Shining a light on a lesser know story from the Civil War era, Legion M Entertainment and Stranger Comics bring together a talented creative team including creatives from Disney, Marvel, and DC, for Defiant, this first volume chronicling the life of Robert Smalls.
Born to an enslaved mother in the American South, Smalls dreamed of freedom. Beginning with his childhood, Defiant follows Smalls as he grows through education, love, and eventually into working as a sailor when war breaks out against the North. It is in this war that Smalls sees an opportunity at freedom, to steal the Confederate transport ship he worked on and escape to Union-controlled territory with some of his fellow crew and their families.
It was this escape that made Smalls famous, but his life’s work did not stop there. He continued as an influential figure throughout the war and beyond, including time serving in Congress. There are many today who do not know the details of Smalls and his life, and in the supplementary material that accompanies this graphic novel, the creators, as well as Smalls’s great great grandson, reflect on the power of legacy and the necessity of telling stories like this in order to remember the past and inform the future.
Defiant opens with a framing narrative depicting Smalls later in life as he takes his grandson fishing. It is here, as they wait for the fish to bite, that he begins to recount his story. Each section of the book captures key moments of Smalls’s youth and adulthood. It’s a significant length of time to cover, but the creators pace the story well, showcasing the experiences that formed Smalls’s character and the sense of defiance that would later drive him to risk everything in pursuit of freedom. The story is told with fondness and dramatic flair, but it doesn’t lose sight of the Smalls’s humanity or the horrors of US slavery at the time.
Balancing cinematic sensibilities with a desire to share a true segment of history, the writing effectively moves between interludes with the older Smalls and the larger narrative chunks leading up to his dramatic escape. The dialogue is straightforward and occasionally on the nose, but the book does an excellent job identifying important details to convey and moving the story along, while also bringing the reader into Small’s life along with the lives of those around him. It’s a story told with concern for historical truth, but also with acknowledgement that some liberties were taken and some factual gaps filled in to bring the story to life.
With these same cinematic sensibilities, the artistic team uses bold coloring and some dynamic layouts that quickly grab the reader’s attention. There’s a general sense of realism to the visual sequences, but the art takes some compelling creative liberties at times which help to elevate the themes and content of the story. There is one pivotal moment early in the book where Smalls, as a child, witnesses the violence and cruelty committed against the Black people around him. With use of light and shadow as well as distortions of faces that once seemed less threatening, the artists bring us into the experience of the moment and the realization of the evil inherent to the institution of slavery. Here and elsewhere, the art reckons with the realities of the time without the need to linger over pain and suffering. As the book progresses into the dramatic escape that Smalls is most known for, the visuals continue to bring the reader into the action, with effective choices in framing and dramatic moments that heighten both the tension and the heroism of what Smalls and the other achieved.
Stranger Comics lists Defiant as suitable for all ages. There are a range of areas in the content to be mindful of—violence and death in war and toward enslaved people, occasional slurs, briefly implied nudity, and some sequences of tension and threat which at times include children. However, none of these are presented for shock value or in graphic detail; even the creators state that their intention is not to linger over the violence and other horrors of the time. What detail we do see in the pages is relatively brief, maintaining focus on Smalls as a central figure and celebrating what he achieved without glossing over the reality that helped shape him.
As such, it’s a suitable read for older kids and upward, not only for the book’s sense of adventure, but also for the rich and important history it seeks to convey. In the afterword, writer Rob Edwards reflects on the importance of telling stories and why he sees such value in remembering the life of Robert Smalls. There is value, not only in the history recorded here, but in the discussions offered by Edwards and the others in this book who reflect on what it can mean for us today, to remember the bravery and steadfastness of those who have come before. In this way, Defiance is a perfect read for the current moment, and a great addition to shelves in schools, libraries, and home collections, especially with a movie also in production.
Defiant The Story of Robert Smalls By Rob Edwards Art by Sean Damien Hill Legion M and Stranger Comics, 2025 ISBN: 9781939834379
NFNT Age Recommendation: Teen (13-16) Creator Representation: Black, Character Representation: Black,
There are many people who take a good night’s sleep for granted while others would do anything to have it. In a world where caffeine is plentiful, doomscrolling is the number one activity behind pickleball, and anxiety is seemingly a cornerstone of our society, a good night’s sleep, for many, seems to be more unattainable by the day. Graphic storyteller Maureen Burdock has dealt with insomnia for much of her life and chronicles her journey in Sleepless Planet: A Graphic Guide to Healing from Insomnia, a book that’s part memoir, part self-help book, and part good sleep manifesto.
