• Age: 16 to 18
• Grade: 11 to 12

A New York Times Notable Book; a Barack Obama’s end of year favorite of 2022; and the winner of Canada Reads
Kate Beaton’s Ducks stunned the world with its unflinching honesty and candid vulnerability, cementing its place in the graphic novel canon alongside Maus, Persepolis, and Fun Home. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, young Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush—in the tradition of East Coasters seeking gainful employment when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so dear.
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands puts Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess on display. Colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles are set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. But as one of the few women among thousands of men working for the world’s largest oil companies, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. For young Katie, her wounds may never heal.
Her first full length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is the first graphic novel to win Canada Reads, and was named Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post. One of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Books of the year, it was also named among the Best Graphic Novels of the Year by Forbes, The Globe and Mail and The Guardian.

Kate Beaton est auteure de Diantre! un manant, un recueil de bandes dessinées classé au palmarès du New York Times et de l'album illustré La princesse et le poney. Elle est lauréate de nombreux prix Harvey et ses dessins ont paru dans le New Yorker. Kate a grandi sur l'île du Cap-Breton, en Nouvelle-Écosse.

Kate Beaton is the author of The Princess and the Pony, which received four starred reviews and was selected as an ALA Notable Children's Book, and Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside, Pops!, both #1 New York Times bestselling comics collections. Kate is the recipient of multiple Harvey awards, and her cartoons have been featured in the New Yorker. Kate lives in Canada, and you can find her online at www.beatontown.com, or on Twitter and Tumblr as @beatonna.

Kate Beaton's profile page

Ducks... is a rebuttal to hierarchies of silence, an attempt to draw attention to forms of suffering that are easier to ignore.

The New Yorker

Kate Beaton's exceptionally well-told and well-drawn graphic memoir… full of insights into human and environmental degradation, make[s] her a memoirist of the first rank.

The Los Angeles Times

A monumental synthesis of history, politics, and herself.

Vulture

Ducks is a bruising and intimate account of survival and exploitation—of both the land and the people who worked on it—and is brought to life by Beaton’s immersive illustrations. In unveiling her plight, Beaton makes stunning observations about the intersections of class, gender, and capitalism.

TIME

Epic. Kate Beaton headed west [to] one of the world’s most environmentally destructive oil operations, where workers lived in barracks-like camps and men vastly outnumbered women. Her experience there… gave her an insider’s view into a place and piece of Canadian history few outsiders ever see.

The New York Times

What a difficult, gorgeous and abidingly humane book.

The Guardian