A Map to the Sun Graphic Novel Review

The cover to Sloane Leong’s 2020 graphic novel A Map to the Sun is striking: the main character Ren poised to shoot a basketball with a determined focus, palm trees and birds in the background that bring to mind a sunny beach setting, and a bright color scheme of pinks, yellows, and blues that evokes either a sunset or the rising dawn. “Vibrant and poetic,” endorses Gene Luen Yang on the cover, author of another recent basketball-themed graphic novel, the excellent Dragon Hoops, which I also wrote about last year.

Vibrant is definitely a good adjective to describe A Map to the Sun, as its use of vivid, bright colors is one of the standout features of the novel. Flipping through the book, I see visually appealing colors of pinks, oranges, greens, yellows, and reds. If you look at the pages from the side of the book, it almost reminds me of a collection of brightly colored construction paper packs. The colors immediately draw you into the book and help bring you into a world that is imaginative, evocative, and magical, even as it depicts the ups and downs of teenage life. The first pages of the book stood out to me in its colors and imagery: palm trees and outdoor basketball courts, surfboards and waves. The colors shift every few pages, corresponding to different plot developments and moods. I need to do a second read to see if I could see even more specific connections between…