Potential

By Ariel Schrag

Book Overview

Ariel Schrag continues her tumultuous passage through high school in the second book of her acclaimed series of frank, insightful, and painfully honest autobiographical graphic novels. Written during the summer following her junior year at Berkeley High School in California, Potential recounts Ariel's first real relationship and first-time love with a girl, her quest to lose her virginity to a boy, and her parents' divorce -- as well as the personal and social complications of writing about her life as she lives it. Along the way she hangs out with her favorite teacher, obsesses over clothes, gets drunk, smokes pot, and tries to connect the biology she reads about in textbooks with the biology she's living.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416552359
• ISBN13: 9781416552352
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.4" x 10.7"

Customer Reviews

Best One

In my opinion, POTENTIAL is the best of all four books. Maybe I'm biased because I read it whilst coming out and it instilled a sense of confidence that really helped me get laid. Or maybe because it's fun and personal. It's got enough high school drama to be interesting, but not enough to become REAL high school drama (the kind you can't even relate to anymore). In fact, POTENTIAL is extremely easy to relate to, even now. So, basically, the reason is not important. It's just really good at making you feel re-attached to some part of you that you left behind.

Perfectly captures high school angst about love

Anyone who's dealt with the joy and pain of a high school relationship will love this book (straight or gay.) The thoughts and actions ring so true. I'd forgetten what it was all like until I read this. I was continuously amazed that the author was so young given how insightful it was about relationships. I don't think many high schoolers have the ability to look at themselves so clearly (I know I didn't.) The writing is great and the storyline is engaging, but the drawing really makes it. This is the kind of book that I want to lend to people and tell them "you MUST read this!"

Potential is AMAZING!!

This title couldn't have portrayed my own life in a more realistic fashion. Ariel Schrag is an absolute genius!

Funny and honest without being sentimental

Ariel's work is beautiful and compelling. Her high school coming-of-age story is so personal, so awkward, so terrible, and still so delirious with potential... you'll recognize it immediately. Five stars.

Amazing ? Harriet the Spy meets her match

Ariel Schrag's work, POTENTIAL, is a must-read for anybody who has ever been to high school. She tells it how it is - from losing her virginity to smearing goat excrement on a boy's face to endear herself to her girlfriend. Absolutely amazing; if you've ever loved Harriet the spy's adventures, this is for you - in this 200-page tome, Ariel gives the upper East side's favorite young spy a run for her money; Ariel's stories are all true, and told with scientific precision.