Daredevil: Know Fear by Chip Zdarsky (writer) and Marco Checchetto (artist). Colors by Sunny Gho. Marvel, 2019. 9781302914981. Contains Daredevil #1 – 5. Publisher’s Rating: T+. Daredevil is recovering from an injury but heads out into Hell’s Kitchen to fight crime anyway. When he takes on three men breaking into a store, one of them dies of head trauma not long after. Should he continue to be a hero? (He asks himself this question a lot, and also discusses it at church quite a bit.) Detective Cole North has just transferred to New York from Chicago. He sees costumed “heroes” like Daredevil as sadistic criminals, and refuses to turn a blind eye to their activities as other cops do. He’s determined to bring Daredevil to justice. Complicating the story: Wilson Fisk aka The Kingpin is the current mayor of New York City. And Punisher thinks Daredevil may be coming over to his way of thinking (it’s better to kill criminals than to arrest them). And there’s also a visit at the end of the book from a less-than-friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I’ve already read through the 4th volume of Zdarsky’s Daredevil run — the entertaining epic that continues across the books contains Elektra, an affair with a bookstore owner, a gang war, and, of course, Bullseye. The 7th volume is due out in spring of 2022. Don’t look at the later volumes’ covers if you want to avoid spoilers.

Otter Lagoon (Sueño Bay Adventures Book 2) by Mike Deas and Nancy Deas. Orca, 2021. 9781459819641. Jenna is a rule follower, but she’s breaking more than a few as she tries to raise money to help Charlie, an injured dog. When she discovers a glowing object in Otter Lagoon after a dog-walking mishap, she pretty quickly understands it’s the egg of a moon creature, specifically the very large Luner Serpentis. (Her little brother Sleeves has discovered one of its teeth, which also glows.) Jenna decides to try to make money by selling the eggs to exotic animal dealers, which angers the sea serpent, putting a vehicle ferry and the people on it in danger. Spouses Nancy and Mike Deas live on an island in British Columbia, so it’s no wonder rainy Sueño Bay feels so close to home. (I live in Seattle.) After reading this one I immediately went back and read the first book in the series, Shadow Island, which involves the same four friends, a raccoon-like supernatural creature, and a harsh gym teacher. I love the ambiguity of the characters’ ages and the fact that everyone knows the town is home to supernatural creatures.  

Witches of Brooklyn by Sophie Escabasse. RH Graphic, 2020. 9780593119273. 227pp. One night an agent from adoption services shows up at Selimene’s house with Effie, her niece, saying she’s now her legal guardian. Selimene thinks there must be some mistake — she’s way too old, and it’s not reasonable to drop off a kid like that. Luckily her housemate Carlota is more reasonable, and she’s able to help smooth things over and make Effie feel welcome. The house dog Lion helps, too, and Selimene doesn’t take too long to come around. Effie starts school, everyone adjusts to life together, and then Effie starts glowing, which leads her aunts to explain that they’re actually witches. They show her around their secret lab. And then they have to help one of Effie’s favorite singers remove a curse that’s threatening to ruin her concert. There’s even a cool, magical librarian of sorts. This book is absolutely charming and the art is wonderful — I particularly like the way the characters show emotions. I’ve read so many witch graphic novels for young kids in the past year that I wasn’t sure I was up for another, but this is a standout in that crowded field. A sequel Witches of Brooklyn: What the Hex? was published in 2021.  

Endless Pawsibilities by Sean Charmatz. Penguin Workshop, 2021. 9780593223796. “A Book for Furever Friends!” Charmatz draws on photos of paws to turn them into characters, and uses bolded letters and words to turn the text about friendship into cat-related wordplay. The result is silly and adorable. Be Still, Life by Ohara Hale. Enchanted Lion, 2018. 9781592702572. Hale’s poetic picture book starts in a pond the moves to its edge, up and into the breeze, and then into houses and streets, encouraging you to be still and listen to hear the strangest, tiniest sounds, including your heartbeat and silence. And then it moves on to scents, and asks you to take a whiff and embrace the life all around you. It’s colorful and fun and just a bit silly (but also very serious). The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess by Tom Gauld. Neal Porter Books, 2021. 9780823446988. A king and a queen want a child. One asks an inventor for while while the other asks a witch. Then they have the two kids in the title. The log princess has a secret though — every night she turns back into a log until she is awoken by a series of magic words which the little wooden robot uses to wake her up. But one day the robot is distracted, the log is discarded from his sister’s bed, and then he has to go out and find her (which is hard because she’s been thrown in with hundreds of other logs). This is a beautiful, fable-like picture book adventure that makes perfect use of Gauld’s deadpan style. My favorite pages are the one-page summaries of adventures there isn’t room to recount in the book — I hope we all get to see them in detail at some point soon.

