'Queen Street' written and drawn by Emmanuelle Chateauneuf is a semi-autobiographical graphic novel.

Aimee was a lawyer when she lived in the Philippines, but she left there to immigrate to Canada and get married. Now she is raising a busy young girl, and doesn't see her husband much. She lives in an apartment with an eclectic group of people who help her raise her daughter. She also tries to find work, but as an immigrant, her jobs tend to be in restaurants.

This had a lot of potential. The description sounded really interesting, but the book just doesn't deliver. I like a lot of what's going on, but it kind of peters out about halfway through, and it left me wanting something a lot better.

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

RATING- 4 out of 5

This book was a quick and cute read. ( I love the art style! ) All around a great read. The characters were so loveable and fit perfectly.

I'm always way more hesitant to rate someone's autobiographical work or at least the parts of the author's life that go into the story.
The art style was super cute and I loved the idea of the story. We certainly need more books about immigration and this volume certainly makes it more accessible to a broader range of readers.
I did feel for the characters, but all in all it felt kind of incomplete.

I received a copy of this from netgalley for an honest review.

This is going in the DNF Pile. Halfway through and I’m not interested. Amiee is an immigrant to Canada. She moved to marry the love of her life. She has a daughter, but can't keep a job. She wants to be a good mother, but with her husband away driving truck all the time, it’s hard. The art work is fine, but the story so typical, it boring. No real character development. Maybe something happens towards the end, I just don’t care to read anymore to find out.

This story seems incomplete and when I read the previous reviews before starting this, I thought it might be an open ending which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but is totally mine. Apparently, it did seem incomplete.

The story is about a mother who keeps trying to settle things in her life but fails at every step. She definitely garners a lot of pity from me, as a reader, because she tries so hard but to no luck. Of course, a mother’s story always gets my heart either overwhelmed or twisted but this one kinda felt repetitive. She continues doing the same thing and doesn’t land a job or land any happiness and after a while, I just want her to get a job! In addition to the frustrating storyline, the writing wasn’t very pleasant either. It was fine but didn’t sparkle the tedious plot. Anyway, what I did enjoy was the artwork. It was really beautiful and what actually got me through the entire graphic novel.

This book is so good. I would highly recommend it to all people - it gives a new perspective on what people who are newer to a country or have a very small social group go through, and it really highlights very well, their personal struggles. The art is also really good, and the story draws you in and keeps your attention. I really hope to read more books by this author in the future.

Chateauneuf does an excellent job telling the story of a Filipino-American family with a focus on racial prejudice, job hardships, and the challenges of motherhood. The novel mainly focuses on Aimee and her struggles following the American dream. It also shows the troubles of living as the only available parent as the father, Joseph, is constantly working as a trucker and never home. After Aimee resigns from yet another job, the family has to face the consequences that will follow. Aimee wants the best life for her child like most mothers do, but struggles to maintain the image of what she believes is a 'good' mother. Her daughter, Melody, has a vivid imagination, thus slightly shielding her from the emotional struggles that her mother faces.Like her mother, however, Melody faces racial discrimination and realizes how different she is from others. Overall, this novel is great for ages 12 and over, as the text is simple enough for a child to understand, but some of the content is a little mature for someone under 12. The plot is appropriate for middle school and high school students, as it focuses on racial prejudices and immigrant's struggles for the American dream. I would recommend using this graphic novel when discussing immigration and incorporating the material to bring up modern-day struggles of immigrants.

Queen Street is a graphic novel that narrates about the life of Aimee, a Filipina who immigrated to Canada in the late 1980’s. She was a lawyer when she was still in the Philippines and she left her established career when she married Joseph. After over a decade in Canada, she and her husband were blessed with a vibrant daughter who they named Melodie.

Aimee and her story as an immigrant is a vivid depiction of some of the problems a migrant like her that encounters. Their everyday struggles to live in a foreign country describes about the real life that they have is not that wonderful. However, because of their enthusiasm, resiliency, vigor, and assistance from friends and love ones, they can handle all the difficulty that life throws at them.

There are just some minor inaccuracies in the slang words/phrases that the character Aimee mentioned, just like the words “Alla Kat Ta” and “Okinam-!” As a Filipino, I never encountered such slang words; even those who I’ve asked who are older than I am are not aware of those terms. Perhaps the author, Emmanuelle Chateaneuf, only used those words that she heard from her Filipina mother. Probably those are just made-up terms of her own mother derived from the Filipino language, or that Emmanuelle just wasn’t able to clearly hear the exact Filipino words her mom used and she never bothered to ask about them.

Nonetheless, I still consider Queen Street a good graphic novel to check out because of its convincing story and that the illustrations were nicely drawn.

