A Diary of the Plague Year: An Illustrated Chronicle of 2020

by Elise Engler

An extraordinary illustrated chronicle of 2020 that captures this indelible year in America in all its tragic, surreal, epic, and (sometimes) comedic intensity

Artist Elise Engler set herself a task five years to illustrate the first headline she heard on her bedside radio every morning. The idea was to create a pictorial record of one year of listening to the news. But when Donald Trump was elected, the headlines turned too wild for her to stop the experiment.

Then 2020 happened. Was there ever such a year? Headlines about the death of Kobe Bryant and Donald Trump's impeachment began to give way to news of a mysterious virus in China, and Engler’s pages were quickly filled with the march of schools closing their doors, hospitals overflowing, graveyards full to capacity. Day by day, Engler drew every shocking turn of the the police murder of George Floyd and protests around the globe; a war against science and those who preached it; fires consuming California; a vicious election, absurdly contested. Other stories appeared, “Harvey Weinstein Sentenced,” “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospitalized,” “China Extends Control over Hong Kong,” and―on repeat―“Stock Market Plunges.”

The result is a powerful visual record of an unprecedented time, collected in A Diary of the Plague Year , which follows the headlines from the first appearance of the coronavirus to the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Made in real time, Engler’s vibrant, immediate images recapture what it was like to live through 2020, bringing texture, feeling, and even charm to what we might not remember and what we will never forget.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Graphic Novels, Politics, Comics, Historical, Graphic Novels Comics

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 18, 2022

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Was there ever such a year?”
“A global pandemic with millions dead, half a million Americans among them; national uprising ignited by police killings of Black Americans; cities shut down, poverty soaring, a president inciting a riot to stop his election defeat, hellish wildfires, mass shootings. It was the worst year of our lives, people said, apocalyptic, unprecedented, biblical in the scale as it’s disasters”.
“Throughout 2020 and into 2021, I painted today’s headlines, making a picture of the first few news items I heard emitting from my wooden bedside radio when I woke up each morning. Viewed together here, these daily paintings, which include ordinary events along with the historical ones, ended up forming and unusual visual record of an epic, momentous year”.
“I do not said that to document this extraordinary time. The project that became this book again five years earlier. November 22, 2015, I started painting a portrait of an ordinary year in American life. It would be an illustrated series of ‘Diary of a Radio Junkie’, any idea was to do a small gouache or
Watercolor picture illustrating the lead headline I heard on WNYC at the start of each day. After the planned 12 months of making the paintings, I would stop and exhibit this portrait of a year”.

Things began to change… The plague entered her drawings quietly….
On January 20, 2020, COVID-19 appeared in a small portion of a pencil drawing.

Extraordinary and tragic events may remain in our memories, but the daily details and lesser stories of the year will be mostly forgotten—
This book was written with the intention and hopes that they remind us of those we lost, what we witnessed, how we felt, and how we manage to carry-on.

March 2, 2020…. Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the Democratic presidential race.

March 29, 2020…. NYU sets up temporary morgues as deaths increased by 237 in state and one day, 7,200 increase in cases state wide,
59,513 total in NY State, 33,768 NYU; Trump backs off 3-state quarantine.

…. Millions unemployed,
….Trump undercuts CDC recommendation that public wear masks.
….Trump continues to promote improving drug
hydrochloroquine for COVID-19.
…. Tornadoes cross the south, at least 12 dead
…. International outrage as Trump announces US will withdraw funds from world health organization, blaming it for pandemic as 2 million infections reported worldwide.
…. California launches relief fund for the undocumented.
…. April 20, 2020… Cabble Hill, Brooklyn, nursing home that you have had 55 deaths from COVID-19.
…. Police investigate motive for mass shooting for 16 died in Nova Scotia, Canada.
…. Tramp encourages protests across the country against the shut down.
….Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the sole democrat to vote against new 484 billion coronavirus bill, no relief for frontline workers, post office, poor people; outbreaks in Chicago, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, coronavirus was there in January/February; tramp suggest quack cures for COVID-19; 21% of NYU residents test positive for virus antibodies.
…. Cyclist killed by Brooklyn bus
….Fauci says US could be in for a bad fall and winter if not prepared for second wave
…. May 5, 2020…. UK coronavirus death toll highest in Europe.
…. Toxic gas leak in India kills at least 11, has hospitalized hundreds; top Republican donor and Trump Ally picked as new head of US Postal Service.
…. May 21, 2020…Police violence and statistics showing 81% of summonses went to people of color. New outbreaks of coronavirus in southern Korea and China.
….etc etc etc…..
The layout of this book was really done well. The writing was clear — documented facts.
June 11, 2020… how are 2 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US, experts say Deas could reach 200,000 by September.

