Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 04/01/2015 Gr 4–7—New York City's quintessential sights and sounds and hustle and bustle are beautifully captured in this exciting graphic novel. Lost in NYC unfolds via multiple adventures. First, there's Pablo, the new kid in school. His smart and resourceful classmate Alicia offers to be his partner on the class field trip to the Empire State Building. The students will be taking the subway there, so before setting off, Mr. Bartle dives into an engrossing history lesson about the Empire State Building and the construction of New York City's subway system. Spiegelman and García Sánchez's set the narrative tone and demonstrate artistic mastery in an opening spread that uses a 3-D-like cartoon effect to illustrate Mr. Bartle and his students sitting atop and inside a map of Manhattan, "dissecting" and going "underground" to explore the subway system beneath. Seamlessly woven into the illustration and text are historical photographs that depict how tunnels and trenches were constructed to build the subway system. The storytelling is kinetic. The text moves along visual lines, following subway platforms that both ascend and descend. This technique is paired with illustrations that evoke the sensations of walking Manhattan's densely crowded and diverse streets. Readers see the stacks of yellow cabs, the buskers singing, the skyscrapers carving corridors of blue sky, and even some famous tags by New York's finest graffiti artists. This a love song to the the city that never sleeps as well as a solid friendship story. Paired with robust, detailed historical notes and an engaging Spanish translation by Moral, this book is sure to be a hit with kids and their adults. VERDICT Recommended for all collections.—Lettycia Terrones, California State University, Pollak Library, Fullerton , CA - Copyright 2015 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 04/15/2015 *Starred Review* Pablo’s first day at his new school in Manhattan happens to be field-trip day, and after a lesson about the construction of New York’s subway system—which Sánchez invitingly illustrates with a collage of maps, historical photos, and warm drawings—his class departs via subway for the Empire State Building. But Pablo and his enthusiastic classmate Alicia get separated from the rest of their class and then each other, and they each have to navigate the subway alone. Sánchez’s immersive illustrations impressively capture the overwhelming confusion of being lost in a crowded place, using striking angles, panel layouts, and depth of field to layer scenes with crowds of close-set people and buildings. When Pablo and Alicia figure out which trains they need to take, on the other hand, Sánchez uses the iconic orderly MTA system map as a crisp background to clearly illustrate their routes. Extensive back matter goes into even more detail about the construction of the subway and what it’s like today and provides some fascinating facts about the Empire State Building. Young readers enamored by the Big Apple will be both delighted by the wealth of information and atmospheric artwork and encouraged by Pablo’s and Alicia’s successful, if a bit nerve-racking, solo journeys. A Spanish edition, Perdidos en NYC, is also available. - Copyright 2015 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 06/01/2015 What’s not to love about a class field trip? A day off. No textbooks. No quizzes. A fresh setting. Looser supervision. Unless, of course, you factor in the lurking anxieties: who will I partner with? What if the group leaves without me? And where the heck am I, anyhow? Whereas class outings have long provided inspiration for picture books, the giddy nervousness that older kids experience when wrenched from their familiar schoolgrounds has been largely overlooked. Spiegelman sets this to rights in a crowd-pleaser of a graphic novel that embraces the looniness of silent movie comedies while respecting the stomach-roiling worries of kids embarking on the big trip. Pablo shakes off his helicopter parents at the gates of his new school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the sixth school in his academic career, thanks to Dad’s frequent job moves. The class greets him politely enough, but they’re focused on the day’s trip to the Empire State Building. As they discuss the NYC transit system with their teacher, Mr. Bartle, and plan their route, Pablo maintains a studied air of indifference, resisting classmate Alicia’s overtures of friendship—or at the very least, guardianship. She tries to help him read the transit map at the 96th Street Station, but he’s too wrapped up in his own cool to listen. Next thing you know, they’re separated from their class, squabbling between themselves, and then separated from each other. As the entire cast bumbles its way among local and express trains in an effort to reconnect, everyone learns a transit lesson—there’s more than one correct way to get from here to there in NYC. Pablo learns an additional lesson—maybe he could use a friend after all. Writer Spiegelman is deft at sketching personalities through the economical dialogue demanded of the GN format. Readers can sense the world of embarrassment pressing down on Pablo’s shoulders courtesy of well-intentioned but clueless parents: “Do you want me to come in with you?” “No! Bye!” “Are you sure?” “Yes, please just go away!” “Bye, little man! We love you!” Likewise, the strain between Alicia and Pablo, sorely mismatched in local street smarts, is palpable. “You dummy! We should have stayed with the class!” “I’m a dummy? You’re the one who dragged us on this train!” “Whatever.” Even curricular blitzes, delivered on the hoof by Mr. Bartle, ring true: “The [Empire State Building] has its own zip code. Anyone know what it is?” “It’s 10118!” “Wow . . . ” “I just Googled it!” It’s Sánchez’s artwork, though, that steals the show, imbuing the madcap adventure with visual humor while keeping readers off-balance and slightly disoriented in the labyrinthine underground system. Even seasoned comics readers will appreciate his approach to movement, changing up the conventional evocation of progression (through small, sequential panels) with more chaotic but stunningly effective single large frames in which characters appear in multiple positions and the viewer is directed along unexpected paths. Competing feelings of claustrophobia and heady excitement are pervasive, as pedestrians jam every available inch of space around the isolated kids, and even cutaways of their train cars zooming over a city map seem like airless tin cans. Also tucked within the cheek-by-jowl crowd scenes is a hidden mini-drama (loosely based on Sánchez’s own debut visit to NYC) featuring a camera-happy tourist who catches the unwanted attention of a policeman, who follows him around town. Comics are not generally distinguished for thoughtful end matter, but this title is a happy exception. Six pages of NYC transit history and Empire State Building information, illustrated with contemporary and period photographs, are included, as well as an annotated list of additonal print and online resources. Even the endpapers—a Manhattan/Brooklyn transit map almost guaranteed to baffle the uninitiated, and a stylish cartoon recap of the class odyssey—are too much fun to miss. (See p. 518 for publication information.) Elizabeth Bush, Reviewer - Copyright 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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