Dear Mini: A Graphic Memoir, Book One

Natalie Norris

Fantagraphics

A vivid debut graphic memoir of adolescent resiliency.

This debut graphic memoir (the first of two books, with Book Two coming in 2025), is a bittersweet coming of age story that chronicles the author’s teenage experiences with sexual assault, PTSD, and resiliency. Dear Mini is not a cautionary tale, however, it is a vivid (at turns hilariously and uncomfortably so) depiction of adolescent agency in the face of trauma, tracing Norris’s journey from wayward wild-child to harnessing her adult voice after almost a decade of silence.

Told in the form of an illustrated letter to an old friend, Dear Mini recounts the author’s experience going abroad to attend a language immersion program in France after her sophomore year of high school. She meets Mini, an Austrian student who shares her predilection for illicit adventure, and the two quickly form a bond that they expect to last well after they go their separate ways. But when Natalie visits Mini ten months after their last face-to-face, something has changed. Their nocturnal exploits veer head-on into disaster. Norris’s spirited and free-flowing page designs and full color cartooning bring her frank voice and personality to life, making Dear Mini one of the most compelling graphic novel debuts of 2023.