Cartoonist Ngozi Ukazu (Check, Please!; Bunt!) combines introspective discussions of identity inspired by The Bluest Eye with Freaky Friday-style body swapping to create Flip, an earnest, contemplative graphic novel about two teens who suddenly switch bodies.
Brown-skinned Mission Springs Prep senior Chi-Chi plucks up the courage to ask her "rich white boy" crush, Flip, to the senior festival. She creates an elaborate promposal and e-mails it to him the day before presentations in their AP English class. Flip mistakes the video for his class presentation and plays it in front of the class--Flip's rejection is kind ("I'm sorry Chi-Chi. I just... don't know you that well") but public. Embarrassed Chi-chi runs out of the classroom and silently excoriates herself, wishing Flip Henderson liked her. While outside, she slips, hits her head, and envisions herself taking a doll-sized Chi-Chi apart. When she wakes, she's in Flip Henderson's body--and, of course, Flip is in hers.
Thickly lined panels zig-zag across the page or overlap in moments of action and intense emotion. Like Pecola Breedlove's belief she will be beautiful if she has blue eyes, Chi-Chi believes she will have value if Flip loves her. Ukazu uses this to include a visual cue: any time Flip is inhabiting Chi-Chi's body, her eyes are blue. Both Chi-Chi and Flip are forced into self-reflection: Chi-Chi calls out Flip for his unconscious bias around race and sexuality; Flip forces Chi-Chi to recognize the violence in how she speaks to herself. Flip is a rare graphic novel that should please readers of literary fiction and comics. --Kharissa Kenner, school media specialist, Churchill School and Center