Burdock has suffered from insomnia since childhood. As an adult, she sought out doctors and specialists for quick fixes, including drugs and machines to help her breathe properly while sleeping. She eventually comes across a more holistic approach that includes diet, exercise, spirituality, and realizing how our culture of consumerism and progress are detrimental to our own mental health and even the health of the planet.
Far from a simple how-to-sleep manual, Burdock introduces a lot of concepts that don’t initially seem connected. The book can swing wildly from biography to environmental studies to dream studies and mediation. However, there is a slow and steady progression of ideas that are well-researched, according to the footnotes at the end of the book. Burdock’s work is broken up into four chapters, which helps break up the information she presents into manageable chunks and each chapter feels like its own separate book on better sleep. By labeling each chapter as one of the four elements (air, fire, earth, and water), Burdock also creates a mystical, dreamlike aesthetic that suits a book presenting an overall holistic approach to getting better sleep.
That dreamlike aesthetic is only reinforced by Burdock’s artwork, which, while eschewing color, presents a vivid landscape where slices of life are intertwined with symbolic imagery. Presenting information within comic panels along with pictures can often be more accessible, whether those pictures use illustration to demonstrate an idea in action or simply to create a sense of whimsy, what Mary Poppins would call a “spoonful of sugar” that helps the didactic text blocks be remembered. Burdock presents a lot of whimsy in the form of talking koalas, inanimate objects with expressive faces, and an anthropomorphic representation of menopause that smothers the author much in the same way an MMA fighter smothers an opponent.
Adult services librarians interested in purchasing this book should reconsider simply sticking this book in your library’s Graphic Novel collection. Consider putting it in your library’s nonfiction section with other books on diseases and how to cure them. It will improve the chances of a person in need of a good night sleep (and in need of advice from someone who’s lived with insomnia) finding it.
Sleepless Planet A Graphic Guide to Healing from Insomnia By Maureen Burdock Graphic Mundi, 2025 ISBN: 9781637790939
Hayao Miyazaki needs no introduction to most anime fans. Even if his name is not known to most American fans of the artform, the odds are good that they’ve seen one of his movies. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, and Spirited Away are only some of the classic movies he’s directed. Indeed, the greatest challenge in assessing Miyazaki’s career is not debating his influence on the genre and other directors. It is deciding which of his great works might be considered his best.
The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki does not try to answer this question or even offer fodder for that discussion. What author Nicolas Rapold does instead is look at Miyazaki’s influences, both in his life and his reading. Through this, and a series of essays, Rapold tries to find the source of the creativity of the man called the “godfather of animation in Japan.”
This might be seen by some as spoiling the magic. However, Rapold’s intent is not to prove the truth of C. E. M. Joad’s saying that “the height of originality is skill in concealing origins.” Instead, he uses this examination to show how Miyazaki’s genius lay in how he twisted the stories he loved as a child in new directions.
The first quartet of essays set the tone for what follows, as Rapold explores four of Miyazaki’s greatest influences. These are given as Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Homer, and Jules Verne. However, in discussing these, the essays spin out to cite other influences and common themes with books Miyazaki named as his favorites and why they relate to his work.
It is no intuitive leap to tie most of Miyazaki’s films to Carroll. Many of his protagonists stumble into strange worlds, much like how Alice Found Wonderland. Burnett’s The Secret Garden is an obvious influence on Howl’s Moving Castle and the secret garden hidden within it. Yet Miyazaki also comes back to that book’s theme of regrowth and the power of one person to heal the world and others.
Homer’s Odyssey informs the theme of the wandering stranger trying to get home, as does Gulliver’s Travels. And Verne’s advanced science may be reflected in the flying machines of Castle in the Sky. Yet his books also continue the recurring theme of motion and the power of the self-motivated individual.
However, Rapold also examines Hayao Miyazaki’s work through nonthematic avenues. There are essays and photos of the real-world locations that inspired his visuals. There are also looks at other creators who may have influenced him or were influenced by him. This includes an essay comparing Miyazaki and Stephen Spielberg.
