How Comics Can Be ‘A Positive Dream for the World’

Carousel Summer
Kathleen Gros
HarperCollins Canada (2025)

I Hated You in High School
Kathleen Gross
Andrews McMeel Publishing (2025)

Kathleen Gros really didn’t plan to release two full-length graphic novels in one season. But sometimes, the publishing calendar works in mysterious ways.

The Vancouver-based cartoonist launched two books in April. Carousel Summer, published by HarperCollins Canada, is a middle-grade graphic novel about a young girl in a small Ontario town who faces questions of identity after an artist and her daughter arrive to help redevelop the local carousel. And I Hated You In High School, published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, is a rom-com friends-to-lovers story about a struggling Vancouver artist who falls for her high school nemesis.

Both books deal with themes of queer identity, gentrification and self-discovery, albeit for very different audiences. Carousel Summer joins Gros’s earlier works as a tender introduction to queer identity for younger readers, while I Hated You In High School moves beyond the usual coming-out story into the messy, dramatic, real-life realm of actual queer lives.

At the core of both books are themes of change and identity, paralleled smartly by something familiar to Vancouver residents: real estate development. For a story about queer adults partially set in present-day Vancouver, it’s a no-brainer. And while it might seem like a surprising topic for a middle-grade graphic novel, Carousel Summer uses development and change in a small Ontario town to draw parallels to how all big life changes — from figuring out your identity to your town’s main street changing — can be big, messy and complicated for everyone involved.

A former president of the Vancouver-based comics non-profit Cloudscape Comics Society, Gros has been a staple of the Vancouver comics scene for a decade, not only publishing and exhibiting at festivals, but teaching the next generation of artists at Langara College, Emily Carr University and Place des Arts, a non-profit arts education centre in Coquitlam.

I’ve known Gros since I moved to Vancouver eight years ago. We were introduced by a mutual friend in the Vancouver comics scene, and have subsequently orbited similar queer and comics spaces in the years since. She used to co-table with my partner at comics conventions like the Vancouver Comics Arts Festival, and as a fellow respecter of the wooden roller coaster, she has become my go-to fair ride buddy at the PNE midway in the summer (I even snapped the carousel author photo at the back of Carousel Summer).

Ahead of her dual book launch at Lucky’s Books and Comics on May 16, I grabbed a bubble tea with Gros to chat about her dual releases, cricket-filled Vancouver apartments and the best part about Pride in Vancouver. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

The Tyee: Carousel Summer is targeted at middle grade readers, while I Hated You In High School is decidedly for adults. How did you find the difference in writing for each group?

Kathleen Gros: I mean, there’s certain things that [are] just a lot harder to talk about when you’re writing for children. Both books deal with the topic of gentrification in certain ways, and the tension of new developments. And in a kid’s book you kind of have to set up certain concepts a little bit more because, you know, an eight-year-old is going to kind of understand what's going on just by living in Canada, but maybe doesn't have all of the vocabulary.

Whereas in an adult book, I can just have that humming along in the background and not need to set it up quite as much. I really try not to talk down to children when I write to them because they're smart and funny, and will see through you.

Both books are very gay, and your previous middle grade books — adaptations of Anne of Green Gables and Little Women — also heavily feature queer themes. I think a lot of bad actors would suggest those are topics not for kids, or that need to be explained to kids. But your work feels very intentional in its casual queerness with scenes at Pride and side characters being openly queer.

My intention with my work for younger readers is to both provide a little bit of a lens for people who might see themselves and might need to see themselves, and find that vocabulary they need [to reflect their experiences], but also for people who maybe aren’t queer or don’t know they’re queer yet, and need the vocabulary to know how to react when somebody shares these things with them.

Because there’s still such an element of taboo I even see sometimes in the classes that I teach with younger kids where there’s like a, “gasp! We can’t say the gay word!” Even though gay marriage has been legal in Canada for 20 years.

Parents, we need to be doing a little bit better on educating our kids. But it’s, I think, trying to show a positive dream for the world, or a positive dream for the experience of a kid.

Your books have faced bannings in libraries for their queer content, right?

I know Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of) was targeted in Victoria once, and I'm sure they’ve been just quietly removed from other places, and it feels really bad. But I also think it’s worthwhile work.

You know, it feels very vulnerable sometimes, in a way that I don’t like. As a cartoonist, you get this wonderful separation between you and the people who receive your work, which is really nice.

But now the “themes” that I work with, normal everyday occurrences in lives, are highly politicized. It feels more like critical eyes can turn back towards me in ways that are very exposing and don’t wish to see you as a human being. I’ve become like a symbol of the devil instead of just some person drawing stories in their apartment.

Both books deal with themes of gentrification. You lived for a long time on the Broadway corridor, and have watched the SkyTrain development happen in that time. Can you speak to how you integrated that into both books?

Maybe my own frustration with my own writing is that the politics of Carousel Summer are a lot less strong than my own personal, personally held convictions. Sometimes in the process of framing a narrative, certain edges have to be sanded down, or changed a little bit for the set narrative.

But yeah, I'm angry every single day living in Vancouver with the way that housing is approached here. And both of these books were created from very specific frustrations and angers.

