You're Welcome, Universe

by Whitney Gardner

A vibrant, edgy, fresh new YA voice for fans of More Happy Than Not and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, packed with interior graffiti.

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award!
 
When Julia finds a slur about her best friend scrawled across the back of the Kingston School for the Deaf, she covers it up with a beautiful (albeit illegal) graffiti mural.
 
Her supposed best friend snitches, the principal expels her, and her two mothers set Julia up with a one-way ticket to a “mainstream” school in the suburbs, where she’s treated like an outcast as the only deaf student. The last thing she has left is her art, and not even Banksy himself could convince her to give that up.
 
Out in the ’burbs, Julia paints anywhere she can, eager to claim some turf of her own. But Julia soon learns that she might not be the only vandal in town. Someone is adding to her tags, making them better, showing off—and showing Julia up in the process. She expected her art might get painted over by cops. But she never imagined getting dragged into a full-blown graffiti war.
 
Told with wit and grit by debut author Whitney Gardner, who also provides gorgeous interior illustrations of Julia’s graffiti tags, You’re Welcome, Universe introduces audiences to a one-of-a-kind protagonist who is unabashedly herself no matter what life throws in her way.

"[A] spectacular debut...a moving, beautifully written contemporary novel full of quirky art and complicated friendships...this book is a gift to be thankful for."—BookRiot

• ISBN10: 0399551425
• ISBN13: 9780399551420
• Publish Date: 7 March 2017
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 28 June 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Knopf Books for Young Readers
• Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780399551420

Reviews

[Liz (Bent Bookworm)]

~*This review first appeared on The Bent Bookworm!*~

This book made me happy. Happy in the contented, yeeeeees this was good kind of way. I don’t read that many contemporaries (usually find them trite and boring), so I don’t think I’m easy to please – but this book. I pretty much clutched it to myself and gave it a hug when I finished. Also can I please have this quote on t-shirt:

I’m not easy. Never have been.

Julia is a tough cookie. A tough cookie with an artist’s heart and soul. I love her so much, even though I’m not sure she would like me, hehe. She has been hurt so many times in life that she just builds up walls against everyone, which is something I can definitely relate to – though not for the same reasons. I love her independence and how she embraces her Deafness, refusing to allow it to be a liability or anything negative in her life. Not to say she doesn’t struggle and hurt – she does. But she overcomes and she doesn’t wallow in her sadness.

I bury my face in the cushion of my beautiful armchair, my command center, and scream. Over and over, my throat vibrating and crackling with fire. Nobody comes to see what’s wrong. Nobody can hear me.

This was my first experience in the Deaf world. I have some older family members who are deaf, but they are far removed so I really don’t have any contact with anyone Deaf. While this is not an OwnVoices novel, the author appears to have THOROUGHLY done her research, as many people who either are deaf or have close deaf family members have reviewed this book and given it mad props for an accurate portrayal of the Deaf community. SO HAPPY about that! I was very intrigued by the fact that there are “Deaf” people and “deaf” people…I had no idea.

Julia does a lot of growing in this book. And in case anyone doesn’t remember from being a pre-teen or teenager…growing pains are real. Both the physical and mental kind. In this case Julia learns a lot about friendships, and letting people go. It HURTS, people…but she grows through it and it’s a beautiful thing.

Diversity is HUGE in this book, and (to me, a very NOT marginalized person) it seems to be presented as such a normal thing, no one bats an eye (except one teacher at some point in the narrative, but that’s only realistic I suppose).

- Julia is Indian American, and while it only occurs once in the book itself, she is often the target of racial slurs – many of which don’t even apply to her, but are due to people making ASSUMPTIONS based on her skin color. #RAGE
- Julia has two moms. I’m embarrassed to admit this is the first book I’ve met with that kind of representation, but I really enjoyed seeing/reading it. It’s so completely normal, and they both play such huge roles in Julia’s life. The narrative spent just enough time explaining the relationship between the 3 of them to help the reader avoid having a constant “but how…?” in the back of the mind while reading.
- Julia is Deaf, and her moms are both Deaf as well. See above comments.
- Julia is a graffiti artist – this may not technically qualify under the diversity label, but come on – graffiti artists are DEFINITELY in the minority. I loved that pictures of her art were included in the book – I have troubling picturing things without pictures and finding out that the illustrations were included was one of the main reasons I bought a hard copy instead of an ebook!

