I am a member of the ALA Carnegie Medal Committee. This title made the 2024 Shortlist <a href="https://www.ala.org/rusa/awards/carnegie-medals/2024-winners">. The two medal winners will be announced on January 20, 2024 at 9:45 a.m. EST, at the Reference and User Services Association’s Book and Media Awards livestream event premiering during the American Library Association’s LibLearnX conference in Baltimore <https://2024.alaliblearnx.org/>.

I just finished reading this. It was so good, so powerful, and so painful, in several ways. I sincerely hope that lots of people read this book, and I sincerely hope it hits everyone that reads it in the way they need to be hit (which isn't always the way we want to be hit). I'm writing this just 2 months after this book's release, and it's already been banned in a school district in Florida, so you know it must be saying something important.

#TheTalk #NetGalley

From childhood memories of growing up in Los Angeles to his professional career and now parenthood, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Darrin Bell recounts experiences that shifted and shaped his worldview in his debut graphic novel The Talk. When Bell was just six years old, his mother talked to him about why he could not have a realistic looking water gun like his white peers and what that meant for him. Bell breaks his promise with his mother to stay inside and goes outside to play with his bright green water gun imagining himself as a young Luke Skywalker. Not long after, Bell is stopped by a police officer who screams at him to drop his weapon, taking away his new toy and leaving him with a “warning”. This encounter deeply impacts Bell and while he is unable to talk to his mother or father about the incident, he finds solace in drawing. Through beautifully rendered illustrations with cool tones and pops of intentional color, Bell examines racism in America both through his own perspective and larger events taking place across the country. Bell weaves in editorial cartoons and explores how his worldview directly impacts his work. By the end of his memoir, Bell faces one of his own children with The Talk as they grapple to understand what race means to them. From frequent graphic novel readers to those who may not normally reach for graphic novels and everyone in between, The Talk is a must-read memoir.

This graphic memoir is excellent. Bell recounts his experiences with "The Talk" and how this impacted not only his life but also the life of his own son. Everyone should read this book in an effort to more fully understand the experiences of Black people in America.

The Talk looks at racism and the experiences of black people from the perspective of someone that was biracial. I feel the story made a lot of great points and is provides the audience with an authentic representation of blackness that is not stereotypical or monolithic. I could relate to some of his struggles. However, I wish the author had addressed some of the privileges he had growing up biracial. He presented his struggle with white acceptance, but I feel he could have expanded on it more.

Beautiful illustrations to a heartbreaking story. The Talk is an early conversation on race issues in America within a Black community. However, this book is an excellent resource for everyone to learn about the impact issues have on children.

Darrin Bell is a very good artist! Now that I read this, I realize that I've seen some of his cartoon/comic drawings.....& appreciated his work then too. This is really a memoir in GN form, telling his story...& it's really good! An artist can really say a lot with a drawing, even without words! (But there are words in this book!) I'd recommend this to everyone....young & old! Well worth the read!
I received an e-ARC of this book from publisher Henry Holt & Co. via NetGalley in exchange for reading it & offering my own fair/honest review.

hmm I found this interesting. a book that was supposed to be about racism in America somehow turned into a (bare with the oxymoron here) misogynistic, wokie guide, throwing in situations, that had absolutely nothing to do with race. I expected nothing less from a political cartoonist, however.

Darrin himself is biracial but he is white passing? he should have brought that up, because in theory his experience is not the same As a black person's like mine, especially.

id like to note that in america, we will never be fully accepted by whites but we can make our own place for ourselves here and I think darrin does that with his comics. I do commend the aspect of black fatherhood or at least the conversation of it.

next, i fail to believe how the author does not bring up or address as a male the privelge in general he has and his misogynistic ways of his college heyday. in a book that brings up so many social and political issues, he didn't think to address that? wow. *slow hand clap* the Spirit of victim mentality is strong here guys 😅

AND, can we talk about how this guy is like hopping on trump's case regarding the border issue, but Biden admin not too long ago refused to provide refuge for millions of children at the border who *still* remain parent less and homeless. 😐 this is not to put Trump on a pedestal because wrong is wrong, but I feel in books w topics like these, we shouldn't be so quick to point the blame at others.

The Talk is a moving and frank look at the reality of growing up black in the USA by Pulitzer Prize winner Darrin Bell. Released 6th June 2023 by Macmillan on their Henry Holt imprint, it's 352 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats.

Dialogue is important, vital, to change and awareness. There is so much aggressively unresolved trauma surrounding race in the USA which people haven't been able to process. This is an expressive and often heartbreaking autobiographical graphic novel about the author's lived experience growing up in the 80s in Los Angeles.

It's a plain-spoken monograph on generational trauma; from his mother's refusal to buy him a realistic gun-looking water pistol to his own adult need to have "The Talk" with his own son. It's profound and heartbreaking.

Five stars. This is a superlatively illustrated and well written important book. It would make a great selection for public and school library acquisition, although it will likely be the subject of banning, challenge, and censure in some areas of the USA.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

"I've collected things to give my son. But he doesn't need things. He needs a better world, and I don't know how to give him that."

