I’m A Mess, by Einat Tsarfati and Translated by Annette Appel, (July 2024, Mad Cave Studios), $14.99, ISBN: 9781545800867
Ages 13+
Funny and painfully honest, I’m a Mess is an honest-to-goodness meditation on living with messiness. With sections on types of messiness, how to organize without really organizing, and that “golden group of gods”: the Organized, Tsarfati finds the funny parts of being disorganized as well as the advantages: learning to adjust, the ability to improvise, and a well-developed visual memory, for starters. 3-color illustrations are humorous: various parent groups throughout the ages criticize their children’s messiness, as with the Viking father who laments,”In the name of Odin, look at this living room! Are you a barbarian?” A visual list of objects that a “messy person loses in two months” shows a variety of sunglasses, keys, coins, and pens; cross-sections of an organized person’s brain show an array of clearly labeled folders, while the messy person’s brain has three very general, very battered folders. But Tsarfati doesn’t leave us marooned on an isle of disorder: there are helpful tips on non-traditional organizing (the desk spread is my favorite), and she is very big on acceptance. I’m a Mess is a fun addition to graphic novel collections that teens and college students will enjoy.
Mom Read It 