I might be burning bridges, but they’re my bridges to burn.

Burn, baby, burn.

I loved pretty much everything about this book. Please go read. I’m super excited to have found another debut author that I absolutely love!

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[readingwithwrin]

"My first real piece and I'm expelled. And now I need a new tag. Go ahead, call me a vandal, say I'm some sort of delinquent, it isn't going to insult me. It's not going to stop me. Please. This is what I live for."

I believe this was the first ever book I've read that has a deaf main character. So this ended up being a huge learning experience for me in not only learning about being deaf, but also about graffiti which is Julia's favorite hobby.

Julia does end up getting expelled like it says in the synopsis, but I wasn't expecting such a betrayal to happen between her and her best friend because of what she did to get expelled. After it happened though I understood Julia's feelings because she really was just trying to do the right thing even if it wasn't what her best friend wanted her to do. And now because of said best friend she is getting sent to a hearing school. One where she will have to have an aid and will be mostly alone. This is very isolating for Julia especially because she doesn't really like school at all, and having everyone around her be different just seems to make it worse.

As for Julia's home life it was really interesting to read as well. She has two moms who are both deaf as well and seeing how they interact and parent as well was really nice to read. In fact I would have to say that Julia's moms were some of the most involved YA book parents I've seen for awhile. They truly care for her and just want the best for her and to see that actually be conveyed in a YA book was nice.
"I don't do friends, I don't do friendly. I don't play nice, because I get played."

She does end up making a friend that she nicknames Yoga Pants and this friendship was so nice to see. Not only did YP treat Julia normal, but she also didn't go way over the top with trying to learning everything about Julia and how to best interact with her. Instead waited for Julia to give her cues for things. Which was really nice to see for a change. Of course I feel like part of YP niceness was because she herself felt alone now, because of her own struggles with things.

As for who she was in a tagging war with, I was surprised. I truly wasn't expecting that, and I also felt betrayed because of who it was.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. Obviously there were certain things I didn't really like, namely Julia's attitude about things (I did understand it, and I could tell some consequences were going to happen because of it that were going to potentially put her in a bad spot). As a person in a wheelchair I get being exasperated with people and just wanting to be left alone, but I also know that you have to tell them to leave you alone in a kind way so they know you still want them around and that you just need some space. It's a hard concept to explain to someone until you've been in that type of situation before yourself.
As for the graffiti parts of this book I found them to be a huge learning experience. I've been able to appreciate most graffiti for awhile now once Bansky made it well known and started to convey actually messages through it. Before then I just saw it as a way for people to tag things showing it was their territory. Now though I see it not only as art, but also as a form of expression thanks to this book.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.


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[Leah]

You’re Welcome, Universe was one of my most anticipated reads of 2017, it has a Deaf MC, who is also of Indian heritage and has two moms. It’s not #ownvoices, but it has incredibly strong representation, but not only that it was a genuinely incredible read, right from the start. There aren’t many books about graffiti, and I don’t know a lot about it because I am as artistic as a tea-spoon, but I was completely enraptured with what Julia was doing.

Julia is one of those MCs you’re rooting for from the very start. She’s very head-strong in her opinions – she doesn’t care that this girl, Yoga Pants, wants to be her friend, after she’s expelled from her old school, she isn’t interested in friends, she’s happy just to pootle along, all by herself, with the occasional assist from her interpreter Casey. I genuinely loved Julia. She was proud to be Deaf, couldn’t care less what anyone thought of her, and she’s the type of girl I wish I was. I wish I was more like Julia, because her absolute belief of right and wrong, and her sense of self was absolutely outstanding and I loved that she was never happier than when she had a spray can in her hand.

