Skimis narrated by Kim's diary entries clear as it is that she feels more deeply and sees more clearly than the people who surround her, the authors have resisted the temptation to make her preternaturally knowing or precociously self-aware. The casual cruelty of youth is never directed quite so blatantly at Kim again, but it is a threatening presence throughout the graphic novel, something she can never quite forget. And so I was The Night Sky” at the age of 13, she is invited at the last minute to the birthday party of a popular classmate and spends most of the evening upstairs watching television with the only other Asian girl there – that is, until the two of them are rushed out of the house with cries of “Fire drill!”, and left outside to make their own way home while the others continue the celebration. She is an unwilling outsider, as demonstrated by two poignant flashbacks: at the age of six, “I was in the school play and they ran out of parts for people. She is half-Japanese, overweight, introspective, too cynical to fit in with the “normal” kids at her private Catholic school in Canada but not cynical enough to maintain a veneer of cool aloofness. ‘BEING SIXTEEN is officially the worst thing I’ve ever been.” So says Kimberly Keiko Cameron, also known as Skim. GRAPHIC FICTION: SkimBy Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki Walker Books, 148pp.
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