…. Protests, protesters arrested, natural disasters, political divisions, Texas reports all time daily high of coronavirus cases….. as other states do the same, Facebook started labeling violent posts from politicians including Trump, historical flooding in China, 5.4 million lose health insurance in the US, Government carried out first federal execution in 17 years, Trump downplayed police violence against Black Americans…..
July 22, 2020…. Over 1000 deaths in one day in the US, first time in over two months; Trump admits it will get worse, tells public (finally) to wear masks at first briefing since Clorox drinking.
July 23, 2020… House passes bill removing confederate statues, other figures from capital; California surpasses New York in total Covid cases….

August 12, 2020…. Find chooses Kamala Harris for VP
🥳🥁

….August 29, 2020…. Thousand scar in Washington, DC, for the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King‘s I have a dream speech.
…. September 19, 2020… Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg dead at 87.
…. October 2, 2020 Donald and Melania join 7.31 million Americans testing positive for COVID-19.
…. December 14, 2020… Covid-19 approaches 300,000 deaths in the United States as vaccine shipments begin to arrive.
…. Cleveland Indians will change name.
….December 16, Biden hooses Pete Buttigieg for transportation.
….MLB recognizes Negro League Baseball.
…. January 6, 2021…. That’s an even need to be said?
The United States capital attacked!

I barely cover a third of all the information in this book—
I think it’s a great book to own and to pass on to generations.

The drawings were excellent….capturing those thoughts about how the truth can be stranger than fiction.


Kudos to Elise Engler— Author and visual artist….
She did an outstanding job. This is a really wonderful [painting/diary] contribution—depicting the
worst year many of us had ever experienced.
Perhaps not everyone can appreciate - or indulge to read — [today] as in years that follow…..
But I found it worth my time…
….part of my own healing journey of moving forward.

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, in which the author has drawn the news headlines for every day in 2020 (and a little in 2021), left me overwhelmed and impressed.

Impressed because of the endurance to do this and for her compositions (these aren't great portraits, but I like how she blended the news of the day in her drawings).

Overwhelmed because the last 16 months have been unendingly intense, stressful, historic, and generally awful and it honestly felt bad to see the news again for very day. The slow ramp up of coronavirus into an explosion in February and March; the George Floyd protests in the summer; and then the election, the fraud accusations, and the January 6th insurrection attempt. And while she ends it with Biden's inauguration (maybe as an attempt to a return to "normal" ending), the intensity and general suckitude of that year were enough to make me feel bad looking at her art for each day.

Twenty years from now this may be a great record of a historical year that helped defined the first half of the 21st century, but right now it just hurt.

**Thanks to the artist, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a project of endurance, from the author painting the biggest news headlines every day for a year as they happened, to those of us who survived the annus horribilis, and for me as I slowly slogged through this book for over a month as I revisited the shitshow that was 2020.

Starting January 20, 2020, with the growing mention of a coronavirus outbreak in China, the book winds through the lockdowns, the death of George Floyd, the demonstrations, the election, the denial and insurrection, and ends with the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 21, 2021.

Reading this book is a masochistic act. It doesn't help that the art is a blotchy mess with squished or haphazard layouts and the author has no real talent for capturing likenesses of the many people involved. The hand lettering is usually a sloppy mess in light gray that is difficult to read, but the editors at least took mercy on my poor eyes and transcribed them into type below the illustrations.

