Late Bloomer

The biggest, richest and most delightful collection of Tyler’s work to date. In Migrant Mother, Tyler tells the grueling story of a cross-country trip with the flu and her terrible-twos toddler using her trademark combination of rueful humor and empathy. The full-color Just A Bad Seed is a meditation on a problem child who might not be such a problem after all, while The Return of Mrs. Kite chronicles a family crisis - how her widowed grandmother fell in with a beau of questionable character. Gone (also in full color) is a stirring meditation on all kinds of loss, and Why I’m A-gin’ Southern Men is a classic rant that dissects that particular breed of male - or at least a certain subspecies of ex es - with pitiless wit. Other stories include Sweet Miss Lee (a reminiscence of an immigrant roommate and her fate), There’s Something Wrong with a Perfect Lawn (a tale of suburban obsessiveness), Little Crosshatch Mind (where artistic impulses come from), and Uncovered Property (discovering the power of sexuality at an early age). Tyler works equally well in delicately crisp black-and-white penstrokes and lushly watercolored paintings (this book features over 30 pages of her stunning full-color work). All told, the three-dozen stories here cement Tyler’s reputation as a cartoonist to be reckoned with.