Posts Tagged As / Awards
‘It Rhymes With Takei’ Nominated for 2026 Eisner Award
Wow, It Rhymes With Takei was nominated for “Best Graphic Memoir” at the 2026 Eisner Awards.
This was the second time our team of George Takei, Steven Scott, Harmony Becker, and myself teamed up with Top Shelf Productions to tell the story of George’s life experience in a graphic novel, and both times we’ve received Eisner Award nominations. That’s hard to comprehend.
It’s been incredible enough to watch the first book, They Called Us Enemy, go on to international acclaim and become one of the bestselling nonfiction graphic novels of the last ten years. Accomplishments that were unimaginable while we had our heads down doing the work.
Like that book, It Rhymes With Takei lands at a moment in American history when the hard-fought progress of Civil Rights and LGBTQ+ representation are under attack not by outlying forces, but within the very halls of administrative power.
They Called Us Enemy captured the disgusting history of Japanese American internment and put faces to the names of those who perpetrated these injustices at a time when the U.S. government was ripping immigrant families apart at the border. We drew unmistakable lines from past actions to present policies.
It Rhymes With Takei comes at another fraught time for Democracy. Transgender individuals have become scapegoats for complicated societal problems over which they have no control or influence, while the Supreme Court strips away Civil Rights piece by piece, attacking reproductive rights, women’s right, voting rights, with suggestions that landmark rulings on gay marriage are next. George’s story illustrates the inhumanity of those actions.
As proud and honored as I am at this latest Eisner Award nomination, I am mostly hopeful — not that we go home with another trophy on a Friday night in July — but instead hopeful that knowledge gained by people like George is being read and learned by current and future generations; that it can inform and inspire them as they build towards a better tomorrow.
It’s never too late to learn. It’s never too late to change. That’s why I believe in books like It Rhymes With Takei.
Congrats to the whole team:
George Takei
Steven Scott
Harmony Becker
Jose Villarrubia
Nathan Widick
Leigh Walton
See the full list of nominees HERE.
Winner of the Will Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work
“Over 100,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon–and America itself–in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.”
librarypass.com/2020/07/27/2020-eisner-award-winners-in-comicsplus
Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature
“In this moving graphic novel, George Takei shares his childhood experience growing up in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. During that time, the loyalty of Japanese Americans was questioned, they were unlawfully detained, racism was legalized, they were threatened with deportation, and subjected to other de-humanizing situations. Takei recounts his family’s imprisonment from a child’s perspective, including the confusion and fear of leaving their home at a moment’s notice. He depicts the long-term effects that internment had on his parents, his struggle to fully understand what they went through once he reached adulthood, and how his experiences propelled him into a career in acting and fighting injustice through social activism. The committee found that this graphic novel has significant historical value and it is a perfect fit among resources in the Asian American culture due to current immigration controversy.”
An ALA Notable Children’s Book for Older Readers
ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/notalists/ncb/ncbpastlists/ncb_2020