The Golden Hour by Niki Smith. Little, Brown and Company, 2021. 9780316540377. Includes a note from the author about PTSD and derealization, as well as a list of resources plus notes on the famous photos in the book, early sketches, and a page showing Smith’s creative process. Before spring break, Ms Winstone was shot in her art classroom. She’s still out recovering but Manuel, who was in the class when she was attacked, is back at school. (None of his fellow students knows he was there.) Manuel gets to know his new friends Caysha and Sebastian during a group project. Caysha raises show chickens and Sebastian has a new calf — both encourage Manuel to go to Ag-Club and show his photographs there. But he’s also secretly (with the help of a counselor and his mom) dealing with PTSD and having panic attacks that lead to dissociating. (The way Smith draws these panic attacks, as well as Manuel’s efforts to ground himself during the panic attacks, is really affecting.) It was great to read a graphic novel about kids becoming close friends without any bullying or drama. These are kids who care about each other, and they all have decent parents! Smith’s art is moving, and the book feels extremely personal. (I’d like to offer a shout out to the diverse range of subjects Smith has been able to cover in her three excellent graphic novels! I highly recommend both The Deep & Dark Blue (YA fantasy) and the very explicit Crossplay (erotic, set at a comic convention), too.)

tiny dancer by Siena Cherson Siegel and Mark Siegel. Background assistance by Abe Erskine. Atheneum, 2021. 9781481486668. 264pp. Siena grew up in Puerto Rico, where her father had an architectural firm. Her ballet teachers thought she showed great promise, and she focused on it after her brother left for boarding school in the states. After she was accepted to the School of American Ballet in New York, she and her mother moved there. (Problems with her parents’ marriage were part of the reason as well.) What follows is a coming of age story full of dreams, romance, self doubt, and lots of inspiring dance practices and performances. It all starts to fall apart when Siena rolls her ankle one day in practice, about halfway through the book. Minor spoiler: she does mostly recover from the injury, but ultimately decides to leave the school and take a different life path. This autobiographic YA graphic novel completely stands on its own, but also continues Cherson Siegel’s life story from the Siegels’ enthusiastic kids graphic novel To Dance. (There’s a nice callback to To Dance early in the book, when she’s dancing on the beach in Peurto Rico while walking with her dad.)  

Geo-Graphics by Regina Giménez. Translated by Alex Gomay and Valerie Block. Levine Querido, 2022. 9781646141302. 96pp. This book starts big — with inspiring images (alongside text) that try to express the size of the universe and the intensity big bang — and then settles into more earth science and geography-centric graphics showing things like the layers of atmosphere and the Earth, the relative sizes of things like continents, islands, mountains, deserts and lakes. It has a great visual explanations of tides, the moon’s phases, and more. Giménez beautiful paintings and collages make every page worth revisiting. (Some pages are text- and fact-heavy while others look straight out of a picture book. I don’t think you could go wrong giving it to adults with kids interested in science or kids with adults interesting in science — they’ll have a good time talking about it.) Time Is A Flower by Julie Morstad. Tundra Books, 2021. 9780735267541. 56pp. This poetic, philosophical picture book about time is full of real-life examples like flowers and trees and baking, some of which, like the pages about a spider’s web, seem to point to time’s deeper scientific nature. There’s a cat, a beach, and several illustrations of kids dancing plus one of a family reading together — this book is full of images you’ll love.

Batman and Robin and Howard by Jeffrey Brown. DC Graphic Novels for Kids, 2021. 9781401297688. 160pp. This is my favorite of this new line of branded DC Graphic Novels for Kids. It features one of the more recent Robins, and the youngest — Damian Wayne, Batman’s son. After Damian punches the wrong guy while on patrol, his dad makes him take a break and go to a new school. There he meets Howard, a cool kid with whom Damian has a low-stakes conflict as they become friends, fall out a bit, and then become even better friends. The kids’ awkwardness is exaggerated by Brown’s art, which emphasizes the same quality in his version of Batman and Bruce Wayne as a dad. There’s a lot of soccer in the book, and a lot of content about different kinds of cells, and a very cool idea for a science project that will excite many kids (and give them an excuse to eat a lot of candy). Perfect. Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, art by Asiah Fulmore. DC Graphic Novels for Kids, 2021. 9781779501226. 160pp. I’m a huge fan of the Hales’ Rapunzel graphic novel and their Princess in Black series. They do an equally good job with this relaunch of the Amethyst series, which includes beautifully colored, manga-inspired art by Fulmore. Amethyst is a bit younger than in her original incarnation. At the beginning she’s sent to our world, where her magic doesn’t work, as punishment. But she and her babysitter are stuck here, and without magic they gradually lose their memories of home. That only lasts until Amethyst is pulled through a magic portal back to Gemworld, which she has to save. Her family has disappeared. An impossibly powerful evil is rampaging through the land. Amethyst is the only hope. (It’s a pretty standard story structure, but it’s more fun and lighthearted than that sounds.) If it catches on at your library, expect to see lots of very young girls with purple hair in addition to your purple-haired library folk.