My Begging Chart

Keiler Roberts mines the passing moments of family life to deliver an affecting and funny account of what it means to simultaneously exist as a mother, daughter, wife, and artist. Drawn in an unassuming yet charming staccato that mimics the awkward rhythm of life, no one’s foibles are left unspared, most often the author’s own. When Roberts considers whether or not to dust the ceiling fan, it’s effectively relevant. She can get lost in the rewarding melodrama of playing Barbies with her daughter and will momentarily snap out of her depression. Her harmless fibs to get through the moment are brought up by her daughter a year or two later, yet without hesitation Roberts will request that her daughter’s imaginary friend not visit when she is around. Her MS diagnosis lingers in the background, never taking center stage. In My Begging Chart, her most encompassing work yet, Keiler meditates on routine and stillness. The vignettes of her everyday life exude immense presence, making her comics thoroughly relatable and reflective of our all-too-human lives as they unfold with humour, sadness, and relieving joy. In transporting these stories onto paper, Keiler observes, and at times relishes, a fleeting present.

There once was a lady who was very creepy. She moved about the world in seemingly normal ways, except for one tremendously bizarre tic. First she sought out kids transfixed by their screens, staring blindly and blank-faced at nearly any device, and then she would snatch something precious from them. In this picture book for grown-ups, sibling duo Keiler Roberts and Lee Sensenbrenner render a compelling—and downright creepy—modern fable about kids who are hooked on their digital devices. Creepy is the contemporary answer to the shocking tales of the Brothers Grimm and bedtime moral stories like the boy who cried wolf or the princess and the pea: in it, Roberts and Sensenbrenner provide a shrewd and comical commentary on the increasing digitization of childhood. Known for her award-winning autobiographical comics, Roberts’s signature deadpan humor is on full display in these vibrantly painted pages. It’s safe to say that no one tackles the peril of screen time as vividly or absurdly as this pair.

Keiler Roberts affirms her status as one of the best autobiographical cartoonists working today with The Joy of Quitting, a work encompassing 8 years of hilarious moments in the author’s life, mined from the universal. It spans her frantic child-rearing, misfires in the workplace, and frustrating experiences with the medical system. In one strip, the author and her daughter Xia have itchy scalps. Roberts asks her husband to check her hair and all she gets is the cursory remark that he just sees "a bunch of bugs.” In another, Xia describes her oddly shaped poop in precise detail. We then see Xia sitting at the breakfast table telling the family that she recently learned the word “nuisance” and everyone agrees it’s a good word for her to know. As Xia grows from toddler to big kid, the family evolves and its dynamics shift in subtle ways, changes that pass all too suddenly in real life captured forever with Roberts’s keen observational humour. The Joy of Quitting is Roberts’ magnum opus of domestic comedy, highlighting how she continues to work within and expand the rich tradition of autobiographical comics. Again and again, Roberts shows us that most meaningful moments or gestures often don’t have any meaning at all.

As Lina steps into adulthood, she turns to the work of Virginia Woolf and Patricia Highsmith for insight into who she--and her friends--will become It's a typically sticky Toronto summer and Lina's spending her first couple of weeks after graduation reading and hanging out with her best friend Cara. Everything's calm--until she finds out that her childhood friend Alicia has died. With her high school friends quickly drifting apart and her parents out of town, Lina tries to make sense of what has happened on her own. Hoping for answers, she turns to Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse and Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt. As Lina reunites with her friends for a final party on the shores of Lake Ontario, she finds herself wondering what it means to have known someone, and who they'll all become when they're no longer anchored to each other. Winner of the Expozine Awards, July Underwater is an early work of Tiohtià ke (Montreal) based artist Zoe Maeve, now available to widespread audiences for the first time. "A beautifully illustrated, poetic, at times impressionistic yet straightforward tale that is strongly evocative of the kind of reminiscences and reflections experienced during summer beachfront escapes."--Juror comments, 2016 Expozine Awards

A recovering alcoholic lives in the shadow of a world famous comic strip and its tyrannical creator Caleb is a middle-aged painter with a non-starter career and a checkered past. He also happens to be the only child of one of the world’s most famous cartoonists, Jimmi Wyatt. Known for the internationally beloved father and son comic Sonny Side Up, Jimmi made millions drawing saccharine family stories while neglecting his own son. Now sober, Caleb is haunted by his wasted past and struggling to take responsibility for his present before it’s too late. His always patient boyfriend, James, is reaching the end of his rope. When Caleb gets the chance to step out from his father’s shadow and shape the most public aspect of the family business, he makes every bad decision and watches his life fall apart. Is it too late to repair the harm? Are we forever doomed to make the same mistakes our parents did?

When Susan MacLeod accompanied her 90-year-old mother through a labyrinthine long-term care system, it was a nine-year journey navigating a government within a heart in a system without compassion. Her family, much like the system, erected walls rather than opening arms. She found herself involuntarily placed at the pivot point between her frail, elderly mother's need for love and companionship, the system's inability to deliver, and her brother's indifference. She had also spent three years as a government spokesperson enthusiastically defending the very system she now experienced as brutally cold. MacLeod's tone is defined by a gentle, self-effacing humour touched by exasperation for the absurdities and the newfound wisdom around expectations.Dying for Attention is the latest memoir in the graphic medicine field, shelved alongside My Begging Chart by Keiler Roberts and Tangles by Sarah Leavitt. MacLeod includes helpful tips for communicating with nursing homes, as well as background research, to provide a larger context for this under-discussed experience.

“The characters in Dhaliwal’s stories sparkle. They’re tenderly rendered and their problems are real... The struggle of the cyclops unfolds in metaphors for race, sexuality, gender, and disability, tangling with ideas about fetishization, interracial relationships, passing, and representation.“—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House Following the critical and popular success of Woman World—the hit Instagram comic which appeared on 25 best of lists—Aminder Dhaliwal returns with Cyclopedia Exotica. Also serialized on instagram to her 250,000 followers, this graphic novel showcases Dhaliwal’s quick wit and astute socio-cultural criticism. In Cyclopedia Exotica, doctor’s office waiting rooms, commercials, dog parks, and dating app screenshots capture the experiences and interior lives of the cyclops community; a largely immigrant population displaying physical differences from the majority. Whether they’re artists, parents, or yoga students, the cyclops have it tough: they face microaggressions and overt xenophobia on a daily basis. However, they are bent on finding love, cultivating community, and navigating life alongside the two-eyed majority with patience and the occasional bout of rage. Through this parallel universe, Dhaliwal comments on race, difference, beauty, and belonging, touching on all of these issues with her distinctive deadpan humour steeped in millennial references. Cyclopedia Exotica is a triumph of hilarious candor.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together