This is all a bit academic for the children for whom Miyazaki made his works. Indeed, I was stunned by how much text there was contained within a book about a visual artist. This is not to say that there are no pictures from the movies, but they are shockingly small for a volume this size and there are few full-page images. Despite that oddity, I think most art history and anime history library collections would benefit from owning a copy of The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki.
The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki By Nicolas Rapold Frances Lincoln, 2025 ISBN: 9781836004813
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
Cocktails. We know them. Many love them. But how many of us know the long and complicated journey through history that brought us the cocktail as we know it today?
From Ten Speed Graphic, renown cocktail historian David Wondrich delivers The Comic Book History of the Cocktail along with art from Dean Kotz, Brad Simpson, and Micah Myers. Opening with some pre-history, this nonfiction journey around the world introduces the earliest known precursors of mixology from civilizations such as Rome and India. From there, the story really begins in the 1600s with the expansion of global trade and the journeying of ingredients, practices, and liquors around the globe. While cocktails are rather a niche subject, their evolution was shaped by many aspects of a changing world. Race and gender dictated who could stand behind a bar. Politics and global warfare led to booms and lulls in alcohol consumption. And social standards drastically changed consumer expectations about what a cocktail could be and where the bars that served them fit within society. With deep historical knowledge and a clear affection for mixed drinks, Wondrich and the creative team offer a detailed and engaging history of drinking which simultaneously takes us across centuries of world history, charting the ebb and flow of society before turning an eye toward the infinite possibilities of the future.
Though deeply researched and factual, this graphic history is written with a clear and engaging style that makes the subject matter entertaining and accessible. The narrative voice that drives much of the book feels quite personal, interjecting commentary on world events and suspect cocktail techniques throughout. There are also frequent interludes from two bartender characters who offer further commentary on topics from the chapters while also sharing recipes and techniques for some of the drinks referenced throughout. Rather than a history text, the book feels like a casual lesson from a friendly group of people passionate about the subject matter. The book is full of information while never feeling bogged down in excessive detail. Even with all that it presents, there is clearly so much more a curious reader could go on to discover with further reading. Indeed, Wondrich closes the books with an extensive index and bibliography of further resources for those curious, highlighting the extensive body of scholarship underlying the information presented here. If the writing has any weakness, it’s the fact that a book of this sort simply doesn’t have the space and time to dive as deep as some of these historical figures and periods deserve. On a pickier note, the dialects and historical accents of some of the historical figures rendered into written text are occasionally distracting—but even these are drawn from historical sources as accurately as possible. As an introduction to the subject which manages to effectively cover a huge span of time and history, Wondrich remarkably makes the subject matter both accessible and fun to read all along the way.
Wonderich’s extensive knowledge is made all the more engaging with art from Dean Kotz. There isn’t a great deal of sequential visual story telling here. Rather, Kotz captures an enormous range of historical figures and time periods. Illustrating each era the book covers from those uncertain times of pre-history right up through the covid pandemic and into the modern day. With heavy line work and a mix of style and realism, Kotz details bustling bars, shattered battlefields, horrific plantations, and the men and women who walked through them all. It’s an undertaking to capture chemistry and brewing practices alongside shifting societies around the globe, but every page of this book is made better through Kotz’s illustrations. Particularly of note are the double-page spreads of bars at specific periods of time, showing their evolution from small, focused establishments to the influential social spaces that they are today.
With no recommended age range and no particularly explicit content, this book is relatively safe for any reader to flip through. However, given the explicit focus of the subject matter on drinking and alcohol, it’s a read best aimed at adults, especially given that it takes a rather positive slant on the history of cocktails without more nuanced discussion of the risks drinking also poses. Nearly every page features liquor being made or consumed, and there are also digressions into serious topics such as war and the international slave trade. As such, adults with interests in areas of history and drinking will be the audience best served by this one. Additionally, it does lean more text-heavy than some comics, expecting the reader to be settled in with an attention span to match. As a final note, not only does Wonderich offer a wealth of historical information not regularly covered by more mainstream sources, he also goes out of his way to recognize the contributions of often marginalized figures throughout history. There’s a clear, individual perspective to the history, but the book is always explicit about where there is authorial commentary alongside historical fact. Furthermore, the book is upfront about any place where the historical record is murky or nonexistent. The Comic Book History of the Cocktail would be an excellent addition for any comics collection that leans toward the adult and the historical. It is a strong read on its own, and might also ignite further curiosity in the covered range of topics and intriguing historical figures.
