Ember and the Island of Lost Creatures by Jason Pamment. Harper Alley, 2023. 9780063065208. 288pp. Ember is a tiny boy who lives in a huge city and dreams of going to school with the “giant” kids at Seawinds Elementary. One day he slips and falls into the schoolyard and, after an Indian Jones-esque escape, ends up on a beach where he meets Lua, a sea turtle. She tells him about an island she found when she was a little turtle, a magical place full of lost creatures where she went to school and learned about the world. And she offers to take him there. And the island is super cool, but telling you more about it and what happens there would spoil this graphic novel for you. This book is just as beautifully drawn as Pamment’s Treasure in the Lake, and it’s full of strange, magical, and mostly friendly animals and plants. My favorite character is Ember’s first friend on the island, a rock that helps him get to school on his first day. (Doug the dung beetle is a close second.)

The Night Eaters Book 1: She Eats The Night by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda. Abrams Comicarts, 2022. 9781419758706. 204pp. This family story starts in Hong Kong in 1956, when Ipo arrives looking for work, and continues in Queen’s Village, New York, now, where she is a hard, chain-smoking mother of two who lives across the street from a spooky house. Her husband seems like the most patient, loving guy ever, and the couple’s love story is charmingly strange. Their kids, Milly and Billy, are working to keep their restaurant afloat. Ipo is trying to get them to take care of a few plants, and eventually she makes them accompany her across the street as part of what seems to be a neighborly gardening project. It quickly becomes clear there’s something supernatural happening at the house, though. And then Milly and Billy are forced to face it. In some ways this reads like a beautifully illustrated, narrator-less, Hellblazer-esque Finding Your Roots episode. By the end you’ll know more about Ipo and her family, and it’s clearly the beginning of a series of books rather than a standalone graphic novel. (Volume 2 has already been published, and it’s just as great.)

The Unpetables by Dennis Messner. Top Shelf, 2023. 9781603095235. 88pp. Pigmund Isadore Pigmund grew up in Uncle Milo’s All-Natural Petting Zoo, where he wrote his life story on paper plates. His best friend Lizárdo Van Buren Van Halen (an iguana) was also born there. After getting really sick of all the petting, they escape using a train and some chickens. Kenny, Maintenance Man Kenny from the zoo pursues them. He continues to try to hunt them down as they seek their destiny as freelance pets. I particularly loved the section of encounters with potential customers looking for pets — they’re all nightmares until suddenly Pigmund and Lizardo meet Chad. And that situation becomes its own weird nightmare, complete with a house containing comics, collectibles, and an insane hamster named Mr. Buttercups. It’s all super silly, and Messner’s black and white drawings reminded me of some of my favorite comics from the 1980s – early 2000s.

Nothing Special Volume One: Through the Elder Woods by Katie Cook. Ten Speed Graphic, 2024. 9781984862839. 416pp. including a look inside Radish’s notebook at the end. Callie’s dad is a daemon, and he runs an antique store. He never talks about her mother, and he seems overly protective of Callie. She goes to a high school in the human world, and it’s there she runs into Declan, who can also see sprites. (These are little spirits, mostly of plants, that follow Callie everywhere.) It’s a nice meet-cute even though they’ve been in class together since Kindergarten. She helps him learn to communicate with the large sprite outside his house that’s freaking him out. He’s there when she finds her house trashed and her father missing. Then they set out together to find him, through the door to her father’s shop which opens into a magical market. The magical forest where they go next is a bit intimidating, but in Cook’s hands it’s delightful, a bright place full of humor, cuteness, and pop culture references. Soon Radish joins the quest — he’s the bossiest sprite around, and more than a little protective of Callie (though that may just be jealousy). And soon Decklan has a rival for Callie’s affections, too, though it’s clear Declan has nothing to worry about. They figure out why Declan can see sprites and discover who Callie’s mom is, too, in the process of rescuing her dad (who really needs help). Great book. Put it in your YA section where middle school kids can find it, too. If you’re trying to decide if this is right for your library, youo can still read Nothing Special in its original format on Webtoons.

My Very Own Special Particular Private And Personal Cat by Sandol Stoddard Warburg, designed and illustrated by Remy Charlip. Enchanted Lion, 2023. (Originally published in 1963.) 9781592703852. I love everything about this book: the poetry, the illustrations, the orange-yellow paper, and especially the layout, which helps the words and illustrations work together. A child talks about playing with his cat, and the cat is clearly not having a good time and finally runs off. The story really gets going in the second half, when it shifts into the cat’s point of view. Also: I loved the reproduction of Remy Charlip’s signature on the “This book belongs to ______” page.   Gravity Is Bringing Me Down by Wendelin Van Draanen, illustrated by Cornelia Li. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024. 9780593375921. Gravity is in a bad mood, and it’s making Leda’s school day pretty rough. (Don’t worry, she makes up with gravity later in the book.) The story is great, and a fun way to introduce kids to science, but Li’s illustrations make the book amazing; the way she draws the sun is my favorite thing in the book.       Love in the Library by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, illustrated by Yas Imamura. Candlewick, 2022. Includes an author’s note at the end. 9781536204308. The story of George and Tama Tokuda, the author’s maternal grandparents, who fell in love in the Minidoka incarceration camp in Idaho. (Tama worked in the library during their incarceration; George came in all the time and checked out more books than anyone could possibly read.) This is the best picture book on the internment of Japanese Americans I’ve read, and the most beautifully illustrated.

