It’s 1999, Sara is about to start sixth grade, her first day of school since her family’s moved to a new house. She’s excited to join a new club but even more excited to spend lots of time with her best friend Monica since they didn’t get to see each other much this past summer. It’s going to be a great year! That is, until Sara wakes up to discover her legs are suddenly… hairy.
Mixed Feelings by Sara Amini and Shadia Amin is a colorful fun semi-fictional memoir of Amini’s own childhood. The book follows Sara through her sixth grade year as she starts dealing with puberty and the dynamics of middle school life. On top of this newfound hair she’s discovering on her legs (and arms… and eyebrows), Monica has a new best friend from her summer camp and Sara can’t seem to escape the two of them, making her feel like a left out third wheel. There’s some standard touchpoints of a first year in middle school story but Amini’s storytelling works in such a way it never feels redundant or overdone.
In an attempt to try something new and fulfill her goal of joining a club, Sara joins drama club, landing a lead role after her first audition. All that time spent watching television is finally paying off! The drama club and the upcoming play are a solid backbone to the story. The depictions of the intricacies of drama clubs and the pre-show warm up games are a particular highlight; any reader who spent time in a drama club will find them very familiar.
As the mixed race daughter of immigrants, Sara begins facing uncomfortable questions and exclusionary remarks from peers at school and her Farsi classes. She’s not Colombian enough, she’s not Iranian enough, she’s not Catholic, she’s not Muslim, so what is she anyway? There’s multiple scenes of other kids belittling her identity with appropriately angry and frustrated reactions from Sara. She watches her mother being discriminated against for her language and accent firsthand. Her pride in her parents’ backgrounds and their respective cultures grows as the story continues, which could be a source of inspiration for young readers dealing with similar experiences themselves.The text features bits of dialog in both Spanish and Farsi throughout the book and includes a glossary at the end.
While it does have serious moments throughout, Mixed Feelings is overall a very fun graphic novel. The scenes of Sara’s ongoing newly sprouted hair drama and subsequent secret shaving are laugh out loud funny. So are many of the moments with her family, especially with her dad. Amin’s art includes great facial expressions that jump off the page, with lots of colors in the panels. The art sets the mood for the story and works alongside the emotions perfectly. For readers interested in retro pop culture, including those beyond their middle grade years, there’s a lot of great 90s references hidden in the very detailed art too.
The first in a new series, Mixed Feelings is a delightful addition to the ever growing collection of middle grade graphic novels. Amini’s love of her family and reflection on her own childhood shines through the story; Amin’s art complements this perfectly. The story deals with serious topics while making you laugh on the next page. Readers will be excited to follow Sara’s story through to the next book in the series.
Mixed Feelings By Sara Amini Art by Shadia Amin Scholastic GRAPHIX, 2026 ISBN: 9781338797398
Company Age Rating: 8-12
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13) Creator Representation: Colombian-American, Iranian-American, Character Representation: Colombian-American, Iranian-American,
A near apocalypse at the hands of an Aztec Earth goddess has led to the impossible: Pablo Ortiz is popular again. Since the publication of the first Monster Locker in October 2024, Pablo and his friends Takashi and Maggie have been working to banish the demons and mythical creatures that use Pablo’s basement locker as a FastPass into the human world back into their own dimension. Most of our trio is burnt out with all of their monster fighting, but Pablo is feeling the rush of finally being seen in a good way again and is pushing his friends to keep the monster banishing and their social capital up. The problem with being seen, though, is sometimes the wrong things are looking.
Monster Locker: Nine-Tail Trouble, scheduled for release April 21, 2026, sees creators Jorge Aguirre and Andrés Vera Martínez diving back into the world of the first book with a new focus and an equally lovely story. While monster banisher Pablo still acts as the protagonist, this story is really about his friend, the charmingly unhinged Takashi Rosenberg. Takashi is not overly thrilled with their heavily monster focused schedule and has a lot on his mind. He wants to get back to RPGs and becoming a J-Pop sensation and worrying about his upcoming Bar Mitzvah and missing his mom in Japan. Like many children from different, distinct backgrounds, Takashi doesn’t know how to reconcile his Judaism with his Japanese heritage and vice versa. He feels out of place in both, a situation escalated by his parents divorce and his mother’s physical distance. And this also leaves him vulnerable when a new, dangerous monster threatens not just the trio’s school and popularity, but the roots of their friendship.
I loved the first Monster Locker when it came out but felt like the side characters, like Takashi, didn’t get a lot of fleshing out and it’s like Aguirre and Martínez were reading my dream journal. This second volume not only gives Takashi amazing depth and a massive struggle with identity, but pulls folkloric characters from both of his heritages into the story. While the first book was like an ode to Pablo’s Meso American ancestry and Aztec gods, Nine-Tail Trouble sees Kitsune (the Japanese nine-tailed fox trickster) and a Golem (an animated, humanoid chunk of clay from Jew folklore) doing battle, turning Takashi’s internal struggle into a visibly destructive one.