The Comic Book History of the Cocktail Five Centuries of Mixing Drinks and Carrying On By David Wondrich Art by Dean Kotz Ten Speed Press, 2025 ISBN: 9781984860330
Imagine my surprise when I heard that civilization collapsed some 3,000 years ago, as opposed to almost any other date (insert Daria theme song here. Look it up, kids.).
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed is a graphic novel by experts on the subject, Eric Cline, and Gynnis Fawkes. It is an adaptation of Cline’s book of the same name.
Cline has a daunting task ahead of him in this endeavor. The original non-fiction book is complicated and dense (and won several awards), as we would all expect, and to package all that information in a way that is digestible and accessible is a real challenge.
We come across a tried and true method for the storytelling here: the framing device is from the perspective of 2 characters – Pel, a member of of the marauding Sea Peoples, and Shesha, an Egyptian scribe – visit the locations discussed in the text to explore many, MANY theories, facts, speculations, and historical disasters that brought the the Minoans, Mycenaeans, Hittites, Canaanites, Assyrians, and Egyptians to the end of the Late Bronze Age.
There’s a lot of text to get through; when I describe the book as “dense,” I truly mean it. Each page is chock-full of historical explanation and detail. Small text. We’re approaching something more like an illustrated textbook. Your experience of the text-to-picture ratio this is going to vary, but I would not recommend this for younger readers for the sheer amount of words. Again, this is an adaptation of a nonfiction book that does some serious digging (hurrhurr archeology joke) into a very academic subject.
Fawkes’ illustrations are evocative of humanity’s early attempts artworks/image-making. Think like the cave paintings of Lascaux, Greek pottery, and Roman fresco. The lines are simple, and while characters and objects are shaded, hard swathes of colors are used instead of rendering. The stylization is pretty firmly in a cartoon-ish style (as opposed to photorealistic). I do want to draw attention to the environments and backgrounds – there is some really detailed, professional pencil-work at play here that very successfully communicates different materials, fabrics, surfaces, and natural phenomena.
1177 B.C. could be a good addition to a collection, but I feel that its place would have to be pretty unique in an array of collection development needs – we have an illustrated nonfiction graphic novel that is kid-friendly and about a very specific topic. Due to the high volume of explanation within the pages, I don’t think young children would like it very much. And the childish presentation might put some older kids off who are more interested in just the facts; the publisher put their recommended age range as 16-17. While I’m certain there are older teens who would enjoy this, I would think that they might just prefer to grab the original book this comic was based off of.
Use good judgment and consideration.
Reviewer’s note: the location given is an approximation of the regions explored; keep in mind that these civilizations no longer exist and borders and countries have changed over time.
1177 B.C.: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed By Eric Cline Art by Glynnis Fawkes Princeton University Press, 2024 ISBN: 9780691213026
Miss Mary Mac introduces storytelling and creative writing in graphic novel form with chapters that cover writing as an art form, where ideas come from, creating strong images, motivation, inspiration, and the creative process. The reader is invited to consider their own experiences and how to find their interests and bring those both together to tell a story. The author provides examples from different perspectives and brings their words to life by pairing them with lavishly drawn figures by the artist. The details and shading throughout give each panel depth and draw the reader in to learn more. It also allows the reader to visualize themselves in places they may not have experience with themselves.
It is fantastic to have a craft novel about creative writing presented in graphic novel form as the visualizations alongside the advice from the author worked in tandem to create a full picture for any reader to follow. I also enjoyed that the author used some of their early writing as examples throughout the book. At times, the artist used cartoon proportions and non-realistic coloring to move the reader’s eye across the pages. Other times, the images were portrayed more realistically, which allowed the reader to take in the details.
This is obviously marketed toward younger readers interested in writing, but this would be a good introduction for anyone interested in learning more about the creative process or writing in general. It would be great for public and school libraries and would be a good addition to academic collections that collect juvenile or leisure books.
