Trung Le Nguyen, creator of the critically acclaimed comic The Magic Fish, returns with YA graphic novel romance Angelica and the Bear Prince. High schooler Jelly does it all—she manages the hockey team, runs cross-country, participates in the school newspaper and choir—until intense burnout forces her to take a break. Her only solace is anonymously messaging the social media account of a local theater mascot, Per the Bear, who dresses like a prince. Happily, landing an internship at the same theater company puts Jelly in the mysterious bear prince’s path. But as she navigates her new responsibilities, the demands of her restaurateur parents, the beginnings of a crush on Per, and resurging grief over her late grandmother, Jelly worries about burning out again.
n a conversation with PW, Nguyen reflected on the importance of negative emotions and experiences, his growth as a storyteller, and breaking out of his comfort zone.
The relationship between Jelly, her mother, and her late grandmother is a central element of the book. Why did you focus on this dynamic?
While I was working on The Magic Fish, I realized that I like focusing on intergenerational relationships. Not because of the intergenerationality itself, but because I have a very strong belief that readers of all stripes are capable of empathizing with people beyond their experience. I include characters from different generations in the same storyline simply because I believe in the compassion of my readers. I believe in their ability to care about them.
I feel like when books talk about intergenerational relationships, a lot of their interpretations are meant to signify that this is what an immigrant family looks like, this is what these generations look like when they interact with one another. As I was developing Angelica and the Bear Prince, I was really itching to explore and move away from that sort of educational element. Instead of being like, “Here’s what this experience is like,” I wanted to let that relationship flow naturally.
In an author’s note, you write that Angelica and the Bear Prince is a story about how “there appears to be no right way” to mourn. Can you elaborate?
It was when I was developing the relationship between [the secondary protagonist] Gable and their grandmother that I realized that the story was about mourning. People mourn in completely disparate ways, which is something that I hadn’t considered until I started actually exploring the way these characters navigate loss or change. I explored a lot of that through the way the characters orient their lives and their spaces to help them cope, so that they’re not constantly addressing grief head on. Jelly and her family have a regimented system—they have a little memorial shrine—but for Gable’s grandmother, making sure that there’s always noise in her space is something that I didn’t really think of as a coping mechanism until I wrote that scene. There are ambient ways that we protect ourselves from our own feelings—sometimes, that’s just noise.
I strongly feel that tough emotions are very much part of the fabric of our everyday lives. Even if I intended for the tone of Angelica and the Bear Prince to be a little bit more lighthearted than The Magic Fish, I wasn’t going to let that prohibit me from exploring something thorny or something deep.
Angelica and the Bear Prince was pitched as a modern retelling of the Norwegian folktale “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” What about that story inspired this graphic novel?
It’s always been one of my favorite stories. It was one of the longest fairy tales that I remember reading when I was very little. I think my public library had an edition of it that was illustrated by Kay Nielsen; I even own a newer edition of it now with those same illustrations. Those images really stuck in my head.
I kept coming back to this story because I love the sense of adventure. I love that the heroine gets to make a mistake and then figure out how to rectify it, and I love that she gets to have a lot of agency. I feel like a lot of fairy tales are told in a way where you don’t get a lot of the internal psychology of the characters. They occupy certain rules and do certain things because that’s what they’re meant to do in the story. But “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” was one of the very first ones I read where I could relate to the characters and their choices, so I wanted to explore that in a new way.
How did working on Angelica and the Bear Prince differ from developing The Magic Fish?
The story structure of Angelica and the Bear Prince is a little bit more conventional than The Magic Fish. When I was making my debut, I was really exploring and figuring out what I was comfortable doing. The Magic Fish is structured like an essay: it starts with a thesis statement, and then there are three supporting arguments, and then I reiterate the thesis again at the end.
I was much more intentional with Angelica and the Bear Prince. It was an exercise in storytelling for me. I sat down with the characters, and I asked myself, “What do I want their relationships to look like? Where do I want the characters to grow, and where do I want them to find comfort, and how do I explore that in this narrative shape?” Having it in my mind that this is an adaptation of sorts took some of the pressure off in terms of figuring out what the shape of the story was going to be, but I left a lot of room for things to change and move around.
I also set out to make the vibe of this book different from The Magic Fish. I gave myself room to cartoon more: the characters got to be goofy, they got to exaggerate, they got to interact with the shape of the panels. I’ve never gotten to do that before, so I was like, “This is where I get to have a little bit of fun.” I feel like I have a more expansive storytelling toolkit now.
What’s next for you?
I’m doing a sort of creative walkabout right now, where I collaborate with other people on their projects. I want to see how they work and if their working style vibes with mine or if I can glean any knowledge and experience from them that might inform my own processes. To that end, I’m collaborating on two middle grades right now. I’m also talking with Random House Graphic about doing more of my own books with them.
Angelica and the Bear Prince by Trung Le Nguyen. Random House Graphic, $24.99 Oct. 7 ISBN 978-0-593-12547-2; $17.99 paper ISBN 978-1-9848-9266-9
