Artichoke Tales - Hardcover

Megan Kelso lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and daughter. Her books include Queen of the Black Black, The Squirrel Mother, and Artichoke Tales.

“[S]urprising and wonderful... Kelso’s ligne claire artwork is consistently sweet and airy... The approach provides a likable surface for a story with much darker and stickier depths, about a land whose cultural heritage is rotting away in the aftermath of a civil war.”
- Douglas Wolk, The New York Times Book Review

“Kelso has sharp powers of observation, and many of her characters have a blank-eyed innocence that serves as a counterpunch to the acuity of the narratives.”
- People

“Kelso uses a warm, inviting style of soft colors and rounded, almost pillowy characters to explore the mysteries of people and relationships... Kelso’s stories invite contemplation.”
- Time

“Kelso perfectly marries words and images, telling stories of longing and casual cruelty with a mastery perfectly suited to the comics medium.”
- Publishers Weekly

“A coming-of-age story about a young girl from a family caught between sides in a civil war, set in a world similar to ours but where people have artichoke leaves instead of hair. ... Its delicate, rather impish black-and-white line work comes from the creator of the subtle and poignant Squirrel Mother.”
- Martha Cornog, Library Journal

“Kelso’s work radiates a warmth, poetry, sympathy, and simultaneously earthy and otherworldly essence that few comics creators have brought to the table with such quiet confidence and grace. The closest comic in recent memory to match Artichoke Tales, both in breadth and depth, is Jeff Smith’s Bone. [Grade]: A.”
- The Onion's AV Club

“The surface cuteness of Kelso’s clear-line artwork masks strong, dangerous undercurrents that tug the reader under with heart-stopping suddenness.”
- The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Rather than a narrative arc, with ascensions and declines, Artichoke Tales feels like a series of expansions. The characters and their world grow to envelop the reader in a singular, charming way.”
- Paul Constant, The Stranger

“A fantastical study in a Civil War, this exquisite graphic novel shows how wide-spread political conflict tears at the very fibers of our families and ourselves... [I]ts mastery is in seeming transcendent but revealing immense pain beneath every battle and rejection.”
- Chris Estey, KEXP-FM, Seattle

“Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso is a strange, other-worldly story about birth and death, coming of age, dealing with war, finding love, accepting tragedy. ... The simple, comic-strip-like illustrations in teal and white express movement beautifully with a minimum of lines.”
- Mary Louise Ruehr, Ravenna Record-Courier