Brownstone by Samuel Teer & Mar Julia. Versify, 2024. 9780358394747. 318pp. Fourteen-year-old Almudena has never met her Guatemalan father, Xavier. When her mother gets a chance to tour with a dance production, she drops Almudena off to spend the summer with him. Xavier doesn’t speak much English at all, but it’s better than Almudena’s Spanish. And she’s super confused about what it means to be Guatemalan. But in helping to restore Xavier’s broken-down brownstone, with more than a bit of translation assistance from his girlfriend, she and her father start to form a bond. Almudena also gets to know the neighbors and the Latin American neighborhood, and to form friendships despite some of the teasing she endures. This is a lovely story that spans only three months and ends with a real sense of community. My favorite minor character is Tomaz, a young man with a brain injury who acts like he’s in an anime-inspired fighting video game. He even expects prizes! (He’s a nice dude, though some find him a bit scary.) Queralt, Almudena’s friend who runs a nearby bodega, is a close second. Throughout Teer’s writing is superb, and Julia’s sequential art is so great it just kind of disappeared into my brain as I read the book. (Worth noting: I absolutely love the way they draw Almudena’s hair in the book, though it makes me miss mine.) It’s no surprise that this graphic novel won the Printz Award last January.

The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers by Kiron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard. Image, 2025. 9781534328884. Contains #1 – 5. Publisher’s Rating: M (Mature). I love deciding to pick up a graphic novel in a comic store and then, when I take it to the counter, the clerk is even more excited than I am that I’m buying it. The woman at Seattle’s Phoenix Comics said this is one of their top-selling graphic novels, and that it’s full of ideas Gillen had (but couldn’t use, or wasn’t allowed to use) when he was writing X-men stories for Marvel. Wijngaard’s art and the design of the book (credit to Rian Hughes) had already sold me on buying it, but after hearing that I was all in. People with superpowers appeared after mankind entered the atomic age. There are six superpowered individuals who could each destroy the planet; there are also a few folks with minor gifts. The book opens in 1966 in New York with two of the superpowers, Valentina and Etienne, wandering the streets, talking and eating pizza. Etienne discusses why it would be ethical to take over the world. He sees their existence as immoral. And he needs Valentina to agree on a plan for the world — she doesn’t want to take it over — so they don’t come into conflict. Etienne’s ethics are, for me, the highlight of the book, though they lead him to do some horrifying things with his powers. But it all makes sense to him (and a few of the others) given the threats they face; the rest go along for other reasons… Gillen is always great at writing multi-book story arcs, and after this first volume I can’t wait to see where the series goes.  

 

These two sequels to Adam Rex’s Gumluck the Wizard are fun but go read that first book in the series if you haven’t, it’s too great a start to miss. Rex’s stories are hilarious and make the best read-alouds in large part because his illustrations are also fabulous. Everyone will find something to enjoy in these books. The Story of Gumluck and the Dragon’s Eggs (Book Two) by Adam Rex. Chronicle, 2024. 9781797214511. 126pp. The story of the kind (and kinda hapless) wizard Gumluck, his ghostly friend Butterscotch, and Helvetica (a crow) starts with Helvica looking for a place to lay her eggs. Gumluck keeps wrecking her nests (in the nicest way) so she finds a huge dead tree, the perfect place, and lays three eggs there. Unfortunately, it’s a dragon’s nest. Things get weirder when Helvetica tries to convince the resident dragon that Helvetica, is, in fact, a dragon herself.       The Story of Gumluck and the Heroes (Book Three) by Adam Rex. Chronicle, 2025. 9781797214528. 136pp. (minor spoiler) Helvetica and her three baby crows now live with Gumluck. He’s trying to invite the Very Wise Wizard Who Lives in the Moon to stay at their house when the moon is too small for her to stay home. (The moon has quite a bureaucracy, as evidenced by all of the Moonboss’s assistants and such who stop by to help with arrangements.) The wizard eventually shows up, hands out many gifts, and then asks for a favor; she knows some folks who need Gumluck’s help, adventurers who want a wizard on their quest. They are a fighter with a giant sword, an elvish archer, and a thief who doesn’t seem to want anyone to know she’s a raccoon. This party of adventurers provides Rex with a chance to skewer a few D&D tropes and also to show the value of kindness in the most hilarious ways. It will be enjoyable to kids and adults alike, but particularly to geeky adults with certain gaming habits.

Kirby’s Lessons For Falling (In Love) by Laura Gao. HarperAlley, 2025. 9780063067790. 302pp. Kirby Tan is a climbing prodigy with a nemesis (AJ), an awesome best friend (Eric), and a supportive family (her very Christian mother, her younger brother Bowen, and her grandfather). After she falls in a competition, an injury forces her to take time away from climbing. She needs to improve her English grade, and now she needs an extracurricular activity, too, so she decides to become the new astrologist for the newspaper club. That’s where she meets the outgoing and passionate Beatrix Santos, who takes Kirby under her wing to work on a new column, “Ask the Universe” and also helps Kirby with English. Together they offer advice based on the requestor’s star signs (as well as a little secret help, which often backfires). And after they’ve been hanging out for a while, it’s clear the two are getting closer and closer. Gao’s art, especially the way she uses details in the panels and the way the story unfolds, helps make the pacing perfect. Eric and Astrid (another newspaper club member) are always around, making this a tale of friendship as much as one of high school romance. Kirby has a great relationship with her grandfather, whose health is failing, and her mother isn’t a caricature though she is pushing Kirby toward a churchy life.

