Sincerely, Harriet Is the Best Kind of Graphic Novel for Kids

Graphic Universe

It’s 1996 in Chicago, and Harriet Flores is bored. Not just bored, but bored. It’s summer vacation, but since she and her parents just moved to Chicago, she has no friends from school. Her parents are busy with trying to get situated in their new jobs, so she can’t even explore the city. The only person around is Pearl, their landlady who lives downstairs, and she’s old enough to have grandchildren. It’s not a situation most 13-year-olds would envy.

So, Harriet tries to pretend her life is much more interesting. When she writes postcards to Hannah, her friend from camp last summer, she invents explorations that she has taken around Chicago. She convinces herself that their postal carrier is mentally ill because he barks at dogs. And all of the sounds she hears around the apartment have to mean that the house is haunted. As the summer goes on, Harriet learns more about the power of stories—they can be used to escape, to avoid, to communicate, and, lastly, to inspire connection.

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Graphic novels are at their best when they use the structure to tell a story in a way that a nonillustrated novel cannot. Sincerely, Harriet manages to evoke the feeling of an indie movie—it’s unafraid to take its time to get to a point. Wordless panels are used to drive home the sense of isolation and uncertainty that Harriet is feeling. The book manages to feel slow, but in a compelling, realistic way, and it isn’t afraid to leave things a little ambiguous. The question of whether Harriet is harboring a deep crush on one of her camp friends isn’t one that needs to be answered if Harriet herself isn’t quite sure.

The art of the novel is wonderfully playful at times, and it manages to subtly change over the course of the book to convey Harriet’s state of mind. At the beginning of the book, the tone is wistful, with muted colors. By the end of the book, the colors have grown brighter (which can be seen by comparing Harriet’s shirt in the beginning to the same one at the end of the book). Even the environment reflects Harriet’s mood. Hint—pay close attention to the pizza at the beginning of the book compared to the pizza closer to the end. The small details (such as the tag in Harriet’s dress always sticking up) that author and artist Sarah Winifred Searle include are a treat.

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Sincerely, Harriet also does a wonderful job of portraying the struggles that come with an invisible disability—both those experienced directly by the person and those that affect their families—and how discrimination can compound those struggles. How should you deal with the knowledge your family has upended their lives and goals to ensure you get the best treatment? How can you tell if a stumble is just a stumble—or a portent of something more ominous? Often, these are questions that don’t have static right or wrong answers, and the book does a great job of conveying the guilt and uncertainty that come with this kind of situation.

There’s nothing in this book that I would consider inappropriate for precocious readers, but it may be appreciated more by older elementary-aged children, simply because the book takes its time in unwinding the plot, which is mostly based around character development. Younger children may find the pacing boring, but as always with kids, your experience may vary.

In all, I found Sincerely, Harriet to be a work of art. It’s not too often you encounter a book that is intentionally slow, yet interesting, and the art surrounding the story enhanced the reading experience. Yes, it’s juvenile fiction, but it gives credit to elementary-aged readers by feeling more mature than many other books published in the genre. It doesn’t simplify Harriet’s complicated feelings, which makes it a satisfying read for adults, too.

Sincerely, Harriet is written and illustrated by Sarah Winifred Searle and published by Graphic Universe, the graphic-novel imprint of Minneapolis’s Lerner Publishing Group.