Creative Writing with Miss Mary Mac: A Handbook for Young and Future Authors By Mary McInerney Art by Rivkah LaFille Macmillan First Second, 2025 ISBN: 9781250216885
Company Age Rating: 8-12
NFNT Age Recommendation: Teen (13-16), Tween (10-13)
Jesus “Chuy” Reyes, age 12, starts the story by introducing himself and his best friend, Yael Levy or Yaya. Chuy is super smart and fascinated by all things intellectual—Yaya is a hands-on inventory and can make anything, even if she is a bit goofy at times. When a comet strikes earth and people gain mysterious powers, Chuy is super bummed – not only do these powers not conform to scientific laws, but he didn’t get any! When one of the second-rate supervillains of New Bork City ruins their ice cream, Yaya makes up her mind – they will become superheroes! With Chuy’s smarts and Yaya’s maker skills, the two take on Mr. Anti-Freeze, who is threatening to slimerize all the ice cream in New Bork City!
Florentine’s illustrations are bright and cheery, with lots of primary colors and drawn with clean, sharp lines. Chuy has brown skin, heavy eyebrows that move dynamically to indicate his exasperated moods, including up onto the outside of his pink baseball cap, and square glasses. He’s a tall, sturdy kid who gets a little excited about intellectual pursuits, but otherwise is mostly dragged along by the exuberant Yaya. Yaya, a skinny kid with short blue-black hair, is wildly enthusiastic about everything from superheroing to ice cream, despite the more cautious Chuy’s warnings and her younger brother’s embarrassment. Her family home is decorated to show her Jewish culture and Yoel, her younger brother, wears a kippah. Their villain has brown skin and pink hair.
The story is fairly simple, interspersed with lots of helpful (and random) facts from Chuy and step-by-step guides to making things from sorbet to grappling hooks from Yaya. The story ends with character studies and links to websites with guides for young makers.
Superhero take-offs like this tend to be cheesy, but this story is fully aware of its silliness and plays it for all it’s worth. Chuy’s repeated complaints that he’s NOT a superhero, the ridiculous villain, and Yaya’s wild enthusiasm will make readers giggle along with the author and maybe catch the making bug, even if they don’t want to put on a costume or have a super-powered bag to hold all their tools. While this is unlikely to satisfy readers who want “real” superheroes, it will certainly please younger readers who like funny stories and are interested in hands-on building. A must have for libraries and schools that include a maker space.
Maker Girl and Professor Smarts Vol. By Jasmine Florentine Candlewick, 2025 ISBN: 9781536239584
NFNT Age Recommendation: Easy Readers (5-9), Middle Grade (7-11)
A good biographer knows that their subject must be discussed in an unbiased manner, no matter how much visceral hatred is generated by that subject, and for many graphic novel fans, no name generates more hatred than Dr. Frederic Wertham. For the uninitiated, Wertham, a psychiatrist, led a lifelong crusade against comic books in the 1950’s, nearly putting a publishing company permanently out of business and helping bring about a Comics Code that strictly regimented what kinds of stories comic creators could publish. For many comics fans, Wertham personified oppressive censorship with a generous helping of pretentiousness. However, writer Eric Schechter and Eric Powell once again demonstrate how to look at all facets of a person’s life, even the most notorious persons, in this biography of Dr. Wertham called Dr. Werthless.
Dr. Wertham accomplished a great deal in his lifetime. He was the first doctor to open a clinic in Harlem where he treated many disadvantaged African-American patients, as well as testified in a pivotal court case that helped finally end segregation in American schools. Believing violence could be eliminated if its causes were isolated, Wertham zeroed in on what he felt was a major cause of violence and delinquency among youth: crime and horror comics. After putting EC comics in Congress’s crosshairs, Wertham devoted much of his life to attacking comics as a whole with a zeal that bordered on fanatical and ultimately tarnished his reputation.
In Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?, Schechter and Powell looked at the life of Ed Gein, a man known to craft furniture from human remains. Like Gein, Wertham, though less reprehensible, exists as a kind of bogeyman in the mind of comic book fans and Schechter gives Wertham’s story the same unbiased treatment, looking at who he was along with the sum total of his achievements, particularly Wertham’s study of depraved criminal acts which are as horrifying and salacious as any comic story he railed against. He depicts Wertham as a man who became a victim of his own hubris, a doctor who began his crusade with noble intentions but was sabotaged by his penchants for sensationalism and self-aggrandizement.