We Are Raccoons by Jim Munroe. 9798211698024. 241pp. I loved this book. I took a chance and bought a physical copy in 2022 when I found out that each of them had a different cover generated by Midjourney AI, using a different quote from the novel. It took me a while to get around to reading it (my to-read pile is deep, my eyes slow), but I haven’t enjoyed a book this much in a while. It’s the story of six game designers who, while working on a common NPC they can each use for their games, create an AI. It starts in 2019 and stretches into 2031. It’s written in short sections organized into chapters involving one or more characters, including AIs. The non-explaininess worked for me, along with the brief views into each of the characters’ lives over time, as they find their place in what has become of the world and figure out the part they played in creating it. More details would ruin it, but I urge you got give it a shot. Cory Doctorow and Charlie Jane Anders blurbed it. There are no more physical copies available, but a PDF is free, and you can pay what you like for an Epub or Mobi file if your eyes need help like mine do. (Worth noting: I’d have enjoyed this book as a teen, too.)

Buzzing by Samuel Sattin, illustrated by Rye Hickman. Little, Brown Ink, 2023. 9780316628419. 218pp. including an author’s not on his own OCD and a look at The Quest for Greenmoon campaign notes and the player’s character sheets. Isaac has OCD, and his worst impulses and bad thoughts about himself buzz around his head, unseen by everyone else, whispering to him and distracting him. After class one day Micah introduces herself and her friend Jaime to him. They’re both wowed by Isaac’s sketch of a dragon (and so is Jaime’s couldn’t-be-more-different twin, Carmen), and they invite him to play Swamps & Sorcery with them. Carmen tells him to prepare to venture to the Tower of Greenmoon. Isaac is excited, and clearly a little attracted to Micah; the feeling seems to be mutual. But his older sister Miriam thinks their mom might have issues with role-playing games, which she thinks lead to compulsions. And she does worry about that and everything else about Isaac’s life, so much that Miriam can’t get her mom’s attention for more than a moment. It feels explosive even though his mom lets him attend a few gaming sessions, and it all comes to a head when Isaac gets a bad grade. I loved the crush, the sibling relationship, and of course the D&D-like adventures. Every gaming group I’ve ever been a part of has at least one person who can draw better than everyone else, someone who asked to draw everyone’s characters, and that’s Isaac. Minor spoiler: It was tough to see his mom take that away from him, but heartening to see how others (including Miriam) help and support him in the end.

Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu. Quill Tree Books, 2023. 9780062955760. 267pp. Clementine Change just arrived on Mars, where everyone seems to have sentient, robotic personal assistants like she does. (Hers is named SENA, and it looks like a long-eared Pokemon. In fact most robots look like small, friendly creatures, including the owls at the library). Clementine is on Mars to work for one of her heroes, Dr. Lin, to print things for her in her workshop. Dr. Lin is not a nice person, but her assistant, Kye, is; he’s an AI robot modeled after a hero from a Chinese drama. There’s a lot that’s unusual about him — his level of isolation, plus the fact that Dr. Lin uses him as a data processor and to cook her meals. After Clementine shares some images of Earth with him, Kye starts to glitch. As she tries to help, they find the secrets at the heart of Kye, and Clementine reveals things about her past, drawing the two closer. Dr. Lin, to say the least, is not happy. This book reminds me of Blue Delliquanti’s O Human Star in all the best ways, and I love how Xu uses blue and pink to emphasize emotions and create a sense of place.  

Offshore Lightning by Saito Nazuna. Translated by Alexa Frank. Essay by Mitsuhiro Asakawa. Drawn & Quarterly, 2023. 9781770465053. Drawn & Quarterly’s English publications of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s work introduced me to gegika. This book is right up there with Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo for me. I love Saito’s illustration and storytelling style, and particularly the way she writes and draws older folks in her work. Manga artists and people at the end of their lives appear in several of the stories in a way that seems to build to the last story, “House of Solitary Death”, which, according to the essay at the end of the book, Nazuna is still creating new episodes of. This is a compelling, realistic collection of short manga that will defy most people’s expectations of manga. I believe it belongs in all adult public library collections.

Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy by Faith Erin Hicks. First Second, 2023. 9781250838728. 287pp plus some extras in the back. Alix is an awesome hockey player, but she’s in trouble for punching out her team captain (who, frankly, deserved it). One day at high school she sees Ezra, a theater dude, calmly dealing with a bully hassling him for being gay. Alix asks him to teach her, and she becomes his apprentice. They hang out. After a while she finds out what we readers have known for a while — that Ezra is actually bi — and they start dating. This is a big deal for Alix, who has never even kissed anyone, and their getting together is wonderfully awkward. Both have a hard time with their mothers, but for different reasons (their fathers are both out of the picture), and Ezra’s best friend isn’t really in favor of his new relationship (for a good reason). It’s a wonderfully written and drawn romantic YA graphic novel that will appeal to a wide swath of readers — in fact I’d say it’s Hicks’ best yet — her comics just get better and better — though I don’t think any book will ever replace Friends With Boys as my favorite book by her.