French Milk, A Graphic Travel Memoir

Graphic novels are hot right now. The trend is something I've never much understood. I was never a comic book reader and my attention even wanes over daily cartoons. I prefer a good old-fashioned read with pages full of words.

However, the other day I decided to give a graphic novel a try.

The book I picked up was called French Milk and was written and illustrated by Lucy Knisley.

I initially picked up the book because it looks like a regular book. It is the shape and size of a normal paperback. I was surprised to flip through the pages and see that it was a graphic novel.

Well...graphic "novel" isn't really the right genre title. The book isn't fiction. It's memoir. Travel memoir, to be exact.

The book is an illustrated travel journal of a five-week trip to Paris that the author took with her mom.

It didn't take me very long to read, and it didn't convince me to abandon the traditional, text-laden travel memoir.

But I did find it interesting, if more from a composition standpoint than from a reader's standpoint. I liked seeing how she really pared down her text and used pictures to get across details that a traditional writer would have described with words.

Nonetheless, I think the next travel memoir I pick up will probably be full of words, words, words.