"White All Around" is an emotional odyssey that transcends time, whisking readers away to Canterbury, Connecticut, in 1832. Lupano's compelling script and Fert's evocative art style join forces to breathe life into the pages of this graphic novel.

At the heart of this narrative is the Prudence Crandall School, a beacon of hope daring to educate girls in a society questioning the purpose of their education. The story takes an intense turn when the school decides to welcome black students—an act of defiance in a time when racial tensions cast a dark shadow over America.

The graphic novel skillfully unravels the complexities of this historical backdrop, 30 years before the abolition of slavery. Lupano and Fert shine a spotlight on the ugliness of prejudice and racism, even in the so-called "free" North. The hostility that greets these black students is a stark reminder that the fight for equality is a battle fought on many fronts.

The illustrations capture the raw emotions of the characters, bringing their struggles and triumphs vividly to life. Fert's art is not just a complement to the story; it is an integral part of the narrative, enriching the reader's experience.

"White All Around" isn't just a graphic novel—it's a powerful testament to the resilience of those who dare to challenge the norms, confronting bigotry and paving the way for change. A must-read for those who appreciate a blend of historical depth and artistic brilliance.

“My friends, although the white people may be so enraged against us as to try to break down every benevolent effort that is made on our behalf, and put every obstacle they can in our way to prevent our rising to an equal standard.., let us be careful that we do not return evil for evil, but recompense it with good.”

My thanks to Europe Comics for a review copy via NetGalley of ‘White All Around’ by Wilfrid Lupano with art by Stéphane Fert. It was translated from the French by Montana Kane. My apologies for the late feedback.

While many graphic novels focus on the science fiction and fantasy genres, there are others that address more serious subjects. ‘White All Around’ is in this category as it highlights events in the 1830s where a violent mob had attacked a school that was teaching black girls.

In Canterbury, Connecticut, 1832 Prudence Crandall has opened a female boarding school. It is a success among the locals, with two dozen girls enrolled. Though there was some questions as to whether educating girls served any purpose.

Then Prudence announces that the school will start accepting black students. While this is thirty years before the abolition of slavery in the United States, it does take place in the so-called “free” North. Yet her black students and the school itself is met with hostility at every turn and eventually this erupts in mob violence.

Framing the graphic novel is a Foreword that provides the historical context and an Afterword by Joanie DiMartino, the curator of the Prudence Crandall Museum, that provides details of the school and what happened to some of its known students after the attack. A number of the women became involved in the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad.

Stéphane Fert’s art was amazing. It was quite stylised, almost geometrical. I especially loved the scenes set in the woodlands. I could definitely see the influence of Cubism and Impressionism in his art. Fert also utilised a limited colour palette that proved very effective as it served to complement the powerful message provided by Wilfrid Lupano’s text.

Overall, I felt that ‘White All Around’ was a beautifully presented graphic novel that chronicled this little known incident of racial violence in American history, which had eventually led to educational reform.

Interesting story, have already purchased a copy for my classroom. Interesting historical fiction story about girls in a boarding school trying to fit in with the locals, but will it work out?

The art was amazing but there were problematic instances in the writing e.g. the author's choice to name the black boy character "feral". I did love to learn about the history that's featured in the story.

I loved this, well written, beautiful and accessible. It is perfect for the classroom and will enhance children whilst telling them an important story.

Visually this is stunning. I think the text formatting just ended up getting to me.
I do wish I had enjoyed it more because the blurb sounded so wonderful.

This graphic novel was so good.
It is about how black people, black women , started to go to school, all the problem they had to go through just to get some education.
It is right to know all this part of history that many time they don’t teach us in school.
And for this not to make the same.
That’s something that I like about reading books like this.
I highly recommend to reed to the younger ones.

A moving book about how a white teacher in a white community turned her school into all colored-skin school. Many came, learned together and made way for the colored people to strive in the United States back then. It was not an easy feast, but from what was retold in this comic, even though they parted ways at the end, the students kept spreading the knowledge to those who needs them. And this is what we need nowadays: unity to build a better place.

I received a review copy of this comic via Netgalley and Europe Comics Library News.

The story of Miss Prudence Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color, the first racially integrated school in the United States due to a fateful day in 1832 when Crandall chose to admit a 20 year-old Black woman named Sarah Harris who was studying to become a teacher, is an important one in American history. Crandall's Quaker, abolitionist background and commitment to educating Black young women and girls in a predominantly white village in Connecticut is a matter of gripping historical record. It is a story that continues to inspire and has been shared in a nonfiction biography The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students and a stunning historical Novel in Verse Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color by Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson.

