The Prince and the Dressmaker

A friend at work recommended Jen Wang's The Prince and the Dressmaker to me. In it, Frances, a dressmaker working under someone (lol it reminded me a lot of The Gown in that way) makes someone exactly the sort of dress they want, to the consternation of her boss.  When he's reprimanding her, a man comes looking to hire her for a mysterious client, who Frances discovers is the Crown Prince Sebastian of Belgium. Prince Sebastian enjoys dressing in women's dresses and wants Frances to design dresses that everyone will notice and remember. Prince Sebastian starts going out on the town dressed as the Lady Crystallia, and Frances' dresses are indeed getting noticed, to the point where the pair worry people will put two and two together and figure out just who Lady Crystallia really is.

I loved this book.  Wang's art style is perfect (and I'm glad she decided to make them teenagers - she included a sample page of the pair as adults and the art just didn't have the same charm that the final version has).  I also loved how Sebastian's parents supported him in the end, especially his father; I wish that everyone could be as lucky as Sebastian was in this regard.

All in all, The Prince and the Dressmaker is a delightful story about being true to yourself and your friends. I very much recommend it!

In Real Life

I don't really remember what attracted me to In Real Life, the new graphic novel by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang.  I've read some stuff by Cory Doctorow and liked it, so when In Real Life finally showed up at the library, I was more than happy to read it.

In Real Life is the story of Anda, a girl who falls in love with the new MMORPG Coarsegold Online.  Her mother lets her play under the stipulation that she only hang out with girls her age, something relatively easy because of the guild Anda has joined.  But one of her new friends, Lucy aka Sarge, talks Anda into killing gold farmers for real world money.  Anda agrees and life is good until she meets Raymond, a gold farmer from China.  Raymond is the first gold farmer to actually talk to her.  And so she starts to learn about his life and the horrid conditions under which he lives (he farms gold for hours every day, and is suffering from a back injury but doesn't have a doctor or coverage to get it treated).  Things come to a head when Anda's mother discovers the money coming into her Paypal account and Sarge discovers Anda's friendship with a gold farmer.

In Real Life was a really interesting story about economics, video games, and bullying (sort of).  It was also a really interesting look at how we take our lives here in the West for granted (and what it's like elsewhere in the world).