Review: Sweaterweather by Sara Varon

Title: Sweaterweather
Author: Sara Varon
Publisher: First Second
Age Group: Everyone
Category: Graphic Novel
Release date: February 2nd, 2016
Pages: 128 (Hardcover)
Rating: 3 out of 5
Source: Publisher
Goodreads | Amazon | Author

Back before Odd Duck, before Robot Dreams, Sara Varon created Sweaterweather. This endearing, quirky volume is a captivating look into Varon's creative process. It combines short comics stories, essays, and journal entries, and invites the reader into the world of Sara Varon: where adorable, awkward anthropomorphic animals walk the streets of Brooklyn and a surprising, sideways revelation is waiting around every corner.

Sweaterweather is a combination of cute, funny, and meaningful comics.  All of them are quite short- only a few pages long at most- but enjoyable to read for graphic novel lovers at any age.  My favorite part of reading this collection was the author's thoughts at the beginning of each comic, explaining the inspiration and ideas behind them.  I was surprised to find that many of the stories had little to no dialogue, but that made it better, seeing as there was so much expression in the art.  Sara explains that many of the scenes and characters were taken from her everyday life, so although I wasn't familiar with her work previous to this book, I found it interesting that she's taken real people and turned them into the animals you see in each comic.

Overall, Sweaterweather is a charming look into what goes into Sara Varon's work.  There are ice-cream-eating dinosaurs, cats that long to fly, and many more stories that will bring a smile to your face as you read through.  Some are more informative, like a comic on bee-keeping, while others are clever, such as a comic that has one scene per letter of the alphabet.  While this book is aimed more towards older fans of Varon, newer fans will still be able to get a taste of her storytelling abilities.