I was totally captivated by the cover of this graphic novel, the parade of girls in hats likely on their way to church, and was eager to read a graphic novel that would round out my nonfiction and poetry reading about Crandall's school. I was not expecting the book to begin with a scene centered on a homeless Black boy living wild in the woods near Crandall's school quoting verbatim violent lines from Thomas R. Gray's The Confessions of Nat Turner, describing how Turner and the men with him killed white people, including infants, in their beds.

I couldn't shake the suspicion as I read the whole story, that this boy's character and his wildness was important as contrast to the civilized and civilizing force of education for young women. He even brings a freshly killed partridge to the Black servant at Crandall's school, a gesture that is at odds with his "monster" behavior and lands uncomfortably toward the "noble savage" stereotype. Both gender and racial codes here are problematic, despite the stunning art and beautifully complex browns, ochres, greys, the almost Mary Blair style that grounds every page. This troubling fictional connection between Crandall's school and the history of Nat Turner weighs the pages down even further than they would have been if they had centered more on the school and students.

This was amazing. It is like a historical fiction but based on a true story of an all girls' school in Canterbury, Connecticut in 1832. A small town a teacher decides to create a school for black girls. It is about the struggles to carve out that space to educate black girls. I loved the little frenzy boy(?) in the woods and how it portrayed so much. The artwork seemed very different and therefore oddly refreshing.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I haven't a bad thing to say about White All Around. It tells us about the Canterbury Female Boarding School. In the 'free' Connecticut of the 1830s, it made steps to develop the education of young women of colour. The art style is what gripped me first, which is always so vital for a graphic novel. It was illustrative and gorgeous, and I still find myself thinking back on the composition of each page. It's the driving appeal of illustrated works, and Stéphane Fert does not disappoint. The uniqueness of each character simply hits, and there isn't any simpler way of putting it. Their voices, and their tones, all come across so wonderfully until you're drawn in.

The bottom line: I was gripped by the narrative, the style and the tone, and think that anyone seeking a gorgeously unique graphic novel would enjoy it.

White All Around imagines the lives of a group of young black girls seeking an education in 1860s small town Connecticut, in a time when girls' education wasn't a given and white Americans, even those living in states that had long abolished slavery, feared a possible uprising and revenge from black Americans.

The art is simply gorgeous, a feast for the eyes. The girls look almost regal, the clothes and hairdos are lovely, the forest and flowers are charming. The colours make it look like it's a fairy-tale. It really stood out from the rest, I can't remember another graphic novel that looks like this one. In that sense, it reminds me of Vanistendael's The Two Lives of Penelope, although I loved this comic one better.

The only problems are in the development of the story. The inspiration was fantastic: I love not only the story of these girls and the school, but also that such a short moment represent a lot of American history. I'm also glad the author went into more detail at the end. However, the author seems to try to add so many discordant elements that it almost becomes a pastiche.
It includes things like saying that the girls studying the Geography of their country or the language they speak makes them race traitors and the teacher shouldn't be teaching them like any of her other students, rather she should be developping a curriculum for black people only; that Nat Turner was only as cruel as slave-owners (fair enough), so both Turner and slave-owners are beyond reproach (not fair enough); one of the students is shown unwilling to pray with her Christian friends and it's later revealed that it's because she is a Christian just like them, but she imagines God as a black woman — but this doesn't explain anything, since she wasn't being forced to pray to any particular image of God, who we all imagine differently; both the young boy and the old woman who live in the forest seem to have no particular purpose, and yet we spend more time hearing them babble that we spend learning about the teacher and the school's legal trouble.

A good chunk of these useless "arguments" and tangents seem to be an attempt to make a 19th century story seem progressive for 21st century standards, which is a doomed project. Indeed, it fails. The feminist and anti-racist elements of the comic are the basic plot, the one that actually happened: that a school accepted black girls and they persevered in the face of mob violence. The rest only takes away from that simple, powerful fact. Funnily enough, the school was also a privileged institution for bourgeouise families living in New England, but the author doesn't seem too concerned with trying to make it less classist. It also doesn't mention that the teacher that put her life at risk to make this school succeed was a Quaker, only mentioning it at the very end of the biographical notes, even though Quakers had a very long history of supporting abolitionism, from before the American Revolution, and so it did mean something that this specific woman and her family run this specific school.

It is, in short, a beautiful graphic novel, based on an incredibly interesting story, that was let down by its author and his paternalistic approach to the reader.

