Library Journal’s Best Graphic Novels of 2023 list includes two D+Q titles!

The Naked Tree illustrated by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, written by Park Wan-suh, and translated by Janet Hong. In 1951 Seoul, besieged by the North Korean army, Lee Kyeonga works at an American Post Exchange, managing Korean portrait painters who create souvenirs for U.S. soldiers. Living with her grieving mother, the young woman struggles with guilt over her brothers’ deaths and pines for an exiled painter from the north. Eisner Award winner Gendry-Kim adapts Park’s acclaimed novel with boldly expressive linework. An affecting coming-of-age story amidst political upheaval, foreign occupation, and the devastations of war.

Roaming by Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki. A weeklong vacation to NYC finds three Canadian college students contemplating their pasts and navigating their uncertain futures. The loose, flowing linework imbues the characters and their surroundings with propulsive energy in this tender examination of young adulthood that emphasizes how exhilarating it is to be young, to be in love, to explore new places and aspects of oneself, and to experience each emotion, good or bad, with newfound and at times overwhelming intensity.