Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, a modern retelling of Little Women by Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo

Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy: A Graphic Novel: A Modern Retelling of Little Women by Rey Terciero

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this. So much. Little Women is one of those iconic texts and retellings of iconic texts can be challenging things. Do you stick with the iconic or do you go for something new? Do you retell texture or detail, sensation or sentence? It’s a balancing act and one that will never wholly reproduce the original. But it shouldn’t. Books – stories – life – they evolve. Words grow, words shift, words change, and that which broke our heart at age six can turn us into warriors at age thirty-six. Everything changes. Why should our stories be any different?

And so this is no perfect adaptation, because I think no adaptation can be perfect. It simply can’t. It’s never that original, it’s never that point in time, it’s never the moment when we pick up a book for the first time. It’s an echo, a memory, but in the hands of Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo, it’s perfect. I accept the flaws of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy (and Peggy!) because it’s so utterly, utterly gorgeous. Yes, the chapters tend to devolve into vignettes, and plots are shifted and detail nuanced, but when it’s as beautiful and rich and lovely as this, I don’t care.

And it made me love Amy. So much. Amy! The actual worst becoming the actual best! Wonders will never cease. This is joyful, and I love it. We should not separate our stories from the world; we should take them and reshape them and make them parts of our lives. And we should give them such an ending as Terciero and Indigo give this book, one of heart, hope and utter, utter power.

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