In an author’s note, Krosoczka tells readers that his mother eventually died of a drug overdose. This book, however, ends with some sadness. He is especially beloved by young readers (and cafeteria workers) for his hilarious Lunch Lady series. Krosoczka’s TED Talk about becoming an artist has almost a million views. He leaves for art school and, after a lot of hard work, has a spectacularly successful career as a writer-illustrator of children’s books. His teachers, fellow students - even a few bullies - take note.Įventually, he gets a driver’s license and finds and connects with his father and the siblings he didn’t know he had.

But he has a loyal best friend, and his talent for conveying the absurdity of life in his drawings saves him from the invisibility that’s the fate of so many children in similar situations. Jarrett yearns for his mother and wonders about his father through years of missed birthdays, visits to rehab and jail. “But now that I am in my teens, I fill sketchbooks just to deal with life. “In junior high, I drew to impress my friends,” says another. “When I was a kid, I’d draw to get attention from my family,” he says in the first. Three panels show the evolving role art plays in Jarrett’s life. He doesn’t know where, or who, his father is. “As a 3-year-old, I was getting my cereal on my own because I was waking up in an empty house,” he writes.

When he sleeps at his grandparents’ house, he’s amazed they serve him breakfast.

What’s not clear to Jarrett, but will be to readers, is that she is a drug addict. It’s clear from Krosoczka’s expressive illustrations that young Jarrett loves and needs his mercurial, unreliable mother. Krosoczka makes visible - and poignant and funny - what is most important about that experience: Somehow, you can still love your imperfect family and survive with your spirit unbroken. In his inspiring graphic memoir, HEY, KIDDO: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt With Family Addiction (Graphix, 320 pp., $24.99 ages 12 and up), Jarrett J. To be understood and to make others understand what’s going on. The second wish, probably the fiercer of the two, is to be seen. To be anywhere but where the family is coming unraveled. Perhaps the first wish of every child in an unstable home is to disappear.

Hey kiddo by jarrett j krosoczka