The heartwarming queer romance Navigating with You by Jeremy Whitley and Cassio Ribeiro is one of my favorite graphic novels that I read this year. Meet Neesha Sparks, an outspoken yet guarded teenager from Queens. Florida surfer girl Gabby discovers how to win Neesha over with persistence, an upbeat attitude, and vulnerability. Both girls are new to their high school in Durham, North Carolina. They quickly connect over a manga series that they each read but never finished and form a book club to re-read and, this time, complete the series. The problem is that Super Navigator Nozomi is out of print and ordering a set of the books online is quite expensive. Gabby proposes a competition to find the seven books of the series and Neesha accepts.
Navigating with You has phenomenal representation that plays out naturally in the story and art. Neesha has spastic diplegia cerebral palsy, so she uses assistive devices such as leg braces. She confronts ableism and discrimination, such as when vehemently explains to her new principal that just because she is disabled, it does not mean he should re-assign her from Advanced Placement classes to Special Education classes. Neesha is Black. She has dark skin and wears her hair in braids. We see Neesha stumble and fall, and we see her sew fabulous costumes, drive Gabby around, and visit the farmers market. She typically wears long skirts or pants that conceal her leg braces. Gabby is half Puerto Rican and half Mexican. Her mom died and she lives in an apartment with her dad and two brothers. Gabby is bisexual and has a toxic long-distance boyfriend who does not validate her sexual orientation. She suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder which triggers flashbacks and panic attacks related to her mom’s death. Ribeiro deftly illustrates one of Gabby’s flashbacks by alternating between each girl’s viewpoints, so we see Gabby’s memories unfold as Neesha observes and tends to her girlfriend.
Pages from Super Navigator Nozomi intersperse the main story, so the reader can enjoy the manga alongside Neesha and Gabby. As the manga sections are in traditional black and white with a cartoony style, and the rest of the story is in rich earth and jewel tones, it is easy to distinguish between the two.
This unpaged volume contains wonderful characterization with a sweet romance. Whitley unspools each teen’s backstory as they become better acquainted with one another. By the end, the protagonists feel real and their romance feels hopeful. Language, content, and themes are appropriate for tweens and up. Be sure to acquire and recommend Navigating with You!
Navigating With You By Jeremy Whitley Art by Cassio Ribeiro Mad Cave Studios, 2024 ISBN: 9781952303609
NFNT Age Recommendation: Teen (13-16), Tween (10-13)
Character Representation: Black, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Bisexual, Gay, Cerebral Palsy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Going viral can be a one way ticket to fame … or a gut punch about how the rest of the world sees you. In Maysoon Zayid and Shadia Amin’s Shiny Misfits, Bay Ann discovers that even when she’s showing off how talented she is, many people can’t see past her disability. Can she one up the sudden fame of her former crush turned archnemesis?
A few things about Bay Ann Musa: she won’t eat any food with a face, she has the best friends in the world, she walks her pet cat Lucy (who speaks to her privately in rhymes) in a stroller, and she loves to perform. For this year’s talent show, she’s created a zombified tap dance routine called “Broadway Zom-by” and, as expected, comes in first place. As she soaks in all the praise of the adoring audience, the swoon worthy Alyee Maq gives her a kiss, causing Bay Ann to start to fall, only for Alyee to catch her and save the day.
When the video of Alyee catching Bay Ann goes viral, Alyee is hailed as a hero for saving a “special girl” and making a “sick girl’s dream come true.” Yes, Bay Ann has cerebral palsy, but she’s certainly not dying! She won the talent show! But no one can focus on that and she starts to notice the world sees her only as her disability, not the tap dancing talent show winner that she is. She makes it her goal to prove she’s the best and deserves her own fame, without anyone saving her.
Shiny Misfits is an Own Voices story. Like Bay Ann, Maysoon Zayid is Arab-American, Muslim, and has cerebral palsy. Zayid’s voice is very strong in her writing, with her comedy skills shining through. When things go wrong for Bay Ann, they usually go comically wrong, so there is a lot of humor in this story. Young readers who want their own fifteen minutes of fame will be inspired by Bay Ann’s dedication. Her relationship with her parents, who are divorced and are two very different forces in her life, is a particular highlight of the storytelling.
Readers looking for a story heavily focused on cerebral palsy or disability in general may find themselves disappointed. Being disabled is just another thing about Bay Ann and not a large part of the narrative. Instead, her friendships, her interactions with the adults in her life, and her desire to be famous on her own terms show the type of girl Bay Ann is. She’s not a perfect protagonist but it’s clear that’s now the intention of Shiny Misfits. Readers looking for a fast paced graphic novel should also pass on it; the story takes time to build up. A positive of that is that the book leaves the reader feeling like Bay Ann, impatient as she waits to get her revenge and go viral.