With the shift in focus comes a shift in artistic style. While the first Monster Locker took a lot of visual inspiration from Meso American art, this one pulls in references to Medieval Jewish art to draw in the Golem’s background and soft Japanese watercolor for the Kitsune. It’s lovely to look at and the emotional heft is clear without being overpowering. Takashi’s struggle is universal and makes a powerful framework for this story.As much as I love the focus on Takashi, much like the first Monster Locker, the other characters are not given much time to grow. The story sees many of the characters from the first book return but all, even Pablo, our protagonist, take a backseat. I would love to see more balance between the characters and their growth in future volumes.
Aguirre and Martínez have created a world that has some of my favorite things about graphic novels: the stories are fun and surprising, the characters are unique but grounded in real emotional stakes, and the art is gorgeous. This series continues to please and I can’t wait for more.
Monster Locker: Nine-Tail Trouble By Jorge Aguirre Art by Andrés Vera Martínez Macmillan First Second, 2026 ISBN: 9781250749765
Company Age Rating: 10-14
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Teen (13-16), Tween (10-13) Creator Representation: Colombian-American, , Character Representation: Japanese, Mexican-American, Jewish ,
Santiago—Santi to his friends—is both excited and nervous to spend the summer with his beloved Abuela Emma. Excited, because he loves his grandmother (and her Colombian cooking), and her small town sounds like an interesting change from his NYC home. Nervous, because a big goal for this visit is to practice his Spanish, and he’s afraid he won’t be able to keep up.
Santi is half Colombian, half white, and his parents intended to raise him bilingual. But since he had some trouble learning to talk, they decided to start with just English. Now Santi is twelve, and is taking classes, but he’s embarrassed not to be fluent in the language spoken by half his family. This visit will be an immersion experience – just what he needs to improve. If he can understand enough of his abuela’s Spanish to stay afloat, that is.
At first, things go better than Santi expected. He can understand and speak enough Spanish to get by, and his abuela is patient and kind. Plus, he meets a crew of friendly local kids who show him around town and invite him to join their soccer team. Santi loves soccer! But it’s not all smooth sailing. Sometimes he feels like his Spanish will never be good enough, or like he isn’t Colombian enough. People laugh at his accent or act shocked that he doesn’t know Colombian slang. It makes Santi want to stop talking to anyone, including his abuela and his friends. Can his summer be saved?
This is a good-hearted book full of imperfect but well-intentioned people. They make mistakes, like Abuela Emma joking about Santi’s accent, or Santi taking out his frustration on his friends, but they apologize and forgive each other. Santi works diligently to improve his Spanish, which eventually allows him to have real heart-to-heart conversations with his abuela.
Santi’s struggle is a common one. In a note at the start of the book, author Julio Anta (who is Colombian American and Cuban American) discusses his own difficulties with navigating English and Spanish growing up. He explains that he modeled Santi partly on his son, who is also part Colombian and part white, and also struggled with language early on, complicating his parents’ plans to raise him bilingual.
This is the first of a planned series of Hillside Valley graphic novels. Each will follow one of the kids we meet in this story, with the other kids appearing as supporting characters. This volume introduces the town of Hillside Valley, with its charming main street, diverse and close-knit community, and woodsy mountain surroundings.
The art style is a slightly simplified realism – the characters a little cartoonified, the colors a little brighter than natural. The characters are distinct and expressive, and the backgrounds are clean, with just enough detail to set the scenes. There is some good visual variety, from mountain scenery to soccer field action to plates full of Abuela Emma’s Colombian dishes.
Much of the plot revolves around language. When Santi speaks Spanish, or another character speaks and he understands, their dialog appears in Spanish with an English translation following it in an attached speech bubble. These translation bubbles are outlined with dashed lines, while the speech bubbles actually spoken have solid outlines. If, however, a character speaks Spanish and Santi does not understand, then there is no translation bubble—and sometimes, a few of the Spanish words are scribbled out to indicate that Santi didn’t catch them. This is an effective and interesting way to put readers in Santi’s shoes.
Santi’s struggle with being a Latino kid who isn’t fluent in Spanish is relatable, but not commonly explored, especially in graphic novels. This book is an interesting and heartfelt addition to the category of middle-grade realistic fiction.
Speak Up, Santiago By Julio Anta Art by Gabi Mendez Penguin Random House Graphic, 2025 ISBN: 9780593651636
Company Age Rating: 8-12 Series ISBNs and Order Related media:
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13) Creator Representation: Colombian-American, Cuban-American, Mexican-American, Queer, Character Representation: Colombian-American,
Middle school is never easy. New pressures, puberty, demons lurking under the basement of the school, algebra. Jorge Aguirre and Andrés Vera Martínez’s delightful Monster Locker explores the potential horrors of middle school, elevated by the threat of world domination by an angry Aztec Goddess.
