Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Night Shift by Debi Gliori #bookreview


Debi Gliori, the writer and illustrator of this book, normally creates books for children. This book, on the other hand, is aimed at an older age group as it covers depression.

The afterword explains that she has been "spending most of [her] adult life living through periods of depressive illness" and that her "hope is that this book will help explain what we are going through."

The rest of the book is a series of small black-and-white drawings with little bits of text which tell the story of a female character and her struggle with depression, the depression being represented by a dragon. Luckily it has a happy ending which I thought was nicely done both in the words and the final picture, the way the dragon has disappeared and become something else. 

The book takes a few minutes to read as it is short but the art is good. The black-and-white illustrations suit it given the subject matter. Perhaps the final picture could have been in full colour to emphasise the "shift" that occurs. Maybe this book will help others with depressive illnesses, or help introduce the topic to youngsters so they can better understand it, and if it does then that is a good thing.




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