School Library Journal Review
Gr 5 Up-In Beirut, the residents of an apartment building huddle in one room, hiding from sniper rifles and nearby shelling. As the author worries about her absent parents, she describes each neighbor, piecing together the effects of Lebanon's civil war. With stark black-and-white artwork, the confined action captures the solemnity and impotence of the war's victims. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In the tradition of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Lebanese author-artist Abirached offers readers a memory of her childhood in war-torn Beirut. Abirached and her brother are young children, separated from their parents during a particularly violent bombing. The violence brings all the people of Abirached's apartment complex together, however, and they spend hours together in the foyer, waiting for her parents' return. Abirached's b&w inks offer a stark contrast in hard, geometric patterns that make images at once abstract and fully representative of her childhood memories. The characters, despite their cartoonish nature, show a variety of emotions, and Abirached's gift for pacing makes tense moments appropriately full of anxiety. It is as often the space she leaves empty as the drawings themselves that tell the story-and each detail offered provides insight into the horrors of growing up in a war zone. A winner for young readers and adults alike. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)? (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Comparisons to Marjane Satrapis Persepolis are inevitable; like Satrapis autobiographical graphic novel, this book (also first published in French) presents a girlhood under fire in the war-torn Middle East. Here the setting is 1984 Beirut, a city segregated by religion with Christian and Muslim residents locked in unrelenting civil war. The storys focus is a single harrowing night when Zeinas parents, visiting her grandparents a few blocks away, must make their way home through heavy bombing. Neighbors have gathered in the familys foyer -- the safest place left -- to wait out the shelling and hope for Zeinas parents return. Abirached skillfully weaves flashbacks and explanatory asides into the narrative while maintaining the evenings tension. Despite the oppressive atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, much-needed moments of levity shine through as neighbors try to distract Zeina, her younger brother, and themselves by telling amusing anecdotes, re-enacting scenes from Cyrano de Bergerac, baking a cake, and partaking of fine whiskey. Stark, dramatic illustrations (mostly black backgrounds with white-outlined characters and features) include repeated motifs (flowers, dragons) that effectively capture elements of the culture and lend nuance to the high emotions through small changes in expression or detail. A poignant portrayal of a community determined to hold onto optimism and humanity under dire circumstances. katie bircher (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A stark look at the civil war in Lebanon in the 1980s, as seen through the eyes of a child anxiously awaiting her parents' arrival from her grandmother's house on the other side of the demarcation line. With shells and gunfire delivering staccato bursts of violence, young Zeina and her brother have been sequestered within the small foyer in their apartment. This tiny room offers the most protection from the constant artillery fire, and it becomes a place for neighbors in the building to congregate and seek asylum. Though war is raging and death always seems to loom near with shells falling and snipers possibly crouching behind every wall, Zeina and her neighbors try to live the best they canmaking cakes, acting out scenes from Cyrano de Bergerac and drinking strong Turkish coffee. Through austere black-and-white illustrations (with a detectable influence from Persepolis' Marjane Satrapi), Abirached easily conveys the overarching sense of unease and how something as simple as a visit to grandma's can inspire fear. Abirached's readers will instantly empathize with those who do not readily have access to simple luxuries many take for grantedrunning water, electricity or the simple return of our loved ones from an outingand this may perhaps spur them to re-examine what they may have otherwise overlooked. Quietly mesmerizing and thought-provoking. (Graphic memoir. 12 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A casual browser could be forgiven for picking up this graphic novel and not realizing it wasn't Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2003) until a fair way in. With its childlike visual stylization and stark black-and-white forms depicting the life of a young girl in a Middle Eastern country at war, this screams out for comparison to Satrapi's classic. However, while Persepolis examined the political and religious ramifications on a nation through the life of one growing child, Abirached's tale focuses tightly on people and their deep ties to one another as neighbors gather in the Beirut apartment of Zeina and her little brother while they await their parents' return from across a city under siege. As she puts an accessible face on a foreign culture through her characters, Abirached also distinguishes her piece with striking and unique design work. Her use of heavily contrasted black-and-white spaces, as well as elegant flourishes like crowding an anxious room with ticks and tocks, suggests an impressive new talent following in the footsteps of an established master.--Karp, Jesse Copyright 2010 Booklist
