YOOOOOO so i just bought this cute comic today 1. because the art was pleasing and sweet, and 2. because the story sounded cute and IM SO HAPPY I DID ITS SUCH A WONDERFUL LITTLE STORY!
Its called The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag and it follows the story of Aster. Aster’s family and ancestors are witches and shapeshifters, roles strictly delegated to women and men respectively. Men cannot be witches and women cannot be shapeshifters. Except Aster isn’t a shapeshifter, hes a witch. At least he wants to be, if anyone would let him. When something starts kidnapping Asters cousins, he must decide between following the ancient rules forbidding him from doing witchery, or break them to save his family.
Now, its a cute enough story anyways, which is why I bought it but I was shocked by so many things. First off this story is HELLA diverse. Aster is mixed race (mother is white, father a poc), the friend he makes is a young black girl, there are tons of different ethnicities in the side characters. I mean, look.
There’s also easy lgbt rep. Nothing is pointed out or tokenized, its just THERE. You can see in the family tree above there is Iris and Jade who have 3 kids together. Then Aster’s friend Charlie has 2 dads, which is thrown in casually and its wonderful.
I’m sorry for my shitty photos I was just so excited. Besides all that, the story is amazing! On the surface its a story about breaking gender norms which, A+++ I’m deffo here for that. But even more it definitely struck a sort of… coming out vibe? Or maybe a, hm, gender-fluidity vibe under the metaphors of witch vs shapeshifter? Just the language used sounds like SO many coming-out stories.
And good wonderful acceptance.
And its just???? I don’t know. Its just a wonderful little book and its marketed for kids and if any kid out there gets to read this and relate to Aster and see that its okay to not be like all the other boys or do what everyone says you’re supposed to do just because you’re born a certain way?? Just, I don’t know. I was just really really happy to find this book.
@mollyostertag thank you for writing this book it was seriously wonderful and i loved it so much
flowerfaag 