Doctorow, Cory and Illustrated by Wang, Jen In Real Life 192 pgs.
First Second, 2014. $17.99 Content: Language: G (0 swears); Mature Content: G
Violence: G. GRAPHIC NOVEL
Anda’s new hobby is playing an online game called Coarsegold
online. Thanks to a healthy dose of girl power, she is making online friends,
having fun, accomplishing things, and even earning real money. One of the ways
she earns money is by ‘killing’ the avatars of gold farmers, players who don’t
actually play the game, but do mind numbing repetitive tasks to earn in-game
money and items, then sell these things for real money to active players. When
Anda makes friends with a gold farmer, she realizes that these are real people
trying so hard to earn a living in countries that don’t value them. Anda learns
some valuable lessons about friendship, bravery, economics, and life.
I think this graphic novel would be confusing to a reader who
not familiar with the economics and culture of massively-multiplayer role
playing games. (For Example: World of Warcraft). Given experience with those, this book is pretty fascinating, as
the economics and real life impacts of the game come to life for the teen main
character. The artwork is awesome and filled with variety of layout, expressive
characters, and action. I have chosen to
recommend this for high school level due to the complexity of the political/economics
content.
HS – OPTIONAL Reviewer: Stephanie Elementary School Librarian
& Author.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment