This spare memoir humanizes families trapped in war zones, and their experiences should resonate with young adult audiences. The drawings manage to convey a range of emotions while also incorporating humor and subtle nuances.

Stark, b&w illustrations are very effective and help to portray the disconnect between surreal experiences and daily life. She also relates her sense of wonder when the war quietly ends in 1991, and she and her family can cross the street and walk freely. 'I remember' is repeated throughout as she describes commonplace experiences (power outages and bombings juxtaposed against birthday parties and bedtime stories). Told from her viewpoint as an adult, and running in roughly chronological order, the narrator describes her experiences in a matter-of-fact, unsentimental manner. Here-and throughout-Abirached shares (and readers feel) a loss that cannot be named.' -Publisher Weekly, 'Adopting a simple, straightforward approach, this graphic novel relates a young girl's memories of growing up in war-torn Lebanon. When an attack forced Abirached, her schoolmates, and teachers to stay at school overnight, she realized that 'our teachers were as scared as we were.' In the middle of her account, Abirached abandons words and uses scratchy white lines on black pages to draw remembered moments of peace: a jar of olives, a swing, a coop full of chickens. Abirached's younger brother assembled a collection of shrapnel, and the author recalls watching the Olympics ('I remember Florence Griffith Joyner's nails').

There was no water for showers, but an endless supply of cigarettes. Her mother tired of getting her windshield replaced every time a shell hit, and she eventually drove without it.

Collecting memories introduced via the recurring phrase 'I remember,' Abirached's prose and artwork convey, with grace and humor, the way her family's life during the war shifted from mundane to ominous and back again. 'As with Abirached's debut, A Game for Swallows, this b&w graphic memoir of growing up in Lebanon during that country's civil war invites comparison to Persepolis.

I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached