Dear Scarlet

April 15, 2019
Wong addresses this memoir of her postpartum depression (PPD) to her firstborn daughter, whose birth led to the author's first brush with the debilitating illness. With clean, open, black-and-white line comics, Wong illustrates how she completely lost her bearings after giving birth and ultimately found support, learned coping mechanisms, and felt like herself again. Never undermining her feelings or their severity, Wong uses humor to lighten the mood in one-page diagrams of her postpartum body and mind (labeled not for the faint of heart ) and in sharing her embarrassment over the time she was undone by a Coldplay song. She depicts significant expression with tiny adjustments to her simplified faces. In looping white script on an all-black background, Wong devotes a page near the end of her book to perhaps its most memorable message: simply put, I wanted to die, but I'm thankful I didn't. From this easy-reading and welcoming story of Wong's very tough time, readers will understand that suffering from PPD is not unique, and there's lots of help?and hope?available.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)