"America's First School for Black Girls, 1832"

This is the first graphic novel by Stéphane Fert to be translated into English.

From the publisher:

In 1832, in Canterbury, Connecticut, a "charming and picturesque" little school for young girls opens to accommodate around twenty residents

Educating girls is a bit ridiculous and useless, they think, but harmless enough. Until the day when the "charming school", led by Prudence Crandall, announces that it will now welcome black girls....

Thirty years before the abolition of slavery, fifteen young people in the Crandall school are greeted by a wave of hostility of insane proportion. White America is afraid of some of its children.

The story of this school and its legal legacy cannot be understated. Crandall v. State (of Connecticut) was the first full-throated civil rights case in U.S. history. The arguments by attorneys in the Crandall case played a role in two of the most fateful Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford, and the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. It catapulted Ms. Crandall into a Civil Rights pioneer.

Born in 1985, Stéphane Fert grew up in the southwest of France, near the Pyrenees mountains. He obtained a degree in animation in Paris but nevertheless described himself as self-taught. He credits role-playing games for his story telling ability. As for images, he was first influenced by modern painting and was passionate about working with colors, but he was also interested in animation and in particular the artist Mary Blair. He made his debut in the world of illustration through the Café salé collective before launching into comics. In "Morgane" (Delcourt, 2016), as in "Peau de mille bêtes" (Delcourt, 2019), for which he received the Imaginales prize, he deconstructs tales and legends by questioning the position of female characters. With screenwriter Wilfrid Lupano, he created the children's book "When the circus came" (Delcourt, 2017), which received the Tibet Prize, and the highly acclaimed "Blanc Autour"("Surrounded") winner of numerous other prizes. In 2023, he illustrated new covers for the "Harry Potter" saga for Gallimard.

2-time Eisner Award nominee Wilfrid Lupano was born in Nantes in 1971, but it was in Pau that he would spend the majority of his childhood. His childhood was spent buried in his parents' comic book collection, even if his wild imagination and interest in writing is due above all to his love for role-playing games. As a young adult, Lupano worked in bars to finance his studies -- a combination of philosophy and English. He has since blossomed with a multitude of graphic novels published with many prominent publishers and has been the recipient of a number of awards.