If there’s a universal tough time, one that everybody has to go through, eighth grade is probably it.
Young adolescents grow at different rates and discover their individuality and their interests, experiences that at first can be as alienating as they are exciting. The transformation of bodies and minds lurches along, pushed haphazardly by gusts of hormones.
Jay Violet, the protagonist of A-Okay, a new graphic novel from White River Junction cartoonist Jarad Greene, is in the thick of it. His best friend has drifted away and Jay has adjusted his own school schedule in such a way that he doesn’t see many of his friends. He’s also dealing with a serious case of acne, and the resulting damage to his self-confidence.
The awkwardness and acne are straight out of Greene’s life, but strained through the filter of fiction. The story in A-Okay started life as an autobiographical work, but Greene changed course.
“I think you’re trying to gain more independence at that time,” Greene, 32, said in an interview at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Greene is a 2017 graduate and is now the school’s administrative and development coordinator.
A-Okay appeared on bookstore shelves this week. Greene will participate at 7 p.m. Thursday in an online conversation with cartoonist and fellow CCS graduate Tillie Walden, sponsored by the Norwich Bookstore. The event is free, but registration is required. To register, go to norwichbookstore.com.
In fictionalizing his story, Greene conflated the details of his eighth grade year in Lutz, Fla., (“Lutz rhymes with ‘boots,’ not ‘butts,” Greene said) with the details of his treatment for acne, which took place during his senior year of high school and again in his 20s.
Before that idea emerged, Greene had written an essay, in cartoon form, about his acne treatment, and the response was so positive that he worked to expand it into a book. That proved more challenging.
“Part of writing it was organizing my own thoughts about it,” Greene said. “I think I had a lot of sort of baggage about it to deal with.”
Acne is an odd subject for a memoir, he said. How much does someone want to read about it? At the same time, in an image-conscious world, acne can be debilitating, sapping a sufferer’s sense of self-worth.
Greene’s agent helped him see the story in a new way, asking him how he wanted to get the story to people it might help. They opted to “age it down,” he said. He drafted a new proposal and publisher Harper Collins bought it.
“I just knew I could make it work,” he said.
Because he’d spent so much time organizing his story, the writing, which Greene did visually, drawing thumbnails and writing as he went along, moved quickly. He worked through the early months of the pandemic and documented his progress in a series of video-log posts on YouTube, the last of which appeared this week.
Relatively few cartoonists document how they work, said Greene, who’s been cartooning since he was a teenager. “I was sort of obsessed with the lives of cartoonists,” he said.
Eighth grade made a good setting for a teen dealing with acne, in part because the interior struggle more closely matches the interpersonal struggles kids face in late middle school.
With acne, “a lot of it is sort of a private experience,” Greene said. “You’re sort of struggling with it and hoping people don’t notice,” though it’s something everyone can see.
The same is true of how teens start to sort things out. Friends find new interests and drift apart, which can feel painful. As Jay Violet gets deeper into art, much as Greene did at his age, his old friends are forming a band and they’re not in touch as they had been.
“I think eighth grade is when people start picking up these extracurriculars,” Greene said. “It just like organically happens that way.”
As Greene did, Jay Violet attends a magnet school that requires him to get out the door at 6:30 a.m. and ride two buses from rural Lutz into Tampa. True to middle school life, most of Jay’s meaningful interactions derive from his relationships at school, though he’s close to his sister, who is a couple of years older.
Greene’s first book, Scullion: A Dishwasher’s Guide to Mistaken Identity, also is aimed at middle-grade readers, as is his next book, which is under contract with Harper Collins.
“I think I like the types of stories that fall into that readership,” he said. Coming of age, navigating relationships, discovering interests, all of those aspects interest him, he said.
“Part of it is a little unexplainable,” he said. “It’s where my work kind of landed.” His drawing style and use of color lend themselves to stories for tweens and young teens.
It is a tough age. How would he counsel an eighth grader?
“I think I would say, it can be really hard, but having patience … things kind of work themselves out over time,” he said. “You don’t have to figure everything out in one day.”
Shaker Bridge opensIf high school angst is more your speed, Shaker Bridge Theatre in Enfield opens a production of I and You, a play that centers on a meeting of two teens.
Lauren Gunderson’s 2016 two-hander follows Caroline, who’s kept at home by a serious illness, and Anthony, a handsome athlete who shows up at her bedside with a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and a related assignment for English class.
When it opened in New York in January 2016, Times drama critic Ben Brantley called I and You a “perky two-character study in adolescent confusions and cosmic mysteries.” There’s also a wicked plot twist.
I and You is in production at Shaker Bridge Theatre in Enfield’s Whitney Hall through Nov. 21. Tickets are $28 for Thursday night shows, $35 for Friday through Sunday, and $16 for students. To reserve call 603-448-3750 or email shakerbridge@gmail.com. For information: shakerbridgetheatre.org.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.