I remember being so angry when I was coming up with the Carousel Summer idea. I had this idea of the artist coming to town, but I hadn't fully figured out the B plot yet. And then the old building that Little Mountain Gallery used to be in was up for redevelopment. I think [the] Cloudscape [Comics Society] at the time was having some issues with thinking about the future and what spaces they would be in.

I was just really, really angry about all the important community spaces disappearing in Vancouver. I mean, Little Mountain Gallery found a new place, but it just feels like every art space is disappearing because the rents are too high and the city doesn't want to invest in the goodness that can come from having easily accessible art spaces.

So that doesn’t really come through as much in the book, but that is the spark for, “Oh, I’m really mad about this. How can I write something that helps let kids know what’s going on?”

I also added a housing B plot to I Hated You in High School because we needed to expand it from the bare bones of a romance thing, and I wanted it to be very Vancouver, because that’s true to my own 20s. But I was like, “what is the truest thing that every single person who is a young adult in Vancouver feels?”

And that is the fear that you are going to lose your home because the rents are too high, and the rents are only getting higher, and you live in a shit-hole building, a terrible building that's never being fixed, because they know that the moment you leave they can raise that rent so high. Also it’s full of crickets.

That sounds familiar.

Sometimes, as a writer, you borrow certain details to sprinkle through. But yes, I did live in a building infested with crickets for five years, and it was horrible. And I did move out because the building was up for redevelopment. I had the opportunity to move in with my partner, so we had housing secured, but I didn't see it being particularly great to wait out to see if the Broadway Plan protections would be enacted, because I don't believe that they will be enacted properly.

I think anybody in Vancouver would be very familiar with those little housing development signs that appear in the book.

When you get that notice of redevelopment and you see that one of the contact numbers is for, like, homelessness services. Yeah, pretty bad vibes. The city is not going to protect us, no matter how much they say.

I know that you travelled to Toronto to draw specific locations for I Hated You in High School. There are also a lot of very familiar Vancouver locations. Did you have a favourite place to draw?

I just had such a fun time with the specificity of location, because something I’m always thinking about when I’m creating work is how I really want you to feel, like you could step into that world and turn in a full circle and know what’s around you.

Trying to draw Vancouver, and the Vancouver that I was spending time in, was really, really fun. I think drawing the pool is one of my favorites. The Kitsilano Pool scene is one of my favorite scenes.

I was drawing in the winter, so I couldn’t have access to Kits Pool. So I enlisted all of my friends who I know go to Kits Pool during the summer and take a million photos. They sent me all their photos, and I pieced together all the backgrounds around that. So that was definitely one of my favorite scenes.

I did really enjoy drawing the PNE and the wooden roller coaster. Again, I was drawing this in the winter when I didn't have access to the PNE. I watched a lot of walk-throughs on YouTube — amusement park people are weird in the best way.

Another big part of I Hated You in High School is Vancouver Pride. Do you have a favorite part of Pride season in Vancouver that you wanted to communicate the energy of in the book?

I’m not not a huge crowds person, and I like being inside, but I do really love the HappyLand events [at the PNE]. I think they’re so fun. It’s the best way to experience the PNE, because they get great acts that are really fun, and then you get to ride all the rides. I also love the Dyke March and stuff like that. Going out, seeing everybody getting all dressed up, having fun.

You’ve been a mainstay in the Vancouver comics community as long as I’ve known you, exhibiting at the Vancouver Comic Arts festival and being heavily involved with the Cloudscape Comics Society. I think a lot of people don’t know the full breadth of that community here. Could you speak to it a bit?

I think we’re really spoiled in Vancouver — a lot of cartoonists live here and have for ages.

When I first moved to Vancouver, like I was just leaving my teens, and I did not know how to make friends, really, because I went to Emily Carr and there’s no dorm, so you’re not forced to spend time with your classmates. I was doing the occasional zine show because I’d been doing them in Toronto, and I wound up meeting some folks from Cloudscape, which is an arts organization in Vancouver that has sort of two halves to it. One half is a publishing half, where they focus on publishing comics by B.C.-based artists and writers, and then the other half is sort of a community space, where on Wednesday nights, anyone who is interested in drawing comics or interested in writing comics, is welcome to come to their meeting space, which currently is in the Roundhouse Community Centre.

That was really instrumental in me finding like-minded people, because I didn’t really know anyone who drew comics. And I found some really great friends that way, and Cloudscape published my first book, Last Night at Wyrmwood High.

So I think we’re very lucky in that there’s a lot of people making comics in Vancouver, and a lot of people who want to share their knowledge making comics in Vancouver.

What are your pie-in-the sky projects next, now that you’ve come out of “two-book month”?

I would love to make more adult work. The market is a lot smaller for adult work, so it’s a bit trickier to get your foot in the door there. I would love to write a couple more romance novels. They're really fun. I have more ideas about one set in Vancouver.

But I’ll always love writing for kids. It’s so fun. And I’m currently working on a new kids book with HarperCollins, again, that is focusing on a fictional town on Vancouver Island, and a mini-golf course, and maybe a mystery around that. I’m really looking forward to drawing all the twisty, windy Island roads.

Kathleen Gros celebrates the launch of Carousel Summer and I Hated You In High School at Lucky’s Books and Comics in Vancouver on May 16.