There’s a lot to love about You’re Welcome, Universe. The friendship between YP and Julia was incredible, because I loved that YP wasn’t going to just let Julia brush her off – she persisted again, and again, until Julia broke down and it was an incredible friendship. I appreciated how YP was willing to learn how to sign so they could converse without Casey, and it’s the kind of natural, easy-going friendship that makes you so, so happy you picked the book up. You genuinely cannot beat a good book about friendship. And the artwork was INCREDIBLE. Whitney Gardner is crazy talented, man, and even just seeing it in black and white on my Kindle blew me away. It properly brought the book to life, in my eyes, to see what Julia was doing and despite Julia’s insistence that the person tagging her tags was doing her a disservice, which I agree with, it was visually stunning.

You’re Welcome, Universe was incredible. From start to finish, I was as absorbed in Julia’s world – the art, the friendships, the way Julia was portrayed honestly blows my mind. I don’t know how I would cope if I were Deaf, although the ability to not hear storms would be pretty incredible as I have a pretty horrible fear of thunder, but other than that, I would struggle, and I liked how Whitney Gardner portrayed Julia’s hearing in that she could lip read, but she didn’t always catch all the words, and that seemed so true to how it actually is for someone who is Deaf. I was honestly so blown away with it all, it’s been a while since I’ve felt so passionate about a book and this is a very, very special debut by a very, very special storyteller.

[Sam@WLABB]

I know I shouldn't be tagging the school. I know that. But I wasn't the first, and that mess had to go.
When the administration takes their own sweet time cleaning up a slur about her "best friend", Julia springs into action and uses her own graffiti to cover it up. Little did she know, her "best friend" would betray her, turning her into the principal and resulting in her expulsion from Kingston School for the Deaf. Now Julia must start over in a mainstream school.

This book was different, and I mean different in a good way. The protagonist was not one I have seen before, and the world she inhabited was new to me too. Furthermore, this was not a romance. There was romance, but that was not really central to the story. Rather, it was the friendships that took center stage.

Julia was an interesting heroine.

"Indian, Deaf, girl, two moms."

Yes, Julia was all these things, and this idea that she didn't fit into a "box" was addressed directly, but she was also much more than that description. She knew herself, and was unapologetic about it. She had passion, loved fiercely, and took chances. She also made mistakes and judged some people too quickly and too harshly. But she learned a lot through her experiences, growing and changing for the better.

"I am on fire, I am HERE. Don't pity me."

Julia had decided to be a loner after her expulsion, but she could not resist the charm of Yoga Pants aka YP. I loved how YP was so different from Julia, but then ended up having so much in common. YP was in a healing phase herself, but she didn't let that stop her from reaching out to Julia, and she really made a gold-star effort. I loved that YP made Julia realize that she deserved better friends and she didn't have to settle for a friend of convenience.

At its core, this is a story of friendships - good and bad. Gardner illustrated friendships that were just bad, just good, and some that were complicated. I liked how she put these different relationships side by side, so the reader could compare and contrast them.

"I'm not better than friends, I want better friends who are all in"

I love, love, LOVE books that teach, but don't preach, and Gardner gave me an little education in this book. Julia was deaf, therefore, it needed to be addressed, but Gardner did it in such an organic way. She didn't make Deaf-culture the focus of the story, but made it a part of the story.

"It's not hearing-loss, it's Deaf-gain."

Although one of my childhood friend's parents were both deaf, I was too young to really learn about Deaf-culture. I appreciated a lot of the things Gardner wove into her story with respect to this community, as well as the peek she gave us into the street art movement.

Finally, I have to comment on the artwork. This addition added an extra layer of awesome to an already great story. I found myself looking forward to the next illustration, and I was never disappointed.

Overall: A great story of friendship filled with interesting characters, street art, and Deaf-culture.

**I would like to thank NetGalley and Knopf for the advanced copy of this book

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