Last Pict - Rick Boven

Title: Last Pict
Author: Rick Boven
Genre: Graphic Novel - General Fiction
Published: 2011
Formats: Ebook

Available at:
Amazon
Amazon UK
Barnes & Nobel

I don't normally read Graphic Novels but when I got an email from the publisher Nan Bu Nan Publishing to consider reviewing "Last Pict" I decided to give it a go. This was mainly because I was curious to see how well a graphic novel would work on my Kindle as I had never tried one on it previously. As I read it, I was happy to see that it looked great on a Kindle, and for this story I think the greyscale nature of the images worked well.

Last Pict is basically a short story in graphic form about the troubles of a young boy named Evan who just doesn't fit in at school. The story covers the discussion between the principle and the boy's father after he has been beaten up at school for drawing portraits of his class mates. We see through this discussion how a child's love and interest in something can be destroyed by the unthinking remarks of a parent in an instant.

I believe that this story will reach the hearts of most people, especially parents and I myself felt deeply for Evan as the story progressed. The images created by Rick Boven really do justice to the story and you can really see the Evan's dejection as he listens to what his father is saying to the principle. He has basically managed to put across a big and important message in a subtle and memorable way with this novel.

On a personal level, after reading this I am going to make sure that I am always there to do creative and art related things with my daughter if that is what she enjoys. I would never want to make my child feel the way that Evan appears to feel in this story. This was made even more definite after my wife read the book and basically called the father in the story an "arse".

Overall, this is very thoughtful story that is told with some clever drawings. For anyone like myself who thinks graphic novels are all just sci-fi, supernatural, etc. then you should read this and see how wrong you can be. I know it has changed some of my opinions on this form of storytelling and I suspect I will read others in the future.