Squirrel Do Bad (Trubble Town) by Stephe Pastis. Aladdin, 2021. 288pp. There’s Wendy the Wanderer, who founded V.O.O.P. (Victims Of Overprotective Parents). She lives in a mushroom shaped house designed by her mother. One day she goes to Mooshy Mike’s alone (which she’s not supposed to do) and gets a moosy, a drink that has “the most sugar legally available.” She’s sitting on a bench drinking it and eating nuts when she meets Squirrely McSquirrel, who wants a nut. Instead she gives him a drink of her mooshy. Squirrely goes a bit crazy. The mayor’s office explodes. The squirrel-hating sheriff goes to arrest Squirrelly, but Squirrely is out trying to get more mooshies. This gives rise to and complicates all of the chaos in the rest of the book. Plus theres a chihuahua trying to woo the cat next door, an octopus who can write eight dubious news stories at once, and quite a bit more courtroom “drama” than you might expect in a book centered on a wandering kid and a sugar-addicted squirrel. Pastis (Pearls Before Swine, Timmy Failure) has created a fast-paced graphic novel full of insanity. It’s one of those books I’d have loved to read to my kid way back when she was little, but which I enjoyed all by myself.

Girl Haven written by Lilah Sturges, illustrated by Meaghan Carter. Oni Press, 2021. 9781620108659. After swooning over Eleanor when she offers to paint his nails, Ash joins his middle school’s pride club with Eleanor, Chloe, and Junebug. They all offer support to Chloe, who just came out to her parents, and then head to Ash’s house. He shows them his mother’s studio, a converted shed where she created the fantasy world Koretis starting when she was in first grade. (This is all before Ash’s mom left. Or did she disappear?) Chloe finds a book of spells, including the one that transports them all to Koretis. Turns out it’s a haven for girls full of magical creatures, including quite a few talking rabbits. And they’re not really happy to see a boy there. But then the kindest and wisest of the rabbits lets them know that she believes the kids are there to save everyone (they are), and that the magic hasn’t failed them in bringing them Ash because maybe he is a girl: “Girls come in all shapes and sizes, after all.”

I Dream of a Journey by Akiko Miyakoshi. Translation by Cathy Hirano. Kids Can Press, 2020. 9781525304781. A hotelkeeper has never been anywhere but his little town. At night he dreams of traveling to the faraway places his guests have told him of, and of visiting them. Miyakoshi’s drawings are amazing, particularly the contrast between the black and white drawings of the hotelkeeper’s reality and the stunning colors in his dreams. Every page of this quiet book is a wow.   Listen written by Gabi Snyder, illustrated by Stephanie Graegin. Paula Wiseman, 2021. 9781534461895. This book encourages kids to listen past the noise (particularly the overwhelming noise of a city) to hear individual sounds, to think about sound words, and to be kind. A quiet and lovely book, despite the cacophony it describes. My favorite two-page spread is about rain.   Amara and the Bats by Emma Reynolds. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2021. 9781534469013. Amara loves bats! And she collects bat facts. But after her family moves, there aren’t any bats in the nearby park. So she starts a Save the Bats campaign to make the park bat friendly again. Worth nothing: there are bat faces on the front endpapers! Plus several pages of bat facts at the end.

The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor by Shaenon K. Garrity and Christopher Baldwin. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2021. 9781534460874. Haley loves gothic romance novels. Walking home from school, where her teacher has just told her she must review a different kind of book for once, she jumps into a river to save some dude. Then she wakes up in a manor straight from one of her favorite books — it’s complete with a foreboding housekeeper, a ghost no one else can see, and three brothers: Laurence (dark and brooding), Cuthbert (wanton, youngest), and Montague (cute, crabby, the guy who was in the river). Haley hasn’t gone back in time or anything — it’s way more complicated and has to do with different universes. (In fact there’s a pamphlet that explains it all.) In the end it all comes down to protecting our universe from an ultimate evil, which is pretty much an excuse for lots of lighthearted humor and a tiny bit of romance.

Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu. First Second, 2021. 9781626723566. 368 pp. including a few early sketches and an author’s note at the end. Kumiko is an old woman living on her own. She seems content with a quiet life, salvaging what she can for her apartment. But her daughters are worried about her, and have been since she fled the care home where she was living. They go into overdrive when she doesn’t answer their email. It may have something to do with the fact that Kumiko hasn’t told them where she lives because she wants to live on her own terms, independently. And that’s where she is, in her apartment, in the bath, when death’s shadow comes fo her. She’s not ready to die yet, though, and so using salt and her vacuum cleaner, she traps the spirit. That seems to give her the ability to see ghosts both friendly and lost. Kumiko tries to soothe her daughters a bit, and reconnects with her former lover, Alice. Everything is tense when her daughters finally arrive, meddle, and end up setting death’s shadow free. This is a great story that had my full attention in one of the opening pages, when, after a swim at the community pool, Kumiko is in a shower with a bunch of ajumas speaking Korean (which I don’ think she can understand). Xu’s black and white art is first rate, from the characters to the friendly little spirits to the freaky black shadow of death. This is another book that reminds me of Miyazaki’s work in all the right ways but is entirely its own thing. It has a great ending, too.

