, as well as the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age and the Amelia Bloomer lists. Born in New York City, Cecil lives in Los Angeles.

Nate Powell is an Arkansas native and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist whose works include Swallow Me Whole (a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist), Any Empire, and (with co-authors Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin) the March trilogy, the final volume of which won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Powell is the first cartoonist to receive this honor. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.