I admire the author's persistence, but I'd be surprised if this is a book many people would choose to read, much less make it all the way through.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starting in 2015, Ms. Engler would awake at the crack of dawn to listen to the radio news of the day and eventually expanded painting the day’s headlines. When Trump became president, the headlines became more “outlandish and urgent.” She is creative in her snapshot portrayal of the then current events with simplistic drawings. It felt as if I was looking at a scrapbook and was a great refresher of news that I had forgotten or missed

Beginning in January 2020, featured are Coronavirus cases in China to being declared a global emergency by WHO and the Trump impeachment trials, protests in Iraq and Lebanon, and Kobe Bryant’s death ending in January 2021 with strikes; the stimulus bill; the storming of the Capital by Trump supporters; and Trump’s pardons, threats, and uncooperativeness. What a year it was. It was a chronicle of our times - a global pandemic that killed and infected millions, George Floyd’s tragic death and escalating protests, “Black Lives Matter”, the turmoil of the Trump administration, the U.S. withdrawal of WHO, the lockdowns, closing, bailouts, and reopening of businesses due COVID, the bankruptcies of JC Penny and Lord & Taylor, the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima’s nuclear bombing, the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsberg, the US Presidential Primary, Kamala Harris, Tiktok ban, virtual meetings, vaccines, the Hong Kong protests, the removal of Confederate statues, and so much more.

[Guylou (Two Dogs and a Book) · Rating 3 out of 5]

📚 Hello Book Friends! A DIARY OF THE PLAGUE YEAR by Elise Engler was definitely an interesting read, filled with lots of information. I particularly enjoyed the information about the coronavirus and its spread. The book clearly shows how the world was not prepared for this pandemic and that leaders were too slow to react and protect their people. It also showed that this did not apply only to the leaders but to the people as too many of them did not take the warnings seriously and lost their lives subsequently. I was also educated on what happened to George Floyd and the movement of solidarity that followed. On the other hand, as a Canadian, I was not able to relate to the numerous accounts about American politics. This diary lasts a year and is original and artistic. The illustrations are well done and à-propos. If you are interested to read a unique overview of what happened in 2020 in the US and some parts of the world, this is a good choice.

#bookstadog #poodles #poodlestagram #poodlesofinstagram #furbabies #dogsofinstagram #bookstagram #dogsandbooks #bookishlife #bookishlove #bookstagrammer #books #booklover #bookish #bookaholic #reading #readersofinstagram #instaread #ilovebooks #bookishcanadians #canadianbookstagram #bookreviewer #bookcommunity #bibliophile #adiaryoftheplagueyear #eliseengler #henryholtbooks #metropolitanbooks #bookreview

[Tex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingly complete reminder if my own year of infamy—2020. The artist author painted one picture every day during the year as a pictorial journal of events. I had forgotten just how much horror occurred this year. From the emergence to escalation of COVID-19 and the crazy misinformation pushed by Trump and his minions. To the deaths by cop of George Floyd and Breana Taylor and the BLM protests. To the reduction of the ice in the arctic shelf. To the passing of icons John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Murder hornets! The election that wouldn’t stop. And the treasonous attack on the US Capitol.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I have been looking for something like this: documentation of that crazy year, 2020. This an almost daily painting of the year 2020 based on headlines from the news. The author/painter is from New York, but she does a nice job of including world events. It felt traumatic going through the year visually, so be aware. It took me a while to start but then found it hard to stop. It goes a little past Dec 2020, to get the inauguration in. I found it fascinating that she was unable herself to include paintings from the first week of the shutdown/shelter in place orders. I will need to revisit this book again.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this book more than the book itself. I read through it carefully and found it to be extremely depressing. How could you not be depressed reading this? I initially liked the drawings but after awhile I was bored with them since they are all in the same style. They are very good drawings... but I didn't need to see this many of them.

Yet, it is an accounting of a year and perhaps future generations will find it more palatable.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really nice series of political cartoons the author created daily from January 1st, 2021 to December 31, 2021. It really hit home and brought back memories. I enjoyed it immensely and marveled at how much happened. Mostly sad but worth remembering.