Secrets of Camp Whatever Vol. 1 by Chris Grine. Oni Press, 2021. 9781620108628. Willow is about to spend a week at the summer camp her dad attended as a kid. But the more he talks about it with folks in the diner in the town nearby, the weirder and more dangerous camp seems. And it turns out that the rumors might be true, that the island the camp iss on might be filled with ghosts and fog leeches and vampires and gnomes and witches and other magical, mythical creatures. The first hints things are going to get weird: the creepy clown at the dock where Willow boards the boat to head to camp, and the big hairy arm she sees poking out from under another camper’s bed. This is an entertaining tale of friendship and the supernatural in which sign language plays a role. The way Grine draws faces in particular helps set a tone that’s both kind and kinda crazy, even in tense moments. Worth noting: there’s a callback to my favorite of Grine’s graphic novels, Chickenhare, early in the book, and big game hunter Clarence Tooter, the new camp director, is a bigfoot hunter who would be right at home in that book, too.

Ping Pong Volume One by Taiyou Matsumoto. Translation & English Adaptation by Michael Arias. Viz Signature, 2020. Publisher’s Rating T / Teen “…and is recommended for ages 13 and up.” 9781974711659. Ping Pong Volume Two by Taiyou Matsumoto. Translation & English Adaptation by Michael Arias. Viz Signature, 2020. Publisher’s Rating T / Teen “…and is recommended for ages 13 and up.” 9781974711666. Makoto Tsukimoto is nicknamed Smile because he never does. He’s overly serious, but too empathetic to win ping pong matches. Yutaka Hoshino, nicknamed Peco, is the original big-talking, snot-nosed kid. He’s undisciplined but brings passion and a real desire to win his matches. This is the story of them both trying to improve and striving to win. Smile’s coach takes him under his wing and really makes him work, turning him into a deadly rival for other ranked opponents including a well-known Chinese exchange student. Peco’s passion backfires for a while, and sends him away from the game, but when he comes back and starts to play again, he seems destined to play Smile in an epic match. Worth noting: This manga series is complete in two volumes. The books are full of action, and embrace the sports genre (manga of this type probably has a cool name) while ultimately, I think, defying it in creative ways. And as in Matsumoto’s Tekkonkinkreet the slightly rough art seems perfect for the subject matter. This is one of my favorite sports books ever.

Incredible Doom Volume 1 written and illustrated by Matthew Bogart, story by Matthew Bogart & Jesse Holden. Harper Alley, 2021. 9780063064935. “Are you, like me, an old nerd? Then this is the book for you.” — Librarian and book person extraordinaire Sarah Hunt, who used to collaborate with me on the Book Threat website, bookthreat.wordpress.com Sarah read this graphic novel and then called me to sing its praises. It looks like it’s being marketed as YA, and it will appeal to some teens, sure, but it’s aimed squarely at folks like use who lived through and participated in the pre-internet years of dial-up BBS’s. And at people who love great art — it’s beautifully told in black and white and blue. It is, as you might suspect, about disaffected youth. Sarah’s dad — this is a character in the book not the above-named librarian — is a magician and a controlling asshole who uses a magic trick to abuse her after she doesn’t want to help him on stage anymore. She figures out how to use the family computer to make friends, including Samir, who she sets off to rescue (while at the same time saving herself). Richard is new in town, and he’s seriously bullied for being a bit of a nerd by another kid, whom he knows from camp. Tina from the Evol House BBS saves Richard, and starts making sure he’s safe at school. (But then he pisses her off…) Somehow these four teens stories will come together. The next volume is due out in 2022.

IN. by Will McPhail. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. 9780358345541. 268pp. http://www.powells.com/book/-9780358345541?partnerid=34778&p_bt Cartoonist Will McPhail draws a lot of comics for the The New Yorker. In this, his first graphic, a combination of inks and maybe watercolors create a mostly black-and-white world (with bursts of color following revelatory moments, in fantastic sequences) in which his wide-eyed characters try there best to communicate with each another. Nick is an artist, and a bit of smart aleck. He’s kinda sad and wanders from cafes to bars, and in one of the latter (it’s name out front is written in Helvetica) he meets Wren, a doctor on a date with another dude. But then they meet up on the subway after Nick gets told off by another woman he was drawing, and they kind of hit it off. (There’s a two-page spread early in the book, a wordless summary of their first date, that is amazing.) But remember: Nick is sad, and he seems sad because he can’t really communicate with anyone, including his neighbor, his sister, and his mother. And he really needs to communicate with his mom because she has cancer, and they need to talk about it and a lot of other things. Worth noting: The story maintains a lightness, even in heavy moments, because of the romcom feel of what’s happening between Nick and Wren. I was reading another, much less entertaining book on loneliness that I could not relate to when I picked this one up. This was the perfect book for that moment. (I never did finish the other book.)