Aya.

Abouet, Marguerite (author) and Clement Oubrerie (author).

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Intelligent, practical, and kind older teen Aya has best girl friends besotted by romance and sex. She also seems to know a plethora of guys who are either intoxicated with their own studliness or a bit dim. Set in late 1970s Ivory Coast, this accessible, engaging story features a relatively simple plotline—smart girl frustrated by less-forward-thinking friends and family—and delightfully thorough characterizations that resound with emotional universality as they manifest the particulars of a time and a place American readers otherwise rarely glimpse. In perfect keeping with the narrator’s youthful perspective, the young people’s parents are visually exaggerated to go with stunted personalities. The locale is evoked handsomely in scenes set in Aya’s working-class neighborhood, in her father’s boss’ chic mansion with its multiple living rooms, and during luminous nights some of the youngsters spend at the Thousand Star Hotel—that is, the nocturnally deserted market square. References to the period’s worldwide hit TV show, Dallas; the aural backdrop of French pop music; and the cast’s Ivorian traditional garments given a disco-twist vivify the rich cultural mixture of Western and newly independent African elements that Aya depicts. Abouet’s storytelling is straightforward but gently nuanced, while Oubrerie’s cartooning mixes sepia with bright hues that seem to reflect the ambient sunlight.