[Keen Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh the horror!

“There are 33 new billionaires and 8 million have become impoverished.”

Reads part of one delightfully, uplifting entry, from November 23rd. Aside from an obsession with scattering semi-colons all over the place, I found the art work…I am trying to choose my words carefully here…not for me…definitely not for me.

This actually reads like the diary at the end of the world. When read like this America in 2020 was even darker and more miserable than I recall, but then I tend to avoid US news anyway. Though in saying that, I am not sure a British equivalent documenting 2020 under Boris Johnson would make much better reading either.

What this does illustrate more than anything else is how profoundly broken and dangerous the United States of America is. The fact is that there are just too many awful, greedy, lying people in position of power. Far too many of their systems and institutions are so haplessly weighed down and tainted with corruption, racism, sexism and phenomenal inequality. You can dress it up in all the BS, flags and propaganda you want, but the facts and reality speak for themselves.

Ultimately one of the take home messages here appears to be, is to remind you that when you become the President you can and will get away with almost anything, you can lie habitually, incite riots, free some dreadful guilty people from prison and when all is said and done, you will never have to face any meaningful consequences for your actions and behaviour and never ever have to worry about being sent to prison

And as long as the system continues to allow this law of blatant, yet unspoken rule of impunity for US presidents then it makes a mockery of the whole system, and in what way do they think this will enforce change?...Look at the long list of corrupt, scheming liars like Nixon, Clinton, Reagan, Bush and Baby Bush. They have collectively gotten away with some incredible crimes, not least perjury and war crimes, and look what happens?...You end up with Trump.

[April Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to assume anyone reading this review has read the publisher's description of this book, which explains how Engler came to create this book. If not, go read it; I'll wait.
This is an interesting book, at once discomfiting and hard to put down. It's still so fresh, and being reminded of it is a little painful - I'm not sure I have enough distance from it yet. At the same time, it's cathartic reading this, and helped me get a better perspective of how and when things took place, because time stopped working correctly in 2020, amiright? Seeing it play out in one long stream of days rather than one day at a time, it's kinda crazy. Nothing is covered deeply here, because of the constraints of the illustration size, but what's said is a reminder to all of us who read this book - we made it. We went through so much, and while we're still feeling the repercussions of 2020 (did that year actually end, or are we still there, just calling it by a different name?), somehow, we made it. Living through historic times is so weird.

#ADiaryofthePlagueYear #NetGalley

[Morgan Beckley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd like to thank Elise Engler and the publisher for a copy of A Diary of the Plague Year: An Illustrated Chronicle of 2020. I'm really grateful to have this book, it's a piece of history and I enjoyed the art. It had a frantic quality to it, which sums up my 2020 mental state pretty well.

A quick read, because it was mostly artwork. I liked A Diary of the Plague Year by Elise Engler. It's a lot to digest because 2020 was just so awful from start to finish. I anticipate that this will be a book that I turn to years down the road. I probably won't read it front to back again, but I'm sure I'll flip to the day's date just to give myself perspective. My only complaint is that I wish the book wasn't so in your face politically. I get it, 2020 was a politically charged year and deserves to occupy a huge space in a book such as this, but I felt that it took away from some of the impact of the COVID-19 headlines.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was awesome, though I realize a book about 2020 may not be for everyone. Engler sat down every morning and made a small painting about the day's headlines for five years as part of a bigger project, but a publisher saw her work online and suggested she turn 2020 (or rather 2020 plus 20 days, to end with the inauguration) into a book. I like her painting style a lot, but it was also fascinating to see the year presented in one visual block like this—the element of interpretation, but also the confirmation that yes, that year was just as horrible as I remember. I found myself glued to it, turning the pages to see what happened next, even though I KNEW what happened next. The presentation was everything, and it was moving in ways that a straight-up collection of headlines wouldn't have been.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Diary of a the Plague Year is a day by day chronicle of the year 2020. Each page is a day of 2020 where the author illustrated and composed a tiny handwritten blurb of the headlines for that day. The illustrations were great and the concept was very clever, but this book really stressed me out. I think it is just too soon to go through the chaos and awfulness of 2020 - fires, elections, Covid, protests. Too much right now. This book will be perfect in about a decade. Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book!

