I’m starved for more Heartstopper content while I wait for the next season of the show to wrap up filming and production, and for the final volume of the comics to come out, so I’m at the point where I’ll take any morsels I can get. Enter The Heartstopper Yearbook. It’s part art book, part reflection on the series, part other miscellany. However, it’s 100% adorable, including the book itself, with its gold-print leaves on the cover. Whether you like her books or not, I think you have to at least credit Oseman for her cover designs. She’s spoken about playing a central role in the process of deciding what her books will look like, with Heartstopper, Volume 1 looking virtually identical to her self-published version, and the care and attention to detail really shows. Both reading through the book, and even just looking at it on the shelf, it’s a treat for the eyes. I wish my entire collection of books could follow that same aesthetic. Let Rainbow Rowell and Alice Oseman dictate the look of all the books I read and I’d be oh so happy. Anyway, there is actual comic content here to be enjoyed. I believe the additional bits from Heartstopper were included with the collected volumes I read, but the Tara and Darcy mini-comic, showing the moments prior to them officially becoming girlfriends, was new to me and worth the price of admission on its own. Even if not for that, though, I simply love seeing collections of art behind my favorite things, and this has some great examples of the progression of Oseman’s art, showing even pre-Heartstopper Charlie. Having never read the online comic, I didn’t even realize she’d re-done all of the comics in her newly polished style prior to releasing the comics in book form, and we get great side-by-side examples of the before and after of that too. In other words, if you care one bit about these comics and their characters, there’s something for you in this book and I can’t recommend it enough.