Those who are familiar with Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? will recognize the style of Eric Powell’s artwork from that book, even as it looks quite different from his Goon comics. The men and women in this book favor a more realistic approach to facial structure and anatomy while the black and white shading gives his illustrations depth. The face that comes closest to Goon’s exaggerations is Dr. Wertham’s, a face as thin and angular as an Easter Island statue’s.
While lacking the true crime sensationalism that drew readers to Ed Gein’s story, Dr. Werthless is still a worthy purchase for adult library collections with a robust biography section. Wertham, in this book, falls between a villain and a tragic figure, a man dedicated to humanity who eventually lost his way.
Dr. Werthless By Eric Schechter Art by Eric Powell Dark Horse, 2025 ISBN: 9781506744360
Company Age Rating: 16+
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
Yellow Singing Sail is the memoir of Yinfan Huang—a girl who was growing up in rural China, Xintian County, until her family moves to the big city of Guangzhou. The narrative is full of the relatable experiences of being the new fish out of water in town. There are many, many ups and downs to the experience, but Yinfan finally finds a friend who loves her for exactly how and who she is.
But this book doesn’t contain the story of just Yinfan – it also tells of her grandparents, her mother, her uncle; all pivotal figures in her life and all different in their personalities and upbringings. There are echoes of older generations permeating through the years, messages and lessons diluting as time goes on, but oddly enough, superstitions still holding strong. China’s one-child policy is in effect, and Yinfan even has to go to mandatory military training as a young teen.
I always want to be in good faith when I comment on the illustrations—I have to use my undergrad degree somehow, right? I wish I could say more about its successful aspects, but visually this is not the graphic novel for me. The art is incredibly simple with very, very few colors—it evokes doodles on a sticky notepad during work (or, perhaps more accurately, school day doodles on notebook paper). Even those scant scant colors remind me of highlighter markers (green, orange, and gray). There is no rendering, no backgrounds, and no real dynamics to show visual hierarchy. Very little of it is technically proficient. Perhaps this memoir was best meant for a more textually dense setting, like a traditional print book, as the story contains lots of explanation and labels. The prose is easy to read and very heartfelt.
This is a good book, I feel, for modern American children. It gives a perspective that seems a bit hard to find these days. Yellow Singing Sail takes place in a modern backdrop, but there are a number of instances that stand out in this story that might pique a young reader’s interest: imagine never having seen an airplane, or using a mechanical pencil, being mandated to have the same haircut as all of your classmates, or traveling across the country only to find that a different language is spoken and the isolation that comes with that. The story is interwoven with both unique and universal experiences that could create connections between the author and reader. I struggled quite a bit with the visual aspects of this book, but I could see a young person reading it, seeing these illustrations, and being encouraged to write and draw their own stories.
Yellow Singing Sail: A Memoir of an Only Child in China Vol. By Yinfan Huang Kids Can Press, 2025 ISBN: 9781525305511
Company Age Rating: 11-14
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13) Creator Representation: Chinese-American, Character Representation: Chinese-American,
This simple, informational comic starts the story on the endpages, with a small pink crab tumbling into the ocean. It falls on a small larva, who introduces itself. The larva is looking for a home and the crab is ready to get out of the boring bay – but agrees to show the larva around first. They meet kelp, anemones, and more inhabitants of the bay and finally become friends as well as figuring out the larva’s identity.
The plot is a little weak —Crab never really explains why it wants to leave and the “story” is mostly just there as a placeholder to move the characters around the bay and meet different creatures. However, with a younger audience this is fine and it’s a nice way to introduce the different inhabitants, which is the real point of the book. The short chapters, filled with puns and silly jokes, are divided by longer explanations of the different sea creatures the two meet and sometimes by interludes of puns, like a series of thumbnails of seagulls (one is a “trian-gull).
Information is included both in the general story, as when the two meet a group of mussels who explain that they are sessile, or when a sea urchin, sea cucumber, and sea star start an argument about the relative merits of their digestive systems, and in informational sections, narrated by the crab, which give more detailed information about behavior and habits.
