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Hollander's illustrated memoir combines typed episodes from her childhood in the 1940s and '50s, when money was tight and parents were laissez-faire, and art that cheerfully merges collage, photos, and her trademark scribbles. Her dry, straightforward writing contrasts nicely with her bright artwork. In brief chapters, readers learn, for instance, how Sylvia, whose comic-strip adventures Hollander would serialize for more than three decades, was born of young Hollander observing her mother with her three best friends. One chapter recalls Hollander clearing all the trash from her yard, thinking this alone would make a garden grow, which leads to her memories of trying desperately to figure out what sex was. She relays with clarity those moments when the fog of youth lifted to reveal the world as it was, such as in uncomfortable encounters with men (and the normalizing reactions to them) and her belief that her growing body was the true danger. Relegating college, marriage, divorce, and career to the final few pages, this is foremost a coming-of-age story, well remembered and charmingly told.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2018 Booklist

Publishers Weekly
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An annotated scrapbook of memories, these tales of urban family life in the 1950s unfold like stories from a favorite aunt: full of literal and figurative color, perhaps lacking continuity and resolution, but that's not the point. As a young Jewish girl in working-class Chicago, Hollander found her greatest pleasure was listening to her mother gossip: "My mother was always in the kitchen with a neighbor. They didn't work. They had no money. They took care of the children and drank coffee." These gab sessions inspired Sylvia, the big-haired, cat-loving heroine of Hollander's long-running comic strip, whose conversational, tangential pacing is echoed in the graphic memoir. The sketchbook style, including Hollander's notes to self ("too much hair"), adds to the feeling of being let in on the juicy tidbits of table talk. Hollander started her strip in the late 1970s,when "a woman cartoonist was an oxymoron," but her scribbly characters, collaged with photos and mixed-media backdrops, and her raw, chatty honesty feel as contemporary as any Jezebel article and as salty-delicious as the Lady Aster's Chicken Fat Hollander spread on her childhood sandwiches. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.