No Ivy League

I got No Ivy League from my colleague Jason DeHart (THANK YOU!), while rooming together at the recent annual meeting of the Literacy Research Association. On the couple of flights home I had a chance to pore over it and very much enjoyed it. It focuses on Hazel, a home schooled 17-year-old living in Portland, Oregon who wants a summer job so she can travel to go see the band Guster. She gets hired for the No Ivy League, which employs a team of young people to cut back the invasive ivy from trees and in forests to preserve the local flora.

The crew. All the names but Hazel's were changed.

The League typically targets "at-risk" youth, who are much more diverse and worldly than Hazel. Pretty quickly, she learns just how sheltered and privileged she is, especially after doing some research into the origins of Oregon and past attempts to integrate the schools there.

I know what I have described so far makes this book sound like an afterschool special, but it is much more compelling and nuanced than one of those. Most of the reason is the care that the author took in detailing and recasting their own experiences as a home-schooled youth in this gig. That process is well-detailed in bonus material presented at the end of the book. As a result, the characters are palpable and real. Their conversations ring true. The situations are not sugar-coated or idealized, and the entire enterprise does not devolve into didactics or preaching. In the end, there are no pat answers or firm conclusions, only a dedication to learning more of the truth and trying better to ensure a sense of equity prevails.

No Ivy League was created by Hazel Newlevant, an artist and editor whose work has appeared in anthologies such as Comics for Choice and Chainmail Bikini. They have also published the graphic novellas Sugar Town and If This Be Sin. This book is their first graphic novel, and they speak about as a comic book series here and as a completed graphic novel here.

All of the reviews I have read of this book have been positive. Etelka Lehoczky wrote that it "may seem like a modest achievement at first glance, but it's got the audacity to direct you (ever so politely) to change your whole habit of thought. That's colossal." John Seven wrote, "For asking such big questions, Newlevant never gets preachy, never retreats into a frantic tone, and never tries to distance themself from their own place within the questions. It’s a sober account of something a lot of people go through and, unfortunately, continue to go through." Christopher summed it up as "a refreshingly honest, self-aware 'coming of age' story, that explores complex issues of race, gender, and privilege with care and nuance."

No Ivy League was published by Roar, and they offer a preview, teaching guide, and much more here. There is a large preview also available here. There are some profanity and a couple of sexual references in the book, so I would suggest it for adolescents mature enough to handle those.