[Ula Tardigrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very original and moving book. I liked both the approach - to show history-in-the-making through headlines - and the rough aesthetics. It was sometimes a little too painful, as we are still waiting for the pandemic to go away two years later, but this book is definitely worth buying for the future, as a one of a kind memento of this very strange time.

Thanks to the publisher, Henry Holt & Company, Metropolitan Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

[Ives Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

One could feel the painstaking labor it took for Elise Engler to illustrate the disastrous year of 2020, and in her creative and detailed compositions of works, the reader relives the nightmares of the year that didn't seem to end.

[Dasha Slepenkina · Rating 1 out of 5]

A big thank-you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for giving me a copy of this book for an unbiased review.

1/5 - Not for me.

I had to sit with this rating for a while before committing to it. This book is important and informative, but I rate books based on my experience with them. This does not necessarily mean enjoyment - I might rate a book highly because I disagree with it but it opened new ways of thinking for me, for instance. I even seek out books that make me worry or break my heart - I don't mind a tear-jerker.

But this book gave me the experience of reliving the absolute nightmare that was 2020 all over again and I just cannot recommend that to anyone who is as traumatized by that year as I am. The worst part is - that nightmare is far from over. COVID is still with us; we are still losing our loved ones and dealing with the pain and isolation of this pandemic. I had a visceral reaction to this book where I could not get through it quickly enough because each page brought up painful memories on a personal and national scale. It left me feeling nauseated and depleted.

Maybe this is my fault - what did I expect from a book titled "A Diary of the Plague Year"? But I suppose maybe I figured the account would be more personal, which would allow me to connect with the illustrator and not fixate so much on the traumas I myself still carry. Or maybe I thought the account would highlight some of the positives that I had forgotten. Instead, it read exactly in the way that I remember this year - a steady march of daily rising death counts, impediments to justice, global climate change disasters - a sort of rhythm of misery that I am not ready to re-encounter.

My rating of this book does not reflect its value. I can see this being used to study the history of 2020 several decades from now. It is accurate and precise, offering a tapestry that covers what living 2020 was like. But my personal experience in reading this book was just too similar to my experience of living out that year. And for this reason, it was not for me.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up while browsing the library shelves during work. My interest was piqued and I went with it.

The premise of the book is that the artist painted (daily) collages of the top 5 (or so) stories that she heard on the radio every day upon waking up. Interesting concept...and who in the world could have predicted the year that she would document in 2020?

It was very interesting to see the events of the year unfold from nothing (a random mention of Covid in January) into a huge something (400K Covid deaths in the US by the end of the year). The debacle that was Donald Trump was crazy to watch over a year also!!

I didn't feel that I could rate the book more highly because I didn't *love* the artwork, and it turns out that maybe I didn't *really* want to revisit that crappy year. It certainly wasn't an uplifting book - 2020 was a dang dumpster fire!

I really enjoyed the concept...I just didn't love the book for various reasons.

[Kati Garringer-Maccabe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't expect the emotional reaction this book elicited from me. I started crying and kept doing so long after I'd set the book down. I chalked this up to my particularly sensitive nature until I read numerous reviews saying the same. This book is a good historical document, and a compelling artistic challenge, but deeply depressing.

The art itself varies in quality. Many of the paintings are evocative depictions of events or concepts. The blotchy, watery medium lends itself to that bleak, chaotic year. At times, the illustrations are merely serviceable representations of the headlines. And that's fine too. I appreciate the instances we hear the artist's voice. It serves as an emotional check-in between the deluge of daily dread.

I'd give it a 4 as an overall historical document, but a 3 for my personal reading experience. I'd probably recommend it for teenagers and young adults in 15 or 20 years. Not so much for those of us who lived it.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is spectacularly well done. It captures the year that was, as the saying has it, and reminds me of things I either didn't catch at the time, or would have forgotten. The numbers of dead are staggering and the fact that they would have been much much lower had 45 been a leader (or even a decent human being) instead of a giant raging toddler is just horrific. The drawings are excellently done and the emotions they evoke are strong. Above all, I am left with a strong wish that I too could draw little pictures of the day's events that somebody else would recognize as, you know, the day's events instead of random stick figures and weird shadings. What a book I would write, I tell you. What a book.

