Tripping Over You, Volume 2, from Suzana Harcum and Owena White, picks up not long after the first graphic left off, showing unlikely couple Liam and Milo navigating their maturing relationship. This slice of life romantic comic was adapted from real life couple Harcum and White’s webtoon in February and promises more volumes to come. Fresh out of high school, the pair are growing into young adults and trying to allow their relationship to grow with them. Liam and Milo are in a very interesting phase, kind of semi-out to their families (who bring their own baggage into their relationship) and striving to make room for each other as their lives grow fuller. Liam doesn’t know what he wants out of his future and Milo seems plagued with self doubt, but they keep circling back to find comfort in each other. This volume catches our couple at a very real, very vulnerable time where a high school relationship can evolve into an adult one or where it can flounder under the weight of growing up.
This is a sweet story that young readers can easily connect with. The art is incredibly cute with Harcum and White using a style that hits me as a kind of Disneyified Manga: characters with big eyes and bold lines in a world of saturated color. It is very easy to read and honestly just pretty. Liam and Milo give classic black cat/golden retriever energy and seem hyper aware of the struggles that can come with relationships where people have different needs and communication styles. While this comic does show a growing young adult relationship and the intimacy that comes with it, there’s nothing explicit on page or even suggested and I would probably recommend it as young as 6th or 7th grade, depending on the reader. There are a couple of shirtless scenes and implied sex and Liam still hasn’t kicked his smoking habit from book one. But with that, their relationship maintains an innocence that will keep it accessible to a wide range of readers.
The plot beats were a bit of a hang up to me. The small domestic moments of our couple meeting new people, fighting to find time together, struggling with demanding families, and eventually moving in together feel almost like filler, like all of these moments are leading towards conflict in a future volume. The most striking of these involve Milo’s new friend Hebert, an American theater student. There isn’t immediate conflict but there is definitely unresolved tension and Hebert’s motives are questionable at best. Many of the plot points feel unresolved. Liam still does not have a clear career path and Milo still seems uncertain in aspects of their relationship. All of these things made this feel less like a step in their story and more like laying groundwork for the next book.
But honestly, I don’t know if I care. It was still a lovely read. The characters are ones you want to spend time with and their relationship is easy to invest in. It’s sweet and loving and a ready made next read for my Heartstopper fans. Parts of it do come off as wish fulfillment, particularly the moment where Liam comes out to his father. But queer kids deserve as much wish fulfillment as they can get. I can’t help but worry that these boys will have a tough time ahead of them, but my fingers are crossed for a happy ending.
Tripping Over You, Volume 2 By Suzana Harcum Macmillan First Second, 2026 ISBN: 9781250330734
Company Age Rating: 14-18
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Older Teen (16-18), Teen (13-16) Creator Representation: Lesbian, , Character Representation: Queer, Jewish ,
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 ,
Have you ever felt like you needed to talk but the words just wouldn’t come out? How about wanting to be social, outgoing, and funny but finding yourself overwhelmed at the prospect? Aron Nels Steinke’s Speechless is a middle grade graphic novel about Mira, a sixth grader who can’t always find her voice and what she wants to say, no matter how hard she tries at it.
Mira doesn’t talk in school; it started years ago when she was little and it just… hasn’t stopped. But this year, it’s time for middle school and time for her to finally speak at school! Except, by this point, her classmates are used to her not talking, so they fill in for her and thus begins another school year of being speechless. Mira retreats to her sanctuary, her bedroom, where she spends her free time creating stop motion animated films for her channel Danger Cat Studios. Filmmaking is a safe place where she can be herself, as loud as she wants to be.
Throughout the book, and the first year of middle school, Mira attempts finding her confidence and voice. She makes a new friend, develops her first crush, and deals with her former best friend suddenly being inescapable. (Literally, she moves in with Mira’s family!) Her personal struggles lead to school struggles and disappointing grades. Her parents learn she hasn’t been speaking at school and start her in therapy, where she learns more about herself.
Speechless is a welcome addition to any graphic novel bookshelf. With everything going on in Mira’s life throughout the story, Steinke keeps the story light enough that readers will find it enjoyable and still relatable. Her therapy visits and subsequent diagnoses are just another aspect of who Mira is, rather than overtaking her sixth grade story. Learning she has selective mutism and social anxiety leads to Mira better understanding herself. She struggles with the intensity of her emotions and often jumps to the worst possible scenario. Readers facing their similar anxiety will see it’s just one aspect of who they are, along with a lot of other wonderful things about them, and that they’re not alone in how they feel.
Throughout Speechless, Steinke shows Mira’s crafting process in detail, with specifics of how she made her creations out of everyday objects. Her filmmaking process is shown in smaller panels to better appear like a stop motion animation film. With social media being so prominent in readers’ lives and often presented in other books, it’s fun to see the internet being used as a place of creativity and originality in this particular graphic novel.
Steinke’s art is colorful and realistic, there’s lots for readers to pick apart in certain panels. It reflects Mira’s mood and current situations too. When she’s angry, the pages are darker and busier. When she’s feeling trapped in a classroom and not able to speak, there’s more movement from other characters, leading the reader to feel like they’re right there alongside her.
Readers of Steinke’s Mr. Wolf’s Class series should enjoy this standalone graphic novel, as will fans of middle grade stories centered on fitting in, new struggles, and embracing what makes you you. Like other popular middle grade graphic novels, Steinke’s own experiences inform the story he tells. He also includes an afterward with his experiences and recommended resources. Readers who’ve enjoyed similar graphic novels are sure to enjoy this one too.
