(courtesy Allen & Unwin)
There is a sublime and deeply reassuring joy in listening to your inner child and reading some of the sorts of luminously lovely but groundedly honest stories that made reading when you were a kid such an endlessly rewarding pleasure.
That’s why I don’t even remotely apologise for the fact that quite a few decades after I left childhood behind, I still hugely enjoy diving into graphic novels targeted at a much younger demo; there’s a purity and escapist joy in the storytelling which you don’t always get in adult narratives which, and fair enough too, operate at a far more serious level.
But what graphic novels like the beautifully drawn Ember and the Grand Metamorphosis (Ember 2) by Jason Pamment make very clear is that there is still great substance to stories aimed at kids, with the really good titles happily brave enough to go dark and to keep the tension pumping even as they affirm with lightness and joy important life lessons like forgiveness, vulnerability, and unconditional love and friendship.
The second in Pamment’s emotionally and artistically evocative series, following Ember and the Island of Lost Creatures (#1), Ember and the Grand Metamorphosis is an absolute joy of a story which follows the titular protagonist as they keep trying to fit into a school on the island featured in book 1 in which it enrolled all kinds of unique creatures, most of whom have come to embrace orphan Ember as a friend.
After the events of the first book, Ember has been forced to move in with the one classmate who doesn’t really like, Viggo, a surly lizard boy who resents being forced to have Ember room with him and who doesn’t respond well to sweet, kindhearted Ember, no matter what he does.
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But when the teacher at the school, Mr. Cultivar, is unable to take everyone on a once-in-a-lifetime excursion to see a natural spectacle which won’t be repeated for a century, Ember steps up, feeling confident after his actions saved the school, the island and his friends in book one that he has what it takes to lead everyone there and back without incident.
Things don’t go according to plan, of course, and what starts out as a fun chance to do something different, soon becomes all kinds of dangerous and perilous, teaching Ember that while he is a caring and thoughtful leader-in-the-making, that will always need his friends around him and that no person is an island.
We need each other is the theme of Ember and the Grand Metamorphosis and it resonates gloriously well, set against artwork that once again is graphically vivacious and alive and which feels so real that you feel you could tumble into the pages and arrive on the remarkably beautiful and idiosyncratically unusual island yourself.
In fact, if anything the artwork seems even more arrestingly rich and full, conveying both the beauty of the island’s natural landscape but giving real life and vivacity to the characters themselves who leap off the pages in ways that are forthright and sweet, vulnerable and honest and touchingly real.
Ember and the Grand Metamorphosis is an absolute treat, serving up a story which captivates people of all ages, characters who will come to mean the world to you and art so richly, fulsomely colourful and world-buildingly large that you will wish you could go on the expedition too.
Maybe the years don’t stop racing away us but it’s nice to know we can read Ember and the Grand Metamorphosis, both for ourselves and our kids and nieces & nephews and remember once again what it’s like to be a hopeful kid racing out to discover the world, and finding out that while not everything goes the way you expect, that life can be wonderfully alive and exciting, especially with very good friends/found family by your side.
Ember and the Grand Metamorphosis is out now from Allen and Unwin.
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