Kent State
Ratings10
Average rating4.4
Really well done and incredibly well-researched. The end notes explaining his research and choices were so additive. I knew some of this story but not all, so Backderf's research helped to fill in my knowledge gaps, making it easier to draw continued modern parallels to how this massacre happened. I appreciated that he spent a lot of time giving voice to Bill, Sandy, Allison, & Jeff and also included information about the other students who were shot. As a warning, the scenes of the shooting are very realistically graphic. This would be good for upper highschool to adult and would pair well with Deborah Wiles' audiobook of her novel-in-verse, Kent State.
This is a fascinating, exhaustively researched account of the Kent State Massacre. If you're not familiar with the event, the book provides all the background and context you need. I highly recommend it if you're interested in historical graphic novels.
I really enjoyed this and got really emotional reading it. Backderf does a great job with background, calling out politicians lies in little narrative asides, and telling readers about the victims. A must read for anyone interested in history, anti-war movements, and the shady shit that the government gets up to!
Super informative and super stark, especially in folding in examinations of minute details of the days leading up to the massacre alongside historical deconstruction of the details we know, years after the fact. Incredible.
As far as the history of the Vietnam era is concerned, I knew of the events of Kent State in 1970, but did not know the exact details. In my effort to know more, and seeing that this was on NPR's Best Books of 2020 list, I decided to check out this graphic novel. I must say that I learned alot about this event, from both sides of the story, but I also had some problems with it as well.
The best aspect of this book would have to be showing the shooting from both the student's and the National Guard's perspective. Major events like this do not happen in a vacuum, and showing what happened on both sides causes the reader to re-evaluate what they know about the events in history. Another aspect that this brings up for me personally, is understanding how riots and protests are handled today. It is insightful to see how much things have changed. Modern day policing, with training in de-escalation, as well as the use of rubber bullets, tasers and riot gas have shown that things have come a long way since the days of Kent State (to be clear, we still have a long way to go, but the differences are stark.) This makes the reader understand not only the events leading up to Kent State, but also how they reverberate into our time.
If there is one weakness to this text, I would say the art style is a negative for me. I am just not a fan of it, and I also do not like how we see only in black and white with shades of grey. While this is a highly subjective opinion, I'm just getting tired of the historical books that are tackling a serious topic being made without color. But this is more a personal preference than a true critique.
What could also be considered a negative is that we are shown a full cast of characters, and only a few are given true time to be shown in this story. Maybe it was because of the art style, but as someone who had little prior knowledge of the event, I found it difficult to tell these people apart.
All this made for an enlightening story, but an ultimately average graphic novel for me. I think that while it was good, and I would recommend reading it, I would get it from the library or a friend. Wait to buy it before making the judgement for yourself. I give it a three out of five.