This One Summer - by Mariko Tamaki (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A New York Times bestseller
A 2015 Caldecott Honor Book
A 2015 Michael L. Printz Honor Book
An Eisner Award Winner

The Tamaki cousins weave a coming-of-age tale of girlhood, friendship, and nostalgia-for-right-now that has changed the landscape of graphic novels.

Rose is always excited for summer. It means the lake house with her parents, but most importantly, it means she gets to spend the summer with her best friend Windy. This year, though - it's different. Rose's parents won't stop fighting and when she and Windy look for distractions, they find a whole new world. It's full of local teens-just a few years older than they are - and one of them is caught up in something very bad and very secret. Rose and Windy have to navigate the confusion, heartbreak, and hope that comes with being right on the edge of growing up.

Review Quotes

"This book is poignant and melancholy, and it will be swiftly recognizable to those who only recently hovered at the cusp of adolescence." --BCCB, starred review

"This captivating graphic novel presents a fully realized picture of a particular time in a young girl's life, an in-between summer filled with yearning and a sense of ephemerality." --School Library Journal, starred review

"A summer of family drama, secrets and change in a small beach town . . . Keenly observed and gorgeously illustrated - a triumph." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"With a light touch, the Tamakis capture the struggle of growing up in a patchwork of summer moments . . . Wistful, touching, and perfectly bittersweet." --Booklist, starred review

"If I worked at a bookstore, I'd be hand-selling it to customers who adored Raina Telgemeier's graphic memoir Smile but are now ready for more complex themes...This is a lovely book." --The New York Times

"[This One Summer] manages to evoke the nuances, the confusions, of a pair of characters on the cusp." --Los Angeles Times

"Mariko's strengths as a writer lie in her subtlety and her ability to convey whole worlds of feeling within a few lines of dialogue." --National Post

"Jillian's art is simply gorgeous, and the perfect companion to the beautiful--and sometimes painful--truth behind Mariko's every word." --Stephanie Perkins, bestselling author of Anna and the French Kiss

"This One Summer is so vivid and beautifully told, that I saw, heard, and felt every moment. This tender and oh-so-true story of one girl's pivotal summer is a stand-out." --Deb Caletti, Michael L. Printz Honor Award-winning author of Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

"A rare treasure of a book, like a summer caught and pressed between the pages." --Svetlana Chmakova, author of Awkward

"I read this in July, and spent the rest of the summer thinking about it. Every bike on a dusty road and gleefully swimming kid made me think about this book, and how it so eloquently and perfectly captures the feeling of summer-- slow, lazy and somehow hectic and astounding and full-- that we spend every year after the age of 18 trying to remember. " --Lucy Knisley, author of Relish: My Life in the Kitchen

"This One Summer is a precisely written, exquisitely illustrated exploration of the moment when childhood tips over into adolescence. For the second time the Tamakis have raised the bar for young adult comics." --Hope Larson, Eisner Award-winning author

"The most beautiful thing I've ever seen." --Faith Erin Hicks, bestselling author of Pumpkinheads and Friends With Boys

"This One Summer is a beautiful, relatable story of that summer everyone has had, where things happen around you but nothing happens to you." --Julie Halpern, award-winning author of Get Well Soon

"Read this and remember that time. Read this and feel the innocence and the intimate, wrestling out at the beach. Read this and keep it like a secret, or let it run wild like a bonfire night. Read this for the joy and the grit, the tears and the sunburn, what you can't remember and what you'll never forget. Read This One Summer and swear you were there." --Daniel Handler, author of Michael J. Printz Honor-winning Why We Broke Up.

About the Author

Mariko Tamaki is a writer of comics and young adult novels. Her books include the graphic novels Skim and This One Summer with Jillian Tamaki, and Emiko Superstar with Steve Rolston.

Jillian Tamaki is an illustrator and comics artist. She is the co-creator of Skim and This One Summer, and the author of SuperMutant Magic Academy and Boundless (2017). She has taught comics and illustration in New York City at SVA and The New School. She lives in Toronto.