Night and Dana
Anya Davidson
Graphic Universe
Published September 12, 2023
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About Night and Dana
A creative coming-of-age story for the climate-change generation
Dana Drucker fights boredom in her Florida beach town by crafting special-effects makeup―the more gruesome, the better. But when a messy prank with Dana’s best friend Lily gets the wrong kind of attention, the girls have two find a new creative outlet or leave high school without graduating.
To save their shot at diplomas, Dana and Lily join a community college film class. It gives Dana a chance to keep practicing her monster makeup, as she and Lily start work on a horror movie inspired by local ocean warming. And a search for filming locations puts Dana in the path of Daphne Ocean, an activist and self-proclaimed water witch―the perfect kind of inspiring outsider. But when filming starts, Dana finds herself growing apart from Lily, who doesn’t seem to need her closest friend much anymore.
Soon, tempers are flaring, and Dana’s pushing away old friends and her new mentor. But as everything starts going up in flames, Dana also begins to forge her voice. Night and Dana is a creative coming-of-age story for the climate-change era, a graphic novel about making art and growing up when it feels like the world is on fire.
My Review
One of the things I like about this graphic novel is how the story blends Dana’s monster makeup and climate change activism. At first, I wasn’t sure how those two themes would dovetail together, but as the story unfolds, merging those two ideas makes so much sense. I loved how that happened.
I also like the pacing of the story. Some scenes show things happening in real-time. Others feel more like diary entries, with maybe one illustration for reference and a longer block of text describing what happens between scenes. This helped highlight the important moments while briefly showing transitions between them.
The one thing that did not work for me was the illustrations of Dana’s little brother. I don’t know if it’s the art style or the proportions of the illustrations themselves, but he didn’t look like a little kid, so that made some of the scenes kind of weird.
Other than that, I enjoyed reading the book. It’s probably not something I would have been drawn to if I saw it on the shelf, but I am glad I read it.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 12 up.
Representation
Some characters are queer.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used very infrequently.
Romance/Sexual Content
Dana’s best friend begins dating a nonbinary person. A boy and girl kiss. A couple of panels show Dana in her bra. References to sex.
Spiritual Content
One character calls herself a witch and shows Dana a ritual in which she wishes for something (positive) to happen.
Violent Content
Dana and her best friend stage a car accident with makeup to look like a serious eye injury. Protestors stage a “die in” and are arrested. Later, a group of protestors disrupts a parade. References to police using force against unarmed protestors. Red tide leaves fish and other sea creatures dead on the beach.
Drug Content
None.
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