Curll’s art style is very cute, with lots of blues and greens, picked out with brighter pinks and oranges. A red-lipped clam waxes philosophical about being the measure of happiness, with dramatic changes in its cartoon eyes. Kelp strands, some wearing old-fashioned glasses, gossips about their gas bladders and pokes the feet of littering humans. Two groups of opposing anemones, one orange, one yellow, wave their tentacles and zap each other and everything passing by, leading to a blue page with the heading “Pardon the interruption. We are experiencing tentacle difficulties.”
The final end pages show the crab passing readers on to the next habitat exploration, a fern forest with their guide, Fern. Curll has a fun, squiggly style that matches well with her pun-filled text. Young readers will enjoy exploring the underwater world with crab and larva, painlessly learning about the different underwater inhabitants, and giggling at the puns and wordplay. A strong choice for elementary school libraries and public libraries that serve this age group, with special interest for those located in the Pacific northwest.
Barnacle Bay By Jana Curll Greystone Books, 2025 ISBN: 9781778401022
creative team including creatives from Disney, Marvel, and DC, for Defiant, this first volume chronicling the life of Robert Smalls.
There are many people who take a good night’s sleep for granted while others would do anything to have it. In a world where caffeine is plentiful, doomscrolling is the number one activity behind pickleball, and anxiety is seemingly a cornerstone of our society, a good night’s sleep, for many, seems to be more unattainable by the day. Graphic storyteller Maureen Burdock has dealt with insomnia for much of her life and chronicles her journey in Sleepless Planet: A Graphic Guide to Healing from Insomnia, a book that’s part memoir, part self-help book, and part good sleep manifesto.
odds are good that they’ve seen one of his movies. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, and Spirited Away are only some of the classic movies he’s directed. Indeed, the greatest challenge in assessing Miyazaki’s career is not debating his influence on the genre and other directors. It is deciding which of his great works might be considered his best.
Cocktails. We know them. Many love them. But how many of us know the long and complicated journey through history that brought us the cocktail as we know it today?
theme song here. Look it up, kids.).
Miss Mary Mac introduces storytelling and creative writing in graphic novel form with chapters that cover writing as an art form, where ideas come from, creating strong images, motivation, inspiration, and the creative process. The reader is invited to consider their own experiences and how to find their interests and bring those both together to tell a story. The author provides examples from different perspectives and brings their words to life by pairing them with lavishly drawn figures by the artist. The details and shading throughout give each panel depth and draw the reader in to learn more. It also allows the reader to visualize themselves in places they may not have experience with themselves.
fascinated by all things intellectual—Yaya is a hands-on inventory and can make anything, even if she is a bit goofy at times. When a comet strikes earth and people gain mysterious powers, Chuy is super bummed – not only do these powers not conform to scientific laws, but he didn’t get any! When one of the second-rate supervillains of New Bork City ruins their ice cream, Yaya makes up her mind – they will become superheroes! With Chuy’s smarts and Yaya’s maker skills, the two take on Mr. Anti-Freeze, who is threatening to slimerize all the ice cream in New Bork City!
A good biographer knows that their subject must be discussed in an unbiased manner, no matter how much visceral hatred is generated by that subject, and for many graphic novel fans, no name generates more hatred than Dr. Frederic Wertham. For the uninitiated, Wertham, a psychiatrist, led a lifelong crusade against comic books in the 1950’s, nearly putting a publishing company permanently out of business and helping bring about a Comics Code that strictly regimented what kinds of stories comic creators could publish. For many comics fans, Wertham personified oppressive censorship with a generous helping of pretentiousness. However, writer Eric Schechter and Eric Powell once again demonstrate how to look at all facets of a person’s life, even the most notorious persons, in this biography of Dr. Wertham called Dr. Werthless.
the big city of Guangzhou. The narrative is full of the relatable experiences of being the new fish out of water in town. There are many, many ups and downs to the experience, but Yinfan finally finds a friend who loves her for exactly how and who she is.
larva, who introduces itself. The larva is looking for a home and the crab is ready to get out of the boring bay – but agrees to show the larva around first. They meet kelp, anemones, and more inhabitants of the bay and finally become friends as well as figuring out the larva’s identity.
