by Ali Bryan
Cormorant Books, 2024
At the start of Ali Bryan’s new YA novel, Leo—“65 kilos of farm chores and male siblings and meat and potatoes”—pins Grade 11 student Rowan on a wrestling mat. She can’t get up, she narrates, and her dad, who has ALS and is there watching the match, “can’t get out of his wheelchair.” Told with empathy, humour and Bryan’s sharp ear for dialogue, Takedown is an intense yet heartwarming story of a championship-level teenage wrestler who, as outside attention focuses on her athletic prowess, is also fighting for her family. The action scenes are accurate and visceral, but the novel’s heart is in relationships—friends, family, mentors—and Rowan’s struggle with grief.
by Reginald Wiebe and Dorothy Woodman
University of Alberta Press, 2023
It’s “not surprising that superhero comic books would include cancer in their narratives,” write authors Reginald Wiebe and Dorothy Woodman. “Cancer stories bring readers… into a world that may feel familiar or into uncharted territory occupying the public interest in a real and present existential threat.” In the popular Marvel comics, superheroes usually beat the villains. But when a superhero gets cancer, as happens in several comics, “the right thing to do is not always immediately apparent and conflicting desires can’t always be resolved into neat ethical categories.” The book shows how superheroes grapple with the loss of invincibility, allowing readers to do the same.
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