Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 

“My friend Jenny Mei is sad.” The narrator of Tracy Subisak’s Jenny Mei Is Sad (Little, Brown, June 2021) tells us this on the book’s first spread as the two of them walk to school. We can see it in Jenny’s hunched shoulders and scowling face. But sometimes it’s hard to discern when someone is grieving, especially if they mask it. A good friend, though, knows how to listen; how to spot churning, if hidden, feelings; and how, in nuanced ways, to show support.

It’s hard to tell that Jenny Mei is sad, we read, because she still smiles and engages with classmates at school. She even, as pictured below, makes people laugh. Other times, however, the anger that is coupled with the sadness rears its head, and there are consequences at school. “[O]n those days I wait,” we read. The narrator is always there for Jenny Mei; in fact, Jenny tells her she’s a good listener. They have a “quiet walk home.” They play and eat popsicles. Our narrator asks Jenny how she’s doing, but she “doesn’t answer.” They both know that “being sad is hard.” Without a word said, Jenny even sheds a tear. But friends are there for “fun and not-fun and everything in between.”

This remarkably compassionate story sensitively and delicately captures what it means to be there for a friend and the complicated ways in which grief and anger work. (The book’s final spread gives a visual clue as to the source of Jenny’s complicated feelings.) And it pulls it all off without an ounce of finger-wagging. Subisak never gets in her own way and lets these spacious, uncluttered illustrations — rendered in India ink, Japanese watercolor, pastel, and colored pencils — capture the inherent drama of Jenny Mei’s struggles.

Here are some illustrations. …

 

JENNY MEI IS SAD. Copyright © 2021 by Tracy Subisak. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Little, Brown and Company, New York.