Shadia Amin’s art is joyful and expressive. The emotions on Bay Ann and the other characters’ faces are obvious before you even read the text. Plus, Lucy the rhyming cat is super cute. The graphic novel’s coloring, by Elle Pierre, is vibrant and colorful, bringing this memorable story and cast of characters off the page.
Middle grade readers who like graphic novels with plucky protagonists, like the Sanity and Tallulah books, or ones where friendship helps drive the story, like the Paws series, will enjoy Shiny Misfits. Zayid’s voice is distinctive and fun—the graphic novel world needs more characters like Bay Ann and her friends.
Shiny Misfits By Maysoon Zayid Art by Shadia Amin Scholastic GRAPHIX, 2024 ISBN: 9781338752502
Publisher Age Rating: 8-12 NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13)
Creator Representation: Palestinian-American, Muslim, Cerebral Palsy Character Representation: Cerebral Palsy, Muslim
The advanced review copy of Dear Body, edited by Lea Bordier, that I read for this review states on its cover: “In Dear Body, 12 women and non binary describe their relationship with their own bodies in their own words.” As Bordier explains in the introduction, the twelve short pieces the volume contains are adapted from a video project that she created. The stories are translated from French, leading to some occasional awkward turns of phrase, but overall, it’s an easily digestible, thoughtful collection of women and non-binary folks’ stories about their bodies. Each story is illustrated by a different artist, offering a variety of voices and styles.
The stories contemplate topics such as pregnancy, rape, illness and injuries, feminine grooming and dressing, being fat, being Black, and being disabled. A common thread throughout several of the stories is how other people react to the bodies of the main characters, and how the words and actions of others towards their bodies contribute to the characters’ perception of themselves. It emphasizes how societal norms and ideals can affect our self-worth, especially when we defy those norms and ideals. Even more so, it questions why some people feel entitled to treat others a certain way based solely on their bodies. The main characters range in age, with some diversity among the dozen: one lesbian, one nonbinary person, one Black woman, and one Asian woman. One character, Camille, has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, a walker, and crutches throughout her story.
The deep and introspective stories surprised me with a breadth of topics. Shonah struggled to be taken seriously by doctors and it took years to reach her diagnosis of Vestibulodynia. Blaise asks themself of feminine grooming rituals, “Am I doing this for them or for me?” Sophie took two bullets during a shooting and relates her slow recovery through surgery, physical complications, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Mathilde, a fat woman, gets called hurtful names and has trouble finding clothes that fit, but she also sings in a band, has a fun social life, and works out at the gym. Each story is told with lush, beautiful art. “Mathilde”, by Mademoiselle Caroline, reminds me of something you’d see in The New Yorker, with curving, painterly lines and bold pops of color. It also depicts a fat body naked in everyday scenarios such as lounging with a lover and showering at the gym, which complements the story well. “Sophie”, by Karensac, is drawn in a pleasant, cute cartoon style with an orange and blue color palette. Assigning a different artist to each story adds to each one’s unique feel.
The only minor issue with the collection is that the translation from French to English stumbles in some places. For instance, in “Aurelie”, the text reads, “I lost so much weight I had to be hospitalized. I didn’t attend my sophomore or junior year. I was pretty sheltered from comments because I was marginalized until I was 20,” (81). I think by marginalized, perhaps the author meant something closer to isolated. In “Mayalan”, the main character admits, “I had a lot of trouble accepting my body up until one day when I said: Enough!” (91). In the same story, Mayalan points out her faults on a diagram of her own body, with an arrow pointing to her ankles that reads “terrible hemline,” (89). Still, with Lea Bordier’s original video project in French, this may be as good as it gets for an Anglophone audience without French language proficiency.
Dear Body is a decent anthology with some lovely art and an array of themes, though Ivanka Hahnenberger’s translation is awkward at times. Consider it an optional purchase for adult graphic novel collections.
Dear Body By Lea Bordier Art by Carole Maurel, Karensac, Eve Gentilhomme, Lucille Gomez, Mademoiselle Caroline, Sybilline Meynet, Cy, Marie Boiseau, Anne-Olivia Messana, Mirion Malle, Mathou, Daphne Collignon FairSquare Comics, LLC., 2023 ISBN: 9798985927832
Publisher Age Rating: 16+ NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+)
In A Chance, Spanish comics duo Cristina Durán and Miguel Giner Bou chronicle the experience of becoming parents to their daughters: Laia, who was born with cerebral palsy, and Selam, whom the couple adopted from Ethiopia. First published as separate volumes in 2009 and 2012, this engaging graphic memoir captures the day-to-day emotional and logistical complexities of Cris and Miguel’s parenting journey, one that calls upon the couple to embrace uncertainty and difference and lean into a network of professionals and loved ones to support their daughters’ complex needs. A Chance succeeds on many fronts, but its uncritical treatment of the international adoption process results in an uneven read.