Bell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, presents a sobering recounting of his life, and the times he was viewed with suspicion for driving while black, writing essays while black, playing with neon colored squirt guns while black . . .

The list goes on and on.

Though I genuinely enjoyed the book, I'm saddened by what he went through. Change is not only NOT happening fast enough, it seems like nowadays it's one step forward, four steps back.

This was very eye-opening as an educator. It's crazy to see what things were like as Darrin was growing up and the cumulative trauma. This book would be good for high school, maybe high level 8th grade.

This is a very important subject, and the graphic format was great for making it approachable to anyone. The exploration of family dynamics was rich and real and added a lot to the story.

This is one of the best graphic novels I’ve read this year. I loved the author’s frank and lively writing as well as his pitch perfect drawings. This was a deeply personal tale of what it means to be Black in America.

4.5 stars!

The Talk by Darrin Bell was a memoir written in graphic novel form. And let me tell you what, there's so much to reflect on in these pages. Yes, it is a graphic novel, but the content is deep and HEAVY. In it, Bell took us through his young childhood and "The Talk" his mother had to have with him, all the way to "The Talk" he eventually had to have with his son. Inbetween the two was experience after experience of the hardships of growing up Black in America.

Tbh, I don't think the artwork heightened the story (I think that's more a tribute to his words than a knock on the artwork), but my goodness were his words powerful. This book and its contents need to be read, digested, and discussed.

P.S. The acknowledgements at the end choked me up. So, if you read this. Read until the very end. 🥹

Favorite Quotes:
"I've collected things to give my son. But he doesn't need things. He needs a better world, and I don't know how to give him that."

"I see the man my boy will become. I wanted to create a world for him where he'd never have to carry a four-hundred-year-old-burden."

A beautiful and important memoir in the form of a graphic novel! Darrin Bell is a 6-year-old child when his mother has "The Talk" with him and explains how the world works and how society treats young black men. We get to experience various parts of Bell's life where the echoes of "The Talk" follow him until he also becomes a father and needs to have the same conversation with his son.

What a great concept! I loved it.

Darrin Bell's, The Talk is a wonderful exploration of a long-standing tradition in the Black community of what it means for parent/guardians to have a critical conversation with children about race, identity, violence, and other social issues. These are the issues that they will unfortunately often come across at some point in life. It questions this notion of respectability politics in the Black Community and in a very honest way. It is a wonderful graphic novel that highlights the author's own experiences and uses multiple art expressions to do so.

Darrin is six years old when his mom explains to him why she's bought him a green water gun instead of one that's more realistic. She does her best to explain how Black boys do not receive the same considerations as his white counterparts and how police often portray Black children as older and naturally dangerous. For Darrin, it is an encounter with that same water gun and a police officer that opens his eyes to all he fears he will be up against. As the author examines his own journey of how the talk shaped his childhood and how it molded him as an adult it is a reminder that true freedom and equality is a long time coming. As he comes of age in LA and witnesses endless displays of police brutality, he finds his voice through cartooning and as he gets older he learns to use it as a tool of resistance. Learning too that while we've had some progress in race relations, we still have such a long way to go. Drawing on the murders of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, and Tamir Rice, the author really did a good job of making the strong case for the talk. I also enjoyed navigating his own development as he begins to raise his own son.

The graphics were amazing and helped to tell a difficult story in a way that is relatable and entertaining. I also loved the story itself as I think it will be a necessity for readers of all ages.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for my review.

Thank you for the ARC.
This is an enjoyable read. Each chapter has the right amount of pages. Each builds upon the other. You definitely get invested in the main character Darrin. Through history, he has been cataloging his experiences and the racial lines. Whether you artist, journalist, or a person that wants to feel a connection, this is a graphic novel worth reading.
I just reviewed The Talk by Darrin Bell. #TheTalk #NetGalley

Everyone, or at least every black child, gets a version of the talk. Mine was make sure to cry and make a scene so people pay attention and make the right assumption but also to speak properly to officers. I appreciate Bell sharing his own experience and how it affected him.

Editorial cartoonist and comic strip creator Darrin Bell shares his memoir in graphic novel format. Bell, who is biracial, was raised by his white mother. He learned at a young age that he had to navigate the world differently than white boys. This memoir that focuses on his experiences with race both personally and through what is happening in the news takes him from the time he was a young child, through high school, college, and beyond. Meant for adults, it will also appeal to high school students.

I was very happy to see a memoir of a biracial person in this format. Not for me, because I'm not big on graphic fiction, but nonetheless, it is beautifully done and should appeal to young people--and that really is the point here.
I'm also very sad that a book like this exists--that the very experience exists. But, unfortunately, this is the society we live in (still) and it's important that biracial kids are able to find authors they can identify with. Obviously this book belongs on every school and public library shelf.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It's one of those books that a certain kid will read and treasure for sure!