Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of)
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A modern-day graphic novel adaptation of Little Women that explores identity, friendships, and new experiences through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Jo March. A must-read for fans of Raina Telgemeier.
With the start of eighth grade, Jo March decides it’s time to get serious about her writing and joins the school newspaper. But even with her new friend Freddie cheering her on, becoming a hard-hitting journalist is a lot harder than Jo imagined.
That’s not all that’s tough. Jo and her sisters—Meg, Beth, and Amy—are getting used to a new normal at home, with their dad deployed overseas and their mom, a nurse, working overtime.
And while it helps to hang out with Laurie, the boy who just moved next door, things get complicated when he tells Jo he has feelings for her. Feelings that Jo doesn’t have for him…or for any boy. Feelings she’s never shared with anyone before. Feelings that Jo might have for Freddie.
What does it take to figure out who you are? Jo March is about to find out.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While repackaging Jo's story for a contemporary readership, this gentle, warm graphic novel adaptation will remind readers why the March family is long beloved. In Gros's update, the heroine is a white 13-year-old blogger who faces mild challenges with the support of her sisters and Marmee; chats via video with their deployed father; and harbors a crush on classmate Freddie, a bespectacled Black girl. Beth's recovery from leukemia and Jo's coming out first to instantly accepting Marmee, next via a school newspaper essay add a contemporary optimism not present in the more bittersweet original, in which familial closeness was an antidote to a harsher reality. Jo declares in her article, "What scared me most about coming out was how people would react. I was scared my parents would be disappointed," but Gros doesn't really hint at this fear beyond a bit of blushing. Friendly illustrations have an Archie-and-Veronica quality that, alongside a lack of chicken pox vaccines and a presence of introductions using pronouns, makes for a hazy temporal setting, but it's impossible not to root for Jo and family, and to celebrate their victories, however easily won. Ages 8 12.