[Georgina Warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elise Engler gives us a riveting, vivid and insightful visual experience of historic events occurring during the time of COVID-19 in the United States and Worldwide. Her illustrations capture all the nuances of these important players in this unfolding of the news and quarantine.

This book should be included in every library and classroom, and it may inspire other people to create their own visual diaries in words and pictures. The soft blending of colors is truly unforgettable.

Required reading for all academics looking to understand life during COVID-19 pandemic and the contested election year of 2021 for the US presidency.

The illustrations have accompanying text handwritten by the author and typed for further clarity.

[Betty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sobering. That was 2020. The longer we live, the more we remember sobering years. 1963 and 1968: assassinations. 1978: Jim Jones’ koolaid . 1986: the Challenger. We were sobered by these events but they did not affect us as personally as 2020 did.

The author-artist devotes a page a day to the daily headlines. COVID. Lockdowns. A scowling out-going president.

This book is rough to look at with memories so recent and some events still raging today. Future generations might enjoy it. I, however, won’t suggest the twelve-year-old or even the 34-year-old in my life read it now.

[Barbara Waloven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exceptionally drawn chronicle of the 2020 fiasco we all (everyone on earth) lived through. Visual artist Elise Engler didn’t intend to create this book but I am so glad she did. She took important headlines from around the world then she drew a small amazingly detailed gouache or watercolor picture that brilliantly depicted those headlines. There’s politics, masked people, COVID statistics, immigration issues, civil unrest, empty streets, floods, fires, explosions, protests, gun violence, and so very much more. This would be a great book to hand off to future generations. So that mistakes made maybe won’t get repeated. Very highly recommend!

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I saw this at the library, I thought it seemed too good to pass up. The work that went into it was amazing and it certainly was worth walking through 2020 day by day again but it wasn’t a pleasurable stroll. Covid + the Trump presidency were plagues that just kept getting worse. With hindsight, you know what’s coming and it seems to obvious where things are headed but I remember having no idea what the next day would bring back then. I don’t think this was cathartic… it was kind of just depressing.

[Hal Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I picked this book up, thinking, "What a great idea for a book!" Six pages in I realized it was a terrible idea for a book. Each drawings is a dry, dull, literal rendering, usually arranged montagely, of the day's headlines, adding nothing to sparse descriptions (which are in turn too brief to be interesting except as memory prompts). Why bother doing this?

I guess when I picked up the book I had assumed the author knew how to draw.

[Chris]

I forgot so much…plane crashes in the Phillipines, the U.S.S. Roosevelt, Scott Atlas…The graphics have a muddy, courtroom-sketch quality, but they were made in a single morning and the day-by-day headlines reconstruct the rise of the pandemic, BLM, the election, and the insurrection, with a constant backdrop of climate degradation.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm happy to announce I finally finished this book. I'm not sure what I was thinking, that it would be easy to read a book depicting each day of 2020 in an illustration? Dumb thought. I could only take so much of this at a time. Thought provoking and a lot of times forcing me to Google events. A lot of stuff happened that year, only a tiny bit of which I actually absorbed.

[Erin]

A visual record of the headlinese of 2020.

It sounded intriguing (it still sounds intriguing), but I am not ready to take a deep dive into the visuals or the headlinese of 2020. So I flipped through, but will require a little more distance before actually absorbing any of this.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author is actually an artist. This is a catalog of her artwork for each day of 2020 where she composed a new piece for each day of the year according to the news of that day. The texts simply explained what was portrayed. The people in the artwork were not always identifiable by me without the captions. Interesting concept.

[McKenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is a very good chronically of a year. The art is super well done, and it’s so incredibly thoughtful and understanding.

I wish there had been more text or something but overall this was beautiful.