Esther's Notebooks: Tales from my ten-year-old life

Celebrated acquiring my fourth - FOURTH (!) - library card by checking this out. I'm also, like many people, still waiting for an English-language publisher to publish vols 5 and 6 of Sattouf's masterful Arab of the Future series. WHERE IS IT?!

Anyway, this book centers on a young Parisian middle schooler, Esther. We follow her when she's 10, 11 and 12 years old, from 2015-2018 (I think). These are comic strips that have appeared (weekly?) in a French newspaper, and that Sattouf creates after regularly interviewing his friend's daughter, the titular Esther.

I love Sattouf's work. It's brutal but also... humane? Esther is kind of awful and wonderful. She's imaginative, materialistic, already pre-addicted to an iPhone (she LONGS for one in almost every page), feminist, chauvinist, a bully, homophobic, caring, conscientious, and everything. I definitely saw myself in her. She's innocent, trying to fit into a world - including all its broken parts (the homophobia, eeesh, can these kids chill out about gay people) - and trying to figure out herself in it. As she grows, we see her confidence grow. I LOVED her moments of courage and imagination, when she's like “sorry but fuck that” lol. Sattouf sometimes centralizes the casual cruelty of children (Arab of the Future had a LOT of that), and tbh middle school cruelty is the last thing I want to revisit, but I also appreciated how steady-eyed and non-judgmental and... resilient? He also portrays things? Like, life is definitely suffering - but it's also very funny and there are moments of sweetness.