Loving, Ohio by Matthew Erman and Sam Beck. Dark Horse, 2024. 9781506741567. 214pp. Kids have been going missing in Loving, Ohio, but no one seems to care. The opening pages point to a creepy killer (he seems about to murder someone before) before the story flashes back to five months earlier, when Jesse announces that he’s leaving. This was just before he killed himself. The remaining four friends mourn Jesse, complaining about the city they live in and the church/cult their parents belong to. They all seem to want out. And then they witness something supernatural at a rock show in a church’s basement, and the story tilts toward horror. It’s a smooth transition, and it ups the stakes as the friends try to take care of each other. Great graphic novel, particularly if you’re from a place you had to get away from (or still there, hoping to make it out). (Good luck.)  

Hexagon Bridge by Richard Blake. Image, 2024. 9781534397835. 152pp. Contains #1 – 5. Publisher’s Rating: T+ / Teen Plus. Includes a cover gallery and some preliminary art in the back. This book is beautiful. The collection has as much shelf appeal as the individual issues’ covers — I just love the sense of space the illustrations have. If they look as good to you as they do to me, find a copy of this graphic novel. You don’t need to read more. But, in brief: The story starts in 4040, when Adley’s parents are taken captive while exploring multidimensional space. Adley has visions of them, so the plan is to link her to a new, fully conscious AI in a humanoid body, Staden, so that she can help guide him to her parents through the multidimensional maze that is the Bridge. This linking takes a while. Twelve years later, Staden sets off on his rescue mission.  

No Rules Tonight by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada. Penguin Workshop, 20204. 97805935211298. 208pp. This is a sequel of sorts to Banned Book Club, also by Kim and Estrada (though BBC was illustrated by Ko Hyung-Ju). Both graphic novels are about Kim’s experience as a college student in South Korea, when student protests against the ruling dictatorship were frequent. Banned books figure into this volume, too, though Estrada’s art helps it achieve a lighter tone. At the beginning of the book, South Korea is still ruled by a military dictatorship, but the country-wide late-night curfew is a thing of the past. Hyun Sook has joined a folk dance group at Anjeon University (she’s the janggu player), and during winter vacation they’re planning a group trip to Jiri Mountain. Hoon, the group’s director, is the one who invited Hyun Sook into the banned book club, but they’re taking a break after one of their friends went to prison for possession of a book about communism. Hoon is changing schools next year, and encourages Hyun Sook to start her own banned book club. He’s also in charge of supplies for the trip, which becomes a problem after he’s mistakenly arrested for being a union organizer. This creates last-minute problems for the dance group’s trip, but everyone goes despite Hoon being in police custody. Hoon’s arrest also creates a lot of suspicion among the members; could any of them be government informers? The trip is filled with friendly banter and a bit of romance despite some realistic paranoia on the part of the students, which particularly affects their view of the ROTC students and the new guy in the group. Worth noting: I really enjoyed learning a bit more about talchum, “a thousand-year-old art form that [is] like band, musical theater, dance, history, and activism all rolled up into one.” When I lived in Korea I saw a lot of traditional masks, and there were always traditional percussion groups around playing music, but I’ve still never seen a full performance.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. Tordotcom, 2025. 9781250341082. 134p. (The main novella ends on page 99, and the rest of the book contains the short story “John Hollowback and the Witch” (a preview of an upcoming collection) plus a few pages of acknowledgements.) I’m such a huge fan of the book El-Mohtar co-wrote with Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose The Time War, that I don’t think I’ll ever pass up the chance to read her fiction. This novella involves a family that tends to magical Willow trees which grow along a river that flows from Faerie to our world. The family’s two daughters love singing to the trees and each other. One of them has a lover from Faerie who wants to offer a fair trade for her songs. But she also has a suitor from our world whose manners and intentions are far from lovely. There are illustrations by Kathleen Neeley throughout, and the story went places that I didn’t expect. This is up there with Nicola Griffith’s Spear and Premee Mohamed’s The Annual Migration of Clouds as one of my favorite novellas.

The Racc Pack by Stephanie Cooke, Art by Whitney Gardner. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2024. 9781665914932. 184pp. I’ve been a fan of Gardner’s work since reading her YA vampire graphic novel, Fake Blood. And I had just heard 99% Invisible’s Raccoon Resistance episode, about Toronto’s attempts to make its trash cans raccoon-proof. Both these facts plus the book’s tag-line — “live fast, eat trash” — pretty much guaranteed that I was going to pick it up. Raccoons Dusty (the brains) and ReRe (the muscle), plus their possum friend Scraps (the gadget guy), do their best work at night, going through people’s trash. But when the mayor of Toronto invests in raccoon-proof garbage cans…well, it’s not much of a challenge. When they find a market that’s throwing out so much “ugly” food they decide to try to push the place’s bin to their house, but the whole plan gets them into more trouble than ever. Luckily, a cat named JB comes to the rescue. She seems to want to help them come up with a plan to steal the dumpster, too. But it’s unclear what she’s going to get out of that. There’s a madcap sense of humor running through this dumpster-diving story, and Gardner’s illustrations really add to the heist as “Mission Impawssible” gets underway. A sequel to this book was just in January.