Early Book Review: Tina's Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary by Keshni Kashyap

Tina's Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary by Keshni Kashyap is a young adult graphic novel scheduled for release on January 3 2012. This story follows one high school student's take on life and love through the lense of an existential diary she is keeping for a school project. Tina M. is a sophomore at a private school, Yarborough Academy. She is the youngest in her Southern California intellectual Indian family and does not really feel that she has a place in any single group. Through the journal, complete with black and white illustrations, readers follow Tina through some high school adventures. Tina's semester includes the loss of her most important friendship, the drama club, betrayal, cultural quests, and an important kiss. The humor of Tina's personality paired with the illustrations, are perfect purveyors of the issues that one teenager might come across on her quest to find herself, if she can only bring herself to care about the answer.

Tina's Mouth might not be quite up to the comparisons made to Persepolis in some of the book's publicity, however it is still a well done and charming graphic novel. I really enjoyed Tina as a character. She is smart, a little snarky, and on the search for things that will make her happy in life. She does not judge others for their search for happiness, in fact she even supports the actions of her siblings that are a little different from what the family would like them to be. Tina encounters confusion, disappointment, betrayal, and even more questions about life as she searches for her answers. I found her to be a highly relatable character, and one that brought me back to the drama that is high school. Some of the secondary characters were a little thinner, but since we experience the world through Tina's diary that is not unexpected. We see only what Tina sees and processes about them, and frankly some people really do act like stereotypes, at least until we can get past the persona they present to the world.

I would recommend Tina's Mouth to high school students, particularly the girls and those that are a little more philosophically inclined or mature than their peers. Parents, librarians, adults that work with teens, and adults that simply enjoy young adult literature will also enjoy this glimpse into one normal high school student's search for more that just getting by day by day. Maybe reading this graphic novel will even encourage some readers to look further into existentialism or to look a little closer at what might make their own life a little happier.