Joel Christian Gill, the man who NEVER DISAPPOINTS!!!!! Everything I have ever read by him has been amazing... simply and utterly amazing! This was no different, I can't wait to get this for our YA section!

Get Your Motor Running

Bessie Stringfield is such an interesting and admirable character that almost any biography starts out with a high likelihood of being successful. But that said, the biographer still faces the challenge of capturing the personality and pioneering style of this fascinating woman. Joel Christian Gill wrote two entirely different sorts of graphic novels about Stringfield, and each works well in its own way.

The most recent book by Gill is a graphic book aimed at younger readers. It follows Bessie as a young girl, and very cleverly focuses on her desire to ride bicycles, and to ride them Fast!. That book, "Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield's First Ride", has a colorful, almost impressionistic, art style, and tells Bessie's story crisply and with a strong inspirational flavor. The book works so well that it would be appealing even if "Bessie Stringfield" were a fictional character and the book was a fictional adventure. Of course it isn't fiction, as Gill makes clear in his endnotes.

And this brings us to this longer, earlier published, book. This one is a full graphic biography, although it seems to be aimed at middle school and early YA, (like those old "You Are There" sorts of books), and so is still mostly intended to touch the high points and a brief sketch of Bessie's life. (Since Bessie Stringfield reveled in promoting various fantabulous and romantic personal histories, the idea of a "full" biography is rather fluid. Call this one the "Jamaican version".)

We start with young Bessie leaving Jamaica with her parents, losing her mother, being abandoned by her father, being raised in an orphanage, and ultimately being adopted by a childless woman doing her "Christian duty". Wow, and that's before any motorcycles even make their appearance. Once that cycle shows up, Bessie takes off. At this point, because the narrative is set up as Bessie being interviewed by a reporter, the narrative becomes all first person. This works well because we get a sense of Bessie's style and personality as she tells her own story.

My bottom line was that this was an effective way to tell Stringfield's story to a younger audience, and an especially effective way to get across the grit and independence of this pioneering woman. The "Talented Tenth" series is a great way to introduce the personal stories of compelling but often overlooked African Americans, and this book is an especially fine and inspirational entry in the series.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

This was a powerful, vividly illustrated graphic novel that demands to be read. Joel Christian Gill gives us an illustrated story that speaks to the importance of this medium. I would more than gladly share this book with a wide range of readers, young and old. A wonderful graphic novel, and a valuable story.

What a gorgeous graphic novel and an amazing story of a woman we all need to know about!

I love the Talented Tenth series. I've bought copies for my classroom library and students have been gobbling them up.

Can't say enough wonderful things about these stories...
Keep 'em coming!

A wonderfully told beautifully drawn story. Those familiar with her, and those new to her story will both enjoy this.

I heard of Bessie Stringfield before, and it was great to see her story on the page, Beautifully illustrated, and while the subject matter of her being a black woman traveling alone is not sugar coated at all it is artfully handled for a younger audience.

I have to rate this negatively because it begins with the fictional version of Bessie Stringfield's life, and from that point onward, it necessarily casts doubt on the rest of the story. Bessie Beatrice White was born in Edenton, North Carolina, not Jamaica, and there was no dramatic crossing of the ocean to Boston during which her mother pretty much succumbed to consumption (or whatever) and her father abandoned her in a hotel. Why the author felt he needed to augment this story with pure fiction, even fiction she purveyed herself, is a mystery.

It's like he felt her story wasn't good enough without it. The author/illustrator seems strangely averse to illustrating faces too, such as her parents, the woman who runs the fictional hotel where she's fictionally abandoned, the woman who adopts her, and the woman who interviews her.

The frame of the story is a woman interviewing Bessie who then recounts her life. For me it failed because it made Bessie seem to be an extraordinarily selfish and self-centered person. It also skips a lot of detail. Like how did she pay for her gallivanting after she took off at age nineteen? It mentions later that she performed in carnivals on her bike, but there's nothing about how she financed her trips at such a young age or where her bike came from. The author seems to have bought into more fiction: that of divine miracles!

The story mentions that she had six marriages and no children, but it fails to discuss the fact that that her first marriage gave her three miscarriages. It also says nothing about why she married six times, whether she abandoned each of those husbands, split from them amicably, or they abandoned her.

It relates that she took off after college and started riding around the US, but her criss-crossing the country eight times was during her time as an army courier. Despite working for the US to help the war effort, she was subject to racism repeatedly, and they didn't even have the "excuse" of having a racist, misogynistic, homophobic jackass as president back then.

So while this is a story worth telling, I did not feel this was the version worth reading, and I cannot recommend it.

'Bessie Stringfield' by Joel Christian Gill is the second entry in his Tales of the Talented Tenth series. This is my introduction to the series and I really liked this story aimed at younger readers.

We meet Bessie Smith late in her life, and hear her story from her. She immigrated to America from Jamaica and lost her father and mother in Boston. She adopted by a kind woman amd moved to Florida. Her interest in motorcycles led her to cross the United States 8 times. She served as a civilian courier for the US Army during World War II.

The story is fun and positive. The illustrations are colorful and the story, while having it's darker moments, never stays there, but show how Bessie overcame things. I especially love the image of her zooming away from a truck full of crow-headed racists.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Fulcrum Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

This is a very pleasantly presented, and very worthwhile, read about a pioneer from the unsung corners of USA. Bessie's father abandoned her and her dying mother, but she was lucky to be fostered by a woman generous enough to give her a prime birthday wish – a motorbike. Never before had a black woman been so prominent on two wheels – she lived on the road, did wall of death rides and other stunts in the circus, then became a civilian bike courier for the WW2 effort – and mostly in the racist south, where coloured citizens needed a Green Book itemising safe dossing, eateries and itineraries. In being very much a child-friendly volume, it will like as not be bought by more school libraries and churches than home audiences, but either way it's worth a place on your 'read' list. Four and a half stars.

I read a book, a while back, that had Bessie Stringfiled in it, and that was how I found out that she was real, so it is wonderful to find this book about this Black woman motocycle rider from the 1930-1950s.

The drawings are a lot of fun, and the attitude shown in the book is great. There is a section where she is running away from the KKK, and she takes a flying leap with her motocycle, and escapes, and all she thinks is, wow, that was fun.

When asked why she didn’t do more for the Civil Rights movement, she said, she was going her part, out running the KKK and JIm Crow people who wanted her hide.

SHe was the only black woman in the army motocycle core, and rode across the United States 8 times, before the Interstate freeway system was built, so that is an amazing feet.

Some of the other reviews complained that we didn’t find out enough about her, but this is a kids book, and it does provide a good overview of her amazing life.

Highly recommend this for libraries, home libraries and schools. What a great woman to teach about, for Black History month, or all year round.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.