This One Summer

This One Summer is a genuine piece of comics history: the first graphic novel ever honored by the Caldecott committee, winner of a Caldecott Honor and a Printz Honor in 2015, the 2015 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album, and the Lynd Ward Prize. The second collaboration between cousins Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, it’s the story of Rose and her best friend Windy, who spend every summer at Awago Beach — only this year, everything is different. Rose’s parents are fighting, the local teens are talking about a girl named Jenny who’s “in trouble,” and the easy rhythm of summers past is cracking under the weight of things too big to say out loud.

Like Skim before it, the book is a masterclass in showing, not telling. Jillian Tamaki’s watercolor-and-ink pages — steeped in foggy blues, grays, and the glow of a bonfire — give the story its hushed, suspended-in-time atmosphere, while Mariko Tamaki’s script lets the drama unfold in the spaces between what the characters actually say. Rose hovers between childhood and adolescence, wanting to grow up faster than she’s ready for, and the book captures that liminal ache with extraordinary precision. It’s a story about grief, girlhood, and the terrifying gap between what kids overhear and what they understand.

The book also made headlines for its inclusion of a teenage pregnancy storyline, landing it on the American Library Association’s list of most-challenged books in 2016 and 2018 — a badge of honor for a book this honest about teen experience.

Still a New York Times bestseller more than a decade after publication, This One Summer belongs on every shelf next to Roaming. Grab your copy and lose an afternoon to the most beautifully melancholy summer in comics.