Esther's Notebooks

The hilarious, heartbreaking, and painfully true life of a girl growing up in Paris, from the acclaimed comic book artist and author of The Arab of the Future

Every week, the comic book artist Riad Sattouf has a chat with his friend's 10-year old daughter, Esther. She tells him about her life, her family, her school, her friends, her hopes, her dreams and her fears. And then he creates a one-page comic strip based on what she says.

This book is a collection of 156 of those strips, comprising the first three volumes as they appeared in Europe, spanning Esther's life from age 10 to 12.

As The Guardian noted: "Each page of Esther's Notebooks is self-contained--there's usually a neat punchline--but read them all, and you come to see that Sattouf has drawn a portrait of a generation: their hopes, dreams and cultural references; the way that their personalities, backgrounds--many of the children portrayed have parents who are immigrants--and preconceived ideas about sexuality begin to play out even before they've begun secondary school. The result is a bit like a cartoon version of Michael Apted's landmark TV series, Up. These funny, well-observed comics are fantastically daring."

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 01/24/2023
ISBN: 9780593316924
Pages: 168
Weight: 1.25lbs

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 08/01/2022 pg. 15
Booklist 11/01/2022 pg. 50
Publishers Weekly 11/21/2022