White All Around is a very inspiring read about women who fought for their rights and freedom. The illustrations were the best part for me! I'm really getting into graphic novels, as the visual experience adds to much to the story. This is easy to read for kids, is engrossing and very educational. I'd definitely recommend it!

Thanks to Europe Comics for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

White All Around by Wilfrid Lupano with illustrations by Stephanie Fert is a beautifully executed work that handles a complex and historical narrative with grace and nuance. I loved the uniqueness of the artist's illustration style and how each picture added character and life to the story.

A quick and informative read, I greatly enjoyed this historical graphic novel. Unfortunately, I hadn't previously heard of the story of the Prudence Crandall School and its role in advancing equality and civil rights for Black Americans, so I definitely learned something new. The story is both inspiring and heartbreaking, and although the ending isn't quite happy, it is hopeful.

I really liked Stephane Fert's art - whimsical without being over the top or saccharine, it does a wonderful job of conveying both motion and emotion. Lupano's dialogue was a little stilted at times, but I still enjoyed the way he conveyed the relationships amongst the students and their unique personalities. While there were a few minor things that detracted from the reading experience for me, overall I'm glad to have read this book and learned a part of history I hadn't known. I also really appreciated the appendix telling the stories of the real-life students of this pioneering institution.

I really liked the graphics for this one and the story was a very inspiring one! I would highly recommend it to people of all ages.

Incredible, thought-provoking, well-illustrated, and perfectly brutal, this graphic novel was a heartbreaking look into the past and the courage that it took to stand up to the convention of a place that isn't afraid to get violent if you stray outside of the box.

Story of the book-

The realistic novel depends on evident occasions that occurred in Canterbury, Connecticut in the 1830s. This was the time not long after Ned Turner's defiance. Slavery was as yet lawful in the South. While Black individuals were free in the north, but they didn’t have equivalent rights. A neighborhood white lady, Prudence Crandall ran a girl’s boarding school. She settled on a choice to make the school for Black young ladies. This droves the majority of the townspeople crazy and they fought the presence of such a school for Black young ladies. Crandall wound up going to court for her entitlement to keep the school open.

Now, coming to the story of the book-

Prudence Crandall is a Quaker-educated lady who opens a boarding school for young ladies in Canterbury, Connecticut. At the point when 20-year-old Sarah Harris requests to be her student to show the other people of color later, the difficulty starts. The guardians of the young ladies make them leave the school, thus Prudence winds up transforming the boarding school exclusively for girls of color. Resistance starts from everywhere in the town, and majorly from her neighbor Andrew T. Judson, a politician, who was a supporter of the school before. Prudence winds up in prison, and they battle for the young ladies to proceed to study in the school and they need to figure out how to get another law, but brutality wins.

The author presents a dark kid who lives in the forested areas and who discusses the account of Ned Turner, who featured in a grisly rebellion and made a more prominent neurosis towards blacks who could read and compose and those who knew something of the biblical texts.

Will Prudence be able to find justice for the young ladies and continue with the school?

Read the book to know more.

My review-

This is a realistic novel about historical racism. It’s a common story to the individuals who know American history- white men against Black women teaching themselves- yet the account of the Prudence Crandall School is unfamiliar to me: a youthful lady conflict with the town of Canterbury to open a school just for Black young ladies during the 1800s. The white occupants of the town go against her activities and treat both Ms. Crandall and the youngsters awfully, yet the women are resolved to learn and resist the silly limitations put upon them.

This graphic novel and fine art are dazzling and lively, loaded up with warmth and shading. The characters that are the focal point of the story are brilliantly done. Along with the solitary woman educator, and the young ladies longing to learn, the readers likewise experience a lady living in the forested areas who has no adoration for the residents and a young man who goes around amusing local people with stories of Ned Turner, a genuine black oppressed evangelist who drove defiance in 1831.

This is unquestionably worth a read for everybody, even though it may disappoint you at some point. Equity is for everybody, and we need more young ladies like the ones in the book in real life. I truly loved this novel for featuring this valid, unfortunate story of foul play, bigotry, assurance, and woman’s rights.

Finally, I would like to thank NetGalley for providing me the review copy.

Cover of the book-

The cover shows the women of color standing in the forested area which is presented in a beautiful illustration. Loved it.

Rating of the book- 4/5

Rating of the cover- 4/5

#EuropeComics #NetGalley

Very encouraging read about women who fought for their rights and freedom. It's easy to read for kids as well and is very educating.

while i do think that the story itself could have been told better, the art was gorgeous and i adored it