*I received a free e-arc of this title from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

Beautifully done graphic novel that captures quiet, still moments perfectly. All those awkward middle school to high school transition feels are spot on and readers who are also music lovers will enjoy all the different music to see and look up after reading.

If I could change anything...I’d add a playlist in the back.

But, awesome graphic novel. Will definitely rec to my teens.

Thanks to Netgalley and House of Anansi for a digital galley in exchange for an honest review. Quotes are taken from an ARC.

A graphic novel, Operatic features a young protagonist, Charlotte ( Charlie)Noguchi, a middle schooler who navigates the ups and downs of being a teenager while also trying to find her own place in the world.

Mr. K believes that everyone has a song, he says that somewhere in the universe there is the perfect tune for you.

Most of Charlie's narrative takes place in the music classroom and this shapes much of her story as she discusses the boy that once sat in the now empty desk, her crush on a fellow student, and her interest in opera singer, Maria Callas. The latter's story becomes a bit of a mini-biography within the contemporary storyline. I actually listened to Maria Callas'"Una Voce Poca Fa", the song that stirred Charlotte in this story. Wow, what a beautiful voice this woman possessed!

I felt that the images were good, the storyline a bit choppy, and the encouraging moral of the story a bit light for some of the situations presented.

Review Date: 30/03/19
Publication Date 02/04/19

This book should have had an easy 5 stars with me. I did my undergraduate degree in opera. I love Maria Callas and opera and know what it's like when most other students don't like opera at all. I love graphic novels for kids as I'm now a librarian and do a lot of RA for graphic novels. But I did not like this at all. The pacing is a nightmare. It has two major storylines which have almost nothing to do with one another and neither of which really involves the main character very much at all. The characters seem to look and behave as if they are in high school when this is supposed to be junior high. And their teacher is irresponsible and inappropriate. Swearing on an 8th grader's assignment does not make you hip, it makes you a crappy educator. What music class is jumping from 1990s genre's to opera and then back to 1980s hair metal. What is that lesson plan? For me, a slice of life story like this has to make more sense than this.

The art is gorgeous and really breathtaking at points, which is what earns this a 2 star rating.

This is one of my favorite graphic novels. It centers around a middle school girl who's learning more about music. She develops this huge fondness for Maria Callas and it makes her brave.

I love the idea of little kids (and I'm sorry, middle schoolers count as little!) learning about opera. It makes me feel really happy, like maybe they're not just listening to uptempo nonsense I haven't even heard of. (This is probably the grumpiest thing I've ever typed.)

This also discusses Maria Callas a little, and basically all I knew was "legendary diva" so that was good, too. 

This is all about music and I feel like I always think about how books and movies impact me but I don't really think about that in terms of music. Part of that is because my personal pop culture choices skew heavily toward books and movies, then TV and my music choices tend to be the same artists I've loved for years and there are so many songs that can instantly change my mood (for better or worse) and I love that this book talks about that. Music is so powerful and this honors that.

If you aren't into graphic novels, this may be a fun way to start. Recommended.

This one didn't do much for me. Yes, the illustrations are visually stunning, and they create some nice metaphors (a wobbly record standing in for a wobbly voice, our heroine Charlie literally melting at a sideways glance from her crush, etc), but the story was all over the place. The plot didn't really pick up until about halfway through the book; I thought we were getting a story about how Charlie's friend Addie is too shy to sing in front of people, but then it turns into a book about the consequences of homophobia instead. I didn't care about Charlie instead; she really had nothing to do with the story and has no personality whatsoever. The Maria Callas side story also didn't mesh well with the main narrative, and the point about being true to yourself felt a little over the top. I also don't know how many teens will follow the music references, which could alienate a lot of the potential reading population. It's also a little short for YA.

I received an electronic ARC through NetGalley.
Graphic Novel.
Beautiful illustrations draw the reader in to this middle school story. The main character, Charlie, shares her thoughts on school, life and music. Her music teacher challenges his class to find their song. She struggles until he plays an aria sung by Maria Callas. This is her song. She learns about the opera star and makes the connections from Maria's struggles to those she and her friends are going through.
Maclear tells a gentle but powerful story about learning who we are and accepting ourselves and others.
Too old for the kids in my library but I strongly recommend it for middle and high school libraries.

The art work in this is extravagant! I loved seeing everything single page and I also really enjoyed the storyline. This is what I really enjoy about graphic novels, because you can really jump into the world and see it for how the author and artist intended!

Graphic novel with art work to match the beauty of the messages received by the main character, Charlie. A music assignment is given and students need to find a song to represent themselves. Charlie struggles in finding just the right song. Overall, Charlie is a character trying to find her voice as she finishes middle school and prepares for high school.

Posted on Twitter, Instagram (LFLA7), and Goodreads

A very interesting story that was not able to sustain my attention for the totality of the narrative. An admirable attempt.

The definition of bullying in many school boards follows this sort of formula: In order to qualify as bullying, there must be some sort of power dynamic – or “imbalance” – at play, and the bully is the one holding that power over the head of the bullied.

But, as many teachers and young adults can ask, what if the bullying is more of an overall feeling, a general tendency to universally dismiss or scoff at the bullied individual? How do you send the entire school to the office?

Operatic, a gorgeous and thoughtful new graphic novel from Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, explores the aftermath of this bullying, documenting the absence of the universally shunned. Meanwhile, the novel thoughtfully portrays the musical epiphany and blossoming self-awareness of the protagonist, eighth-grade Charlie, in a refreshingly authentic way.

From the start of this brief graphic novel, it is clear that the illustrations are the real strength of the piece. Two frames follow Charlie and the beautiful, quiet, beekeeping Emile as they walk through the city, their surroundings transforming into visual representations of city sound: music, vibration, horns, passing cars. These sounds grow into what appears to be a garden, forming and following them as they move together.

