No Ivy League

By Hazel Newlevant. Published by Lion Forge. 

Softcover, 216 pages, Monochrome, 2019. 

When 17-year-old Hazel takes a summer job clearing ivy from the forest in Portland, Oregon, the only plan is to earn some extra cash to put toward concert tickets. Homeschooled, affluent, and sheltered, Hazel soon finds that working side by side with at-risk teens leaves no room for comforting illusions of equality and understanding. This uncomfortable and compelling memoir is an important story of a teen’s awakening to the racial insularity of the upper class, the power of white privilege, and the hidden history of segregation in Portland.

Readers will be right there with the protagonist for her rollercoaster of emotions.No Ivy League is a solid first chapter … that allows the artist’s strengths to really shine through. Hazel Newlevant is a cartoonist on the rise who has a deft understanding of how to make a reader care about a character.

Pierce Lydon, Newsarama