Part One, “One Chance in a Thousand,” opens with the news that the couples’ newborn infant, Laia, is experiencing a brain hemorrhage. Cris and Miguel spend the next weeks in the neonatal unit, sitting with fear and uncertainty as they wait to learn more about their child’s prognosis. The medical details of Laia’s cerebral palsy are interwoven with the intimate experiences of bonding with a baby under medical care, an early infancy that’s nothing like the one they’d expected.
Once Laia is stable and at home, the family embarks on a tightly scheduled life of medical appointments and grueling physical therapy, punctuated by further health scares. Yet these tense first months and years are underpinned by Cris and Miguel’s love and gratitude for their daughter. Laia’s disability is a challenge, but it’s not a tragedy, and her happiness and quality of life are their focus. Cris and Miguel also emphasize that caring for Laia is a team effort; family members, doctors, and childcare workers step up to support the family, a vision of community care that’s radical and uplifting.
As Laia makes developmental progress and settles into a happy childhood, Cris and Miguel embark on the process of adopting a second child. Part Two, “Efrén’s Machine,” details this experience. While Laia’s complex needs were unexpected, their long-anticipated path to become parents to their second daughter is complex in entirely expected ways—a years-long process involving waitlists, screening processes, and finally, an international flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they meet three-year-old Selamawit at her group home and finalize the adoption.
Cris and Miguel document the emotional and practical demands of navigating the adoption process and bringing their daughter home. As with Laia, becoming parents to Selam requires a great deal of personal fortitude but gives them the opportunity to build relationships with a new community, one made up of fellow adoptive parents, adoption workers, and Efrén, the warmhearted driver in Addis Ababa who gives his name to this part of the book.
Three years before A Chancewas published in English, Ethiopia’s parliament banned international adoptions. Cris and Miguel nod to uncomfortable aspects of adopting a child from another country; they describe their feeling of being out-of-place as white people during their visit to Addis Ababa, highlight adoption myths held by other white prospective parents, and contrast their experience with that of Tigui, an Ethiopian-born woman returning from Europe to her home country to adopt a child.
Yet A Chance never acknowledges critiques of international adoption as a system, one that is characterized by power differentials between rich and poor countries and, in the view of the Ethiopian government and others, has the potential to cause harm to children and families. These are thorny issues, and to be clear, what’s in question here is not two parents’ individual motivations for adopting a much-loved daughter. It’s the structural pitfalls that are missing, from falsification of documents, to economic pressures resulting in families having to give up wanted children, to the impact of being removed from a culture of origin. In the first half of the book, the authors reflect on moments when systems of care fail their daughter Laia—nurses who discourage Cris from trying to breastfeed, a daycare unwilling to accommodate Laia’s disabilities—so the absence of a critical eye here felt jarring.
Durán and Giner Bou have produced an impressive parenting memoir. Readable and emotionally engaging, there’s much in this book to interest readers who’ve had similar parenting experiences, as well as those seeking to learn more about parenting disabled and adopted children. A preference for dialogue over exposition gives the story a novelistic feel, and blocky, stylized art matches the gentle optimism that defines Cris and Miguel’s parenting story. Crafting a coherent narrative with a strong emotional arc out of a chaotic time in the authors’ lives, this book will be accessible to a wide range of readers, from longtime comics fans to those new to the medium. But the memoir format, with its tight focus on the authors’ personal experiences, may be frustrating for readers seeking insight into Ethiopia’s now-banned international adoption industry.
A Chance By Cristina Duran, Miguel Giner Bou Graphic Mundi, 2021 ISBN: 9781637790038
Publisher Age Rating: 12+
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+) Creator Representation: Spanish Character Representation: Ethiopian, Spanish, Cerebral Palsy, Disability, Mobility Impairment
We all know Janet van Dyne, The Wasp, but Nadia, The Unstoppable Wasp, is a whole other experience. She’s smart, she knows it, and she’s here to shake things up, starting with the scientific patriarchy. Oh, and take down the organization that kidnapped and raised her. And make friends, even with villains. And finish her dad’s projects. And maybe take the bomb out of her friend’s head. Who needs sleep?
