A Tender, Heartfelt Graphic Novel on Healing and Kindness

Our main character, Sori, is in middle school. At the start of the book, she is attending a private academy near where her grandmother lives. The book has a heavy opening where we learn some very key things about Sori. A girl in her class at the academy is getting bullied, and Sori is finally tired of standing by and doing nothing, so she tells the bullies to stop. This, of course, puts a target on her. The bullied girl feels guilty and thanks her profusely and Sori doesn’t regret standing up for her, even though now Sori is also getting bullied. The girl Sori helped decides to go to another school and Sori does too — she moves back to live with her father and transfers to a middle school there.

Sori is carrying a lot of trauma from how bad the bullying was at her last school, and she’s terrified of the same thing happening at the new school, so she self-isolates. The isolation backfires and the other students are projecting their assumptions on her. As she is sitting at her desk at her new school, she starts crying and in looking for a tissue, she finds a letter taped under the desk. It’s not just any letter, it’s specifically a little packet and notes that say, “Welcome to our school, this letter was written to help you navigate this place.” It has a seating chart with everyone’s names and photos, a map of the building with the fastest routes to certain places, some inside scoop on the teachers, and other things that would be wildly helpful for a new student who is starting in the middle of the year.

It also has a clue to help Sori find the next letter. There are multiple letters and she learns so much more about the school and the people there. The letters also lead her to people who she was not expecting to be meeting. Sori doesn’t actually know who wrote these letters that seem to be for her, the new student.

I love the artwork in this graphic novel and especially the color palette that is used. The colors do as much in telling the story as the text does. This book is so incredibly beautiful and I loved it. Content warnings for bullying and childhood illness.