The New Girl: A Graphic Novel

“The New Girl” by Cassandra Calin is a graphic novel chronicling the life of Lia, a young girl who has recently moved across the world form Romania to Canada. Not only is the change difficult due to Lia truly missing the only home she’s ever known, her grandparents, etc., but it is compounded by the start of her first period.

Making friends proves difficult at first as Lia keeps to herself, struggling to figure out how to fit in. She also has to continually deal with her periods being not so easy, which is hard for any girl/woman, let alone someone who has only just gotten it for the first time. When she finds that she can befriend someone else from Romania, she jumps at the chance, but his desire to assimilate to the culture around him doesn’t prove easy for Lia, and she feels left behind.

Soon, she makes friends with some girls, but as with any teenage group, there is drama that ensues, coupled with misunderstandings and figuring out how to come to terms with each other. Lia also finds solace in joining the school magazine. There’s even a cute boy involved in it that allows her to start to not so much mind the fact that she is thousands of miles from where she considers home.

“The New Girl” is a look into the life of someone starting out fresh, figuring out how to find her way in a different country and a different culture, but the dilemmas of being a teenager are the same anywhere, and Lia learns that with a vengeance as she learns to cope with change and find her own way in her new school with her new friends.