Aimee e Melodie: la prima una giovane madre, immigrata in Canada dalle Filippine, coraggiosa e impulsiva. La seconda sua figlia, sette anni e un'immaginazione scatenata, che le permette di trasformare una realtà di emarginazione e solitudine in un mondo incantato di supereroi. E supereroine, ovviamente.

Una storia piccola, di coraggio e amore, difficoltà e successi di ogni giorno, all'interno di una comunità che protegge e aiuta, costituendo una famiglia allargata ricca di calore.

Piacevole, anche se non eccessivamente originale, sguardo sulla comunità orientale in Canada e sulle difficoltà quotidiane degli immigrati nel freddo, lontano Paese del nord.

It’s sweet and charming. You could see how tough it is for immigrant parents to work it out financially, always wanting better for their daughter. You could see the struggle, or you could also see how perfectly happy the child, Melodie, is. She’s having a fantastic childhood with a nurtured imagination, not without conflicts of course. Being the offspring of immigrants has its downs especially when it comes to social circles. This was how racism is highlighted here, and readers see how it affects children. We are also reminded how resilient children actually are.

Queen Street is a graphic novel about an immigrant woman, Aimee, struggling to bring up her young daughter largely alone due to an absentee father. Aimee has left a job as a lawyer in the Phillipines to join her truck-driving husband in Sault Sainte Marie, Canada. Her daughter, Melodie, is a handful; a bottle rocket chock-full of energy and fired by a vivid imagination. It is all that Aimee can do to just get through the day trying to manage Melodie and keep their financial head above water.

Most of the book is beautifully drawn and tells an affecting story. Towards the end though, for no clear reason, it suddenly switches to quite an ugly comic strip style that is used to give a few vignettes with no clear relevance to what had gone before. There may be a reason for this, but it escapes me, and it put me off giving this graphic novel the higher rating that the main part deserved.

I am very new to reading the comic/graphic novel format. So whether it is my own inexperience or the style of this work, I found parts of it a bit muddled. I enjoyed the parts that illustrated the young daughter's fantastical view of a situation, while the mother is bogged down by reality. But other than that, I felt like there were too many other parts (dance class drama, financial hardship, the parent's relationship, the neighbors, racism, bullying, the immigrant experience) that should have been narrowed down and developed further. I could see this as a series maybe, with one of those topics per issue. But all in one book I felt it was too much, and each part too shallow, to enjoy fully. I also expected this to me more about the mother/child relationship and it was not.

Very ropy, hard to read, unattractive, and ineffective, graphic novel. Not recommended at all. One and a half stars.

This book was nice and quiet, mostly about a semi-recent immigrant trying to live with little money in Quebec. It seemed to be set pretty recently and the main character has an imaginative and creative child and a husband whose work takes him away from the family for months at a time. I liked it all but the end has some much rougher pages, short one page or half page comics outside the main story and I found those ones almost hard to read.

This was interesting as it explored a woman's journey from the Philippines to northern Ontario, where she faces challenges parenting a bright young girl while her spouse is often away for work.

I'm not quite sure how to describe this book. According to the notes about it, it is supposed to be semi-autobiographical, which might explain why there is no real ending to it.

There are so many colorful characters introduced, the drunk old lady neighbor, the bitchy women at the ballet school, the friends that Melodie, her daughter, makes at ballet school. The Chinese restaurant downstairs. All of these characters and more are introduced, and then nothing....

It is almost as though the author just stopped half way through. There is so much going on, but then, nothing more is developed. I will revise my rating, if this is the first in a series, but there is no indication that it is.

It is probably a 2.5 star rating for an interesting premise.

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

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

Welp, this sounded much more interesting, but I really had to drag my butt through the story. I just couldn't get into it at all. All I could see was a mom trying her best but failing at everything (and then getting grumpy at her husband when he has to stay away longer to EARN money, gee girl, you could have known he wouldn't be home for much when you married him....).

All this book was about was about a mom who can't keep a job for a long time for many reasons and then worries all the time about money, her kid, her kid, and more of her kid. She complains about her job to various people. I didn't really see her take an effort to find a new job during this story. Yes, I get that she just lost her job, but since it is so dire with their money, why didn't she immediately go for a new job? Or at least went and searched for one.

I felt sorry for how Melodie was treated at the dance school. :(

The ending also felt incomplete. Like there was meant to be more, but they ran out of place so they quit. I guess there will be a second volume someday, at least that is what I expect, and otherwise it would make the ending even worse.

The art is truthfully the only thing I really liked about this graphic novel. It was gorgeous, manga-styled, and I loved each and every part of it. From the character designs to the little details everywhere. Plus I loved seeing her illustrate Melodie's fantasies (and also see several references to anime/manga. Sailor Moon!).

But all in all, not really a fav and I won't be reading it further should there ever be a next book.