Networked: Carabella on the Run

Library Journal

College freshman Carabella is blue—literally—which she explains with a yarn about her mother's tie-dying excesses in their hippie commune. The commune also explains, she claims, her total ignorance of Star Wars movies. Plus she's weirded out by how quickly her email address goes viral via "Facespace." What's she afraid of? Then she teams up with a crushworthy techie to promote his goofy shoes, and the fun begins with fans, frenemies, and former compatriots tangled up in conflicting agendas. Naturally, we suspect she might be an escapee alien, but a subtler, chilling explanation develops. Certainly, the scrappy Carabella won't go down without a fight. Networked is a project of the nonprofit Privacy Activism (www.privacyactivism.org), whose website makes available two Carabella flash games and a teacher's guide to the graphic novel. This fast-paced, engrossing read should appeal to teens and up while pushing them to grasp ominous possibilities associated with social networking, online search cookies, cell phones, and suchlikes. VERDICT The message is a bit heavy-handed, but Carabella is such an engaging action heroine that she holds interest and empathy. With loose, enthusiastic color art.—M.C.

School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up—Carabella is blue. Literally. Her skin is the color blue. While she does her best to blend into college life and stay under the radar, her new friends Danielle and Alex notice that she has a real aversion to social networking websites. She also does not like sharing information about herself online in general. It turns out that Carabella is from another dimension, a place where individuals are branded with a color after their personalities are determined by similar technology. She meets Nick, who is developing a new kind of "soulshoe." This invention will monitor everything about a person and make it available online. While Cara rushes to stop this from happening, she must also contend with the Red Police, aggressive soldiers from her home who have come to reclaim her. The idea of this graphic novel—to educate readers about the dangers of giving up privacy online—is a noble one in theory, but it does little to make this tale contemporary and fun. Badger's art is extremely messy and incomplete, and lacks a real portrayal of the world Carabella is trying to save. While several science-fiction pop-culture references creep in, readers will realize that this story is more of an imitation of those tales than something original.—Ryan Donovan, New York Public Library