The characters are complex. There is Mr. Kerner (Mr K), for example, the inspirational teacher archetype who, while pushing the students to think beyond their immediate experiences and providing them with creative learning opportunities, is also woefully unprepared for the classroom bullying that ensues. His comments of “quit it” and “go to the office” clearly do nothing to prevent the tender, whimsical, and surprisingly bold Luka from disappearing from school. Mr K. assigns an inspirational music project, he plays songs he wrote in his youth (*cringe*), but Luka’s desk remains unoccupied. The days go on, the class becomes empowered by tales of Patti Smith, but Luka is still missing.

Sometimes, the trend-based dialogue (“OMG post it!”; “You slay”) is too specific for a graphic novel that hopes to reach a wide variety of young readers, but the instances are infrequent and not excessively distracting.

Another small disappointment was the lack of detail involved in narrating Charlie’s discovery of Maria Callas. Much of this short graphic novel delves into a Wikipedia-esque summary of the life of Callas, while what the young adult reader likely wants is to experience Callas through the eyes of Charlie. The illustrations come to the rescue here, as Eggenschwiler cleverly portrays Charlie and Callas as mirror images of each other at points throughout the novel. Charlie and Callas looking out the same window, Charlie playing Callas’s character on stage, etc.

Opera and middle school may seem worlds apart. As Operatic demonstrates, however, the melodrama, passion, and universality of both connect these two in deep ways.

Middle school libraries should display this book in plain sight.

Thank you to Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy of this graphic novel.

I liked this book overall but found some of the minor storylines hard to follow. The backtracking in time to provide context was difficult to follow.

"Operatic" provides good visibility for the microaggressions that middle schoolers face.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

#Operatic was the best graphic novel I have read so far. I loved the carefully chosen colors used in the illustrations. The story was compelling. There were so many different stories told and none of them seemed bogged down or too thin. The story was about music and finding your song. There were some curse words, but nothing that would make it inappropriate for a middle grade classroom. Thank you #NetGalley for the preview of this book to review.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC copy.
I gave this a 3.5/5 stars.
I liked the art style of Operatic. I liked the storyline of the Opera singers life. The main characters storyline confused me it jumped around. I still did enjoy it though and would still recommend it. I liked that the main plot was about music. There was lgbt characters but we don't get pov they're side characters.

Operatic was loving drawn but the story wasn't straight forward. It mixed an opera's singers life with a modern day girl but in the end I didn't understand the girl's story. It had several tangents that didn't tie together.
I loved the look into music and how it can show us who we are. It was very thought provoking.

This graphic novel was a treat! The artwork is gorgeous and truly enhance some the story. The book explores representation of music of all genres, the art of being unseen in middle/high school, questioning sexuality, and finding your own voice. I learned a lot through this graphic novel and I think that it was extremely well written.

Thank you NetGalley for an early copy of this graphic novel in exchange for an honest review.

This was absolutely beautiful. I have never read a graphic novel that has had me on the edge of tears before!

Operatic is so poignant and personal. It portrays the feeling of being an outcast so authentically, I was having flashbacks to my own middle school experiences. It dealt with topics like coming out for the first time, bullying, and being yourself in a world where you will always be sneered at. All of it felt handled with care and respect and had such a wonderful insight that is important for any book created by adults for a younger generation.

The characters were so sweet and I came to care for all of them. Instead of feeling like just characters in a book, they stood out as individuals. The way that Charlie questioned the status quo and raised others up was so nice and gave me warm and fuzzy feelings.

The art, though! It is stunning. The way it uses visual metaphors to show how the characters feel in a certain moment is lovely.

This is a beautifully developed graphic novel. Not only is the art to die for, but the story is both educational and easy to love.

I loved this graphic novel! It is one of the most beautiful, but also well written and meaningful, things that I’ve read in a long time. The story itself just has so much beauty and so many layers and such a wonderful message that I couldn’t help but adore every second of reading it.

Charlie is a really great protagonist. She just embodies what it means to be a thirteen year old so well, trying to find her place in the world while also trying to navigate her feelings about her classmates and her relationships with her friends and wondering why some of her classmates were such trash. I haven’t been 13 for a while but I still remember the feelings and it was so well done. Her discovery of opera and Maria Callas was so amazing to read, the feeling of finding a type of music and artist that just speaks to you is so powerful, especially when you’re young, and it’s beautifully depicted how important that was to Charlie and really sets the tone for her accepting herself later in the story.

The subplot of the disappearance of her classmate Luka and her feelings about another classmate Emile were really well done and the way they weaved together were great. I don’t want to spoil anything but the importance placed on being true to yourself and what and who makes you happy was so beautiful and I loved that Charlie and her friends were so sweet and accepting in the end.

The illustrations themselves are also just stunning! The different colour tones used for different aspects of the story was really intriguing and the way the characters were drawn was beautiful. I just loved this book, so if you’re looking for a cute story about being young and trying to find out who you really are then check this one out. I can’t get over how much I enjoyed it.

* I received an arc of this book from House of Anansi and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

4/5

This book was really cute. It was a very quick read, and the story while being really short, was actually quite impactful.

The main character Charlie ends up exploring music in a classroom assignment, and discovers her song (the song that makes her feel like she’s home) is by a long dead opera singer named Maria Callas. We learned about the history of Maria through Charlie. And Charlie uses this to help a boy in her class who has stopped coming to school in embarrassment of something he’d earlier done.

I think my favourite part of this graphic novel though was the art. The art in this book was nothing short of stunning. The use of visuals and colours were so well done, and they really brought the story to life.

Absolutely recommend.

Operatic is image and angst thrown together in an adolescent-driven textual experience. Well done visual fiction I would gladly share with fellow readers.