Horn Book

When Mr. Kerner challenges his music class to “choose a song for this moment in your life and write about it,” Charlotte Noguchi (a.k.a. Charlie) is stuck. Truth be told, she is more interested in parsing her crush on classmate Emile than she is in music, until the day Mr. K puts Maria Callas on the turntable (Mr. K is very old-school; his own song-for-life is A-ha’s “Take On Me”). That’s about it for a through-line; this graphic novel is more interested in the middle-school dynam¬ics of crushes, cliques, and bullying, all drawn within the rich context of Charlie’s interior life and her burgeoning passion for opera. School life is colored in ochres, the poignant story of a nonconformist classmate in blue, Charlie’s mini-biography of La Divina brings—what else?—blood red to the page; throughout, small panels play well with drama supplied by full-page pictures in just the right spots. The quiet revelation that Charlie’s crush on Emile can’t go anywhere romantic is bittersweet (she may have lost a crush, but she’s gained a great friend)—a quality that extends to the story as a whole, a boon to the Charlies among and within us.