The story follows Pablo Ortiz who, on top of struggling to overcome the humiliating sleepover incident that led to a devastating fall from popularity, is assigned a locker that can act as a portal for long dormant evil spirits. Short, LARP loving, and now shunned by the popular kids, Pablo has been cursed with the worst of middle school labels: he’s “weird.” Obie the Evil, the primary resident of the basement locker Pablo is forced to take by blackmailer and former best friend Dylan, needs the middle schooler to agree to help him summon Coatlicue the Aztec Goddess in the Serpent Skirt and her evil army. Oh, and his beloved Abeula, who has a hit or miss connection to reality, may or may not have been a former monster hunter in Mexico who has inadvertently cursed her whole family. It’s a lot for the first day at a new school.
Pablo would much rather stay under the radar and work his way back into the edges of popularity, but Obie has other plans. He follows Pablo and his father to a tuxedo fitting for his sister’s quinceanera and learns a weakness he can use to trick Pablo into summoning Coatlicue the Earth Goddess. The school is immediately beset with monsters and only Pablo and a small collection of underdog “weirdos” can try to defeat them. But good and evil don’t stay in their usual lanes in this graphic novel, and defeat and victory came around in unexpected ways.
There is so much to like in this book. Pablo’s big Tejano family is immediately established as both loving and a lot to deal with while also defying standard tropes. The story is a fun adventure that manages to allow for monsters with good motivations and bravery being more than just fighting. The cast is diverse and engaging from Pablo’s hulking, Selena tattooed, IT working dad to his unintentional sidekicks, the delightfully off-kilter Takashi Rosenberg and incredibly angry, red afroed Maggie Murphy. Some of the side characters are not given quite as much room to shine, like nerd-coded Francisco Gomez whose knowledge of pre-Columbian history is very helpful throughout the plot. But that doesn’t detract from the overall story and can be fixed with future volumes.
While Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology have traditionally dominated fantasy graphics and comics, so few have delved into Aztec mythology and not in the way that this one does. Monster Locker leaps into Meso-American culture, history, and religion in such a fun and beautiful way. Characters jump between English and Spanish smoothly enough that no one needs to explain what’s being said to the reader. Similarly, Martínez’s art is a combination of traditional comic book coloring and movement with Aztec iconography. The art flows so smoothly and dynamically that this combination is completely seamless. One moment fantastic creatures dance across the panels to menace tweens, painting the characters like superheroes, and the next Martínez fills an exposition moment with illustrations that mimic Aztec reliefs. It’s striking and helps drive the story forward in moments that could potentially slow it down. Even more than that, it’s exciting, unexpected, and completely engaging.
There is a gentleness to Aguirre’s storytelling that is heartwarming and funny in equal measures and a lovely contrast to Martínez’s vibrant, bold art. Every part of this graphic feels big while being centered on the very real story of a kid that just wants to fit in. This is a prime example of the importance of OwnVoices stories in that it is so distinct and individual while at its core being universal and it is definitely worth the read.
Monster Locker By Jorge Aguirre Art by Andrés Vera Martínez Macmillan First Second, 2024 ISBN: 9781250749741
Publisher Age Rating: 10-14
NFNT Age Recommendation: Tween (10-13) Creator Representation: Colombian-American,
a new house. She’s excited to join a new club but even more excited to spend lots of time with her best friend Monica since they didn’t get to see each other much this past summer. It’s going to be a great year! That is, until Sara wakes up to discover her legs are suddenly… hairy. 
of the first Monster Locker in October 2024, Pablo and his friends Takashi and Maggie have been working to banish the demons and mythical creatures that use Pablo’s basement locker as a FastPass into the human world back into their own dimension. Most of our trio is burnt out with all of their monster fighting, but Pablo is feeling the rush of finally being seen in a good way again and is pushing his friends to keep the monster banishing and their social capital up. The problem with being seen, though, is sometimes the wrong things are looking.
Santiago—Santi to his friends—is both excited and nervous to spend the summer with his beloved Abuela Emma. Excited, because he loves his grandmother (and her Colombian cooking), and her small town sounds like an interesting change from his NYC home. Nervous, because a big goal for this visit is to practice his Spanish, and he’s afraid he won’t be able to keep up.
Middle school is never easy. New pressures, puberty, demons lurking under the basement of the school, algebra. Jorge Aguirre and Andrés Vera Martínez’s delightful Monster Locker explores the potential horrors of middle school, elevated by the threat of world domination by an angry Aztec Goddess.
