Night Shift
-
- $10.99
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
'Debi Gliori is amazing. Her pictures offer people an insight into depression that words often struggle to reach. She makes visible the invisible. And I for one want to thank her for that.' - Matt Haig, bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive
A groundbreaking picture book on depression with stunning illustrations.
With stunning black and white illustration and deceptively simple text, author and illustrator Debi Gliori examines how depression affects one's whole outlook upon life, and shows that there can be an escape - it may not be easy to find, but it is there. Drawn from Debi's own experiences and with a moving testimony at the end of the book explaining how depression has affected her and how she continues to cope, Debi hopes that by sharing her own experience she can help others who suffer from depression, and to find that subtle shift that will show the way out.
'I have used dragons to represent depression. This is partly because of their legendary ability to turn a once fertile realm into a blackened, smoking ruin and partly because popular mythology shows them as monstrous opponents with a tendency to pick fights with smaller creatures. I'm not particularly brave or resourceful, and after so many years battling my beasts, I have to admit to a certain weariness, but I will arm-wrestle dragons for eternity if it means that I can help anyone going through a similar struggle.'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a small-format picture book aimed at a teenage and adult audience, Gliori (Side by Side) uses stark language and somber charcoal-like artwork to reflect on the weight and intensity of depression. A girl with chin-length hair who looks to be around 12 or 13 (a depiction of her in the shower shows that her body is beginning to develop) describes the arrival of something beyond description. "Words left me," she explains. "There was no language for this feeling." Gliori alternately shows the nameless sensation as a hollow inside the girl's stomach, a heavy fog, and spiky dragons that assail her. Although depression isn't mentioned explicitly until an endnote, Gliori's metaphors leave little doubt about the magnitude of what the girl is facing, particularly in a scene that takes aim at well-meaning but useless platitudes ("Pull yourself together. Get a grip. Think of the starving millions"). Significantly, her struggle is not as simple as outrunning her enemies rather, the tide begins to shift at the moment when she accepts weakness. By giving depression physical dimension, Gliori diffuses some of its strange, persistent power. Ages 13 up.
