It's 2017 and Ernesto (the authorial alter-ego) arrives in the US from El Salvador. By plane, legally, with the most strenuous part of the journey being the need to fill out too many customs declarations for the elderly fellow passengers. If it seems weird that I am highlighting that he arrives legally... well, that's to the contrast with his aunt Elena and cousin Carlos, who made the journey between the same start and end points ten years prior. They used the help of "coyotes" - the guides who for payment arranged their trip through El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, bribing the cops, the guerillas, and the mafia on the way, before helping the travelers to cross the Mexican-American border.

You might recognize the tropes: shadowy "shelters" where they have to spend nights on the floor together with dozens of strangers; hours crouching in trucks under the tarp; crossing the Rio Grande on a rickety raft before walking on foot through a scorching desert; criminal cartels victimizing the refugees whom they were supposed to help... Enduring all this just in the hope of having a better life in the dreamt-of America one day. In this regard, it's "just another story," as the title goes: one of the numerous others. Is it even worth telling, the characters ponder, as Carlos suggests that Ernesto's idea to take notes for a future rendition of the journey's story as a comic book (the one we are reading) is a waste of time.

The thing is, while we are, of course, following Elena's and Carlos's journey with interest and empathy for the hardship they had to endure, there isn't really any suspense: from the very beginning, we know that they successfully made it, vouchsafed by the fact that here they are, ten years later, welcoming family members to their home in San Diego. The author, I believe, is somewhat limited by the fact that he is documenting real events that happened to his relatives (or so we are told), which hinders the possibility of introducing unexpected twists and making any kind of a meta-statement on the idea of the American dream, immigration with the hope of a better life, and so on. But is it all that necessary - maybe, indeed, just documenting this traumatic experience of his family members - in a kind of a graphic oral history, if you will - is what is due for them to be able to finally process what happened to them already a decade ago.

I really loved how this is done on the formal level. Saade uses different color patterns to juxtapose different time periods: the past in full color, the present (when Carlos tells Ernesto the story) in greyish-blueish colors, and additional side stories told by secondary passengers in a different palette with one dominant color.

Thanks for the e-ARC to the Lerner Publishing Group and NetGalley. The opinion above is exclusively my own.

#NetGalleyARC This was a great read. I love great graphic novels that cover nonfiction topics and this one did not disappoint. The migrant story is an important one for everyone to read and to understand. The students at my school have had similar experiences and have gone through so much in their lives and this book will for sure be added to my hs library.

80/100 0r 4.00 stars

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a story of good balance. It tells a difficult story and experience for so many people, but it isn't brutal or unnecessarily violent. The artwork is amazing and the story is well told.

This story sort of creeps up on you. It starts with some migrants traveling in the desert, and the main character looks up to see a plane overhead. Then 10 years past, and once again he is looking at planes, but this time it is to welcome his cousin he hasn’t seen since he left his homeland.


And so, Carlos begins to tell his story, of what happened when they had to leave their homeland and travel to the United States. The cartoonist shows the present time in grays and browns, but the past, is all in bright colors.


And at first, the story is very mundane. They get on a bus, they travel by truck, and then it starts to get weird, as their coyote doesn’t want to bribe police, and takes a back road, where he runs into other people who want to be bribed.


And then there are the times where they just have to stop in the journey, stay in a “safe” house until it is time to move on again.


All this time, his mother is stoic, because she knows she is doing this for her son, and the one thing she is afraid of is crossing the Rio Grande, because she almost drowned as a child.


Very gripping book, told from a child’s view, but narrated by an adult. He talks about the food, and how hard it was to sit cramped up in the truck, or the car. And he even talks about how the coyote who is leading them, got his scar, when he wasn’t careful, and lost his group, because he didn’t bribe the right people.


Well designed, and executed. There is some humor, as well as terror, to balance things out. It is sad what people have to go through to just live here, and work those jobs that no one else wants.


Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. This book will be published the 2nd of April, 2024

Thank you #NetGalley for this teens/YA ARC. Start on page 212 and really examine the image. It is a beautiful graphic display of journey, companionship, and how small people really are in the world. In this graphic novel, 19-year-old Carlos reluctantly joins his mother on her migration to the United States from El Salvador. They encounter criminals, overcome fear, and join their family in California.

There is a great play on the title, Just Another Story. This story is not that. This is an insight into real lives and real events and real feelings. Cartoonist Ernesto Saade retells the story of his cousin’s journey and brings it to life with the images and expressions that had to have been present as Carlos migrated with his mom. The inclusion of the map to illustrate the length of the journey and the use of color to show time differences are both brilliant choices.

This book could be used in a secondary classroom of English or history to bring to life the story of migration. It is also great for lovers of graphic novels or readers interested in adventure, family, and resiliency. #JustAnotherStory