Every once in a while, there’s a comic that has a very sound concept, but has trouble with follow-through. Unstoppable Wasp is such a case; volume one is interesting enough at first, though a bit unbearably cheerful and manic, before descending into just kind of silly to the point of feeling pandering. Volume two picks up at the end of volume one, ties them together, and adds in another level of depth and interest.
My primary problem with the Unstoppable Wasp comics is the writing; the first volume especially feels like one long advertisement for diversity in science, especially with the significant number of pages at the end dedicated to interviews with real women in science. Of course, they’re not just women in science, but women in science who also have social media handles and/or are involved in TV or YouTube.
That’s great, and sure, we should talk more about it, but within the story it comes across as the White Savior bringing together her plucky team of disadvantaged girls of color. Because, of course, the rest of the team are girls of color, each from a slightly different background. It doesn’t help that after forming the Agents of G.I.R.L. (an unfortunate acronym that matches the phrase Nadia ascribes to it), the plot never comes back to them for the rest of the first volume. Thankfully, the second volume circles back and gives more detail to each girl beyond just say, Black, into pop culture, quirky dresser, and engineer. Overall though, there’s a weirdly strong emphasis on whether they’re interested in fashion or not, adding to a Barbie feel.
The art is also variable; the first volume is very smooth, but the girls all look strangely the same in body shape, facial features, and coloring. The exception is Lashayla, who is actually a darker-skinned Black girl, an unusual sight in comics. The second volume gives much greater visual variety, though Lashayla is strangely much lighter in skin tone, which is disappointing. The one consistent complaint I have with the art is that the girls all have overfull lips in both volumes. It’s a little disconcerting, but also something of a nod to older comics. Otherwise, the art does a good job of conveying the frenetic energy of Nadia and handling this very dialogue-heavy comic.
The most distinguishing feature of Unstoppable Wasp is that it discusses mental illness in teenagers. We’ve seen discussion of mental health in comics before, even in Marvel (consider the Mariko Tamaki run of She-Hulk), but as far as I know, almost never with youth. And the most remarkable part of it is that they don’t do a bad job of it. There’s discussion of likely genetic links, therapy sessions, and medication. There’s supportive family and friends, encouraging her to take care of herself. Mixed in with that is talk of having to separate the public, heroic image of a person and the personal image that can be more troubled. This means a brief discussion of domestic abuse; I wish that had been expanded a little more because it feels like that particular topic is brought up and quickly set aside, though not done poorly.
I can’t strongly recommend this series because the first volume is so rocky, but if you’re looking to add to your collection with more diverse superheroes and something tailored towards teens, Unstoppable Wasp is a solid choice. It would be a great suggestion as further reading for lovers of comics like Unbeatable Squirrel Girl,Ms. Marvel, or Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat.
The Unstoppable Wasp, vols. 1-2 By Jeremy Whitley Art by Elsa Charretier, Alti Firmansyah & Gurihiru ISBN:
Volume
ISBN
1
9781302906467
2
9781302906474
Marvel, 2017 Publisher Age Rating: T+ Series Reading Order: https://www.goodreads.com/series/208648-the-unstoppable-wasp-2017 (Wikipedia or Goodreads)
Browse for more like this title NFNT Age Recommendation: Tween (10-13), Teen (13-16), Older Teen (16-18) Character Traits: Characters with Disability East Asian, Black, Latinx Queer, Creator Highlights: Related to…:
graphic novels that I read this year. Meet Neesha Sparks, an outspoken yet guarded teenager from Queens. Florida surfer girl Gabby discovers how to win Neesha over with persistence, an upbeat attitude, and vulnerability. Both girls are new to their high school in Durham, North Carolina. They quickly connect over a manga series that they each read but never finished and form a book club to re-read and, this time, complete the series. The problem is that Super Navigator Nozomi is out of print and ordering a set of the books online is quite expensive. Gabby proposes a competition to find the seven books of the series and Neesha accepts.
Going viral can be a one way ticket to fame … or a gut punch about how the rest of the world sees you. In Maysoon Zayid and Shadia Amin’s Shiny Misfits, Bay Ann discovers that even when she’s showing off how talented she is, many people can’t see past her disability. Can she one up the sudden fame of her former crush turned archnemesis?
The advanced review copy of Dear Body, edited by Lea Bordier, that I read for this review states on its cover: “In Dear Body, 12 women and non binary describe their relationship with their own bodies in their own words.” As Bordier explains in the introduction, the twelve short pieces the volume contains are adapted from a video project that she created. The stories are translated from French, leading to some occasional awkward turns of phrase, but overall, it’s an easily digestible, thoughtful collection of women and non-binary folks’ stories about their bodies. Each story is illustrated by a different artist, offering a variety of voices and styles.
In 
