A Pros and Cons List for Strong Feelings

“Touching and humorous. . . . The complexities of family grief that many of us have experienced are treated with tremendous care and beauty.”—Ms. Magazine

“Heartwarming. . . . This sensitive, humorous memoir is as much a celebration of difference as it is of the healing and enduring power of family love.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Delightful. . . . In depicting their family’s relative particularities, Betke-Brunswick shows how individuals are irreplaceable.”—Publishers Weekly

“Filled with moments of tenderness and humor.”—Library Journal, Starred Review

“Heartfelt. . . . An affecting tribute to emotional resilience and everlasting love.”—Booklist

“Unique. . . . will surely resonate in readers’ hearts.”—Shondaland

“Moving. . . . The story is told with a delicate touch that’s as much a tribute to a child’s love for their mother as a primer on how families cope with tragedy.”—Boulder Weekly

“Full of love, humor, and pain. It’s a story any mother would be proud for their child to have written, and a story any child should be proud to write.”—New York Journal of Books

“The graphic novelist uses playfully illustrated animals to unpack topics like their mother’s terminal cancer and coming out as genderqueer in their debut memoir.”—Denver Magazine

“Touching, comforting, funny”—Graphic Medicine

“A one-two punch of charm and verve. . . . In the course of telling a story about their mother’s death and their coming out, Betke-Brunswick illustrates that life, not death, has no limits, memories and moments always live on.”—SOLRAD

“Impressive. . . . full of love, acceptance and kindness.”—Broken Frontier

“Tender and full of love.”—SLJ Teen Library Toolbox

“Life does not deliver a series of discrete events, but a tangle of overlapping experiences. The author was working on a mathematics degree, playing on a hockey team, and slowly coming out as trans and nonbinary when their mom was diagnosed with cancer. This book weaves memories from the author’s childhood with scenes from the last few months of their mother’s life into a tender story of acceptance, care, and love. The heavy moments are lightened by the portrayal of the family as penguins, with friends and strangers as a flock of other birds, but the story is deeply human.”—Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer

“Will Betke-Brunswick’s A Pros and Cons List for Strong Feelings is a remarkable, but also chaotically specific, meditation on family and love. Will’s personable and charming penguins navigate through the months after their mother’s cancer diagnosis with an indomitable spirit and so so so much tender hilarity, even considering the subject matter. The rhythm of the lists Will uses in the book—final gifts from their mother, contents of a fridge, art in their house—are heartbreaking in how precisely they portray their family. I definitely have Strong Feelings about this book, and those feelings are largely that it is a stunning work that everyone ought to read.” —Shing Yin Khor, author of The American Dream?

“Will has created a beautiful, heartwarming family portrait, told thoughtfully with perfect spaciousness and pacing. Grief and growing up felt so tactile and close as I read this book, cover to cover, ending in tears, thrilled to be brought there by penguins.”—Nicole J. Georges, author of Calling Dr. Laura