Kampung Boy/ Town Boy-- Lat

It seemed a little soon to spring into my next graphic novel, but I couldn't resist the playful illustrations on the cover of Lat's books.

Kampung Boy is set in a Malaysian village in the 1950s, where the author was born and spent his early childhood.

The illustrations of little Mat are so cute I couldn't help but grin. One of my favorite pictures of him playing hide-and-seek with his father; Mat is hidden under the edge of the rug with the perfect little-kid expression of "I'm-so-clever-he'll-never-find-me-here"-- you can practically hear the little giggle that will give his hiding spot away. I also like the picture of Mat rocking his baby sister to sleep.

The book gradually incorporates more serious themes. Mat realizes that his father has high expectations of him, and he starts to apply himself in school. Village life and the local rubber industry are displaced by the activities of a large tin company, which eventually buys the rubber plantation Mat was supposed to inherit. When Mat earns a place in the nearby town's boarding school, he says goodbye to the kampung and hopes that he will be able to return. Sadly, we already have the sense that there will be nothing to come back to.

I devoured Kampung Boy in short order and moved on directly to the sequel, Town Boy. While the second book lacks the coherent story of the first, the illustrations of town life are even more arresting. Town Boy is equally steeped in nostalgia, as Ipoh of the 1960s is as lost as the kampung of the 1950s.

I am categorizing these books as graphic novels due to the heavy use of illustration, but they are not told in comic form (that is, not in a picture sequence). This is more of a sophisticated picture book, where the drawings do most of the talking. It seems to me that these books don't fall within a certain age group-- the vocabulary is simple but loaded with cultural concepts that might be challenging for younger readers. At the same time, I think that the illustrations and themes in the books have mass appeal.

While Lat's work is extremely popular in Southeast Asia, these books are the first to be published in the United States. Given the excellent reception, I hope these books continue to gain an international following.