Speechless By Aron Nels Steinke Scholastic GRAPHIX, 2025 ISBN: 9781338849325
Company Age Rating: 8-1
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13) Creator Representation: , Anxiety Character Representation: Mute, Jewish , Anxiety
Echoes of October is built around a simple yet difficult question. The sort of question that children often ask and adults wish they could answer.
Why can’t we just get along?
That question is asked around the world in many ways and many languages. Yet it has taken on a particular vibrancy within the Middle East and especially regarding the Gaza conflict. This is the focal point of Echoes in October, which builds to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The story is told through the eyes of four children. All of them are 11 years old, but all of them were born of drastically different circumstances. Jannah is a Muslim girl from Gaza City. Amir is a Druze boy from Daliyat-al-Karmel. Lily is a Canadian Evangelical Christian, born in Toronto but recently relocated to Kibbut Kfar Aza. Eli is a Jewish boy from Tel Aviv. The children do not meet as a group over the course of the novel, though Eli and Amir are cousins. Lily and Jannah also meet briefly, as Lily’s father works as a volunteer driver who escorts Jannah into Israel for medical treatment.
However, despite its setting, Echoes of October plays out as a slice-of-life comic rather than a political thriller. The story remains firmly focused upon the children and their individual issues. This drives home their common ground and makes them more relatable to the young readers for who Echoes of October was written.
Eli, for instance, is worried about his parents talk of moving away from Israel. Their only concern is the safety of their family and what the threat of war may do to Eli. Yet Eli’s biggest fear is moving away from his friends, his school, and everything he knows. This is counterbalanced by the story of Lily, who has already undergone this trauma. She misses her friends in Canada and worries that her dream of being the next Taylor Swift may be short-circuited by moving halfway around the world.
Amir, an aspiring comic creator, has similarly big dreams of creating the first Druze superhero – a Captain America figure modeled on his soldier father. Unfortunately, most of his family have no use for his art and intend to put him to work in their restaurant instead of letting him continue school. Jannah also has issues with her family, for she has dreams of becoming a politician and bringing peace to the region so the people around her can be happy. Unfortunately, the people calling for violence on both sides are so much louder and so many refuse to listen to women, let alone girls.
Echoes of October does not pretend there are any easy answers. It does, however, offer one of the most heartfelt and well-structured introductions to the conflict in Gaza and how there is more than one side involved in the conflict. While the artwork and language used by Ami Adan are simple, they deliver a powerful idea that ultimately boils down to that one big question.
Why can’t we just get along?
Echoes of October is recommended by the author for readers 10 and up. This is a fair rating, as there is no objectionable content to be found here. Doubtless some will object to the idea of a children’s graphic novel that discusses the conflict in Gaza sight unseen. Yet this book is not entirely about that conflict. It is about four young people struggling to cling to some sense of normalcy in an increasingly angry world. That is something that all too many of us can related to in modern times and why I would recommend this graphic novel to readers of all ages rather than just children.
Echoes of October By Ami Adan Self-Published, 2025
Company Age Rating: 10+
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18), Teen (13-16), Tween (10-13) Creator Representation: Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim, Character Representation: Canadian, Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant ,
On the first day of senior year, Essie Rosen has it all figured out. She has plans for college, supportive friends, and she’s dating the boy next door. But as the school year unfolds, her perfect life starts to fall apart. Her boyfriend breaks up with her, her best friend has stopped responding to her texts, and her college dreams are on the rocks, all while under the scrutiny of her perfectionist mother. Things get even more complicated when she meets Christopher, an alluring junior, whose older brother set her own brother, Gabe, down the path to drug addiction. Essie just wants to know where she belongs, but everyone around her wants to tell her how to live her life.
You Belong Here, written by debut author Sara Phoebe Miller and illustrated by Morgan Beem, is a coming of age teen drama that explores family and personal relationships, sex, and mental health while navigating the end of high school in a small town. Miller’s story is relatable and engaging. Even though familiar tropes show up, like enemies-to-lovers, there are twists and turns in the narrative that keep things fresh. It’s hard to see how things will turn out for Essie as she zooms through her senior year, but her character development is satisfying. Beem’s beautiful ink and watercolors make the world feel lively, even when there are minimal backgrounds. Beem is particularly talented at expressing characters’ emotions through their facial expressions and movements and every page is visually captivating.
There’s a great deal of diversity among the characters, positively representing several different cultural identities. A discussion between Essie, who is Jewish, and Christopher, who is Chinese American, hints at racism in their small, suburban town, but racial tensions are largely left out of the narrative. This quick reference might have had more impact if it had been explored more deeply, but feels more like an afterthought than a feature of Essie’s world.
One of the most refreshing things about this book is that Essie is drawn fat. Her story, however, has almost nothing to do with her weight. She brings up her size once as a reason she’s been discriminated against in acting roles, but she gets to be a typical teenager, she gets to attract boys and pursue sex, she gets to wear what she wants and be who she is. And no one, not even her mother, who nitpicks every other aspect of her life, tells her to change her body. In a world full of stories about fatness being a problem to be fixed, this is a breath of fresh air.
The publisher gives an age range of 14 to 18, but some content readers may wish to know about include mentions of drugs, addiction, and rehabilitation, depression, underage drinking and smoking, language, and an attempted sexual assault on Essie by an older male stranger. There is no overt nudity, but two teenagers do attempt to have sex. Even with all these tough issues, Essie’s story of drama and romance is a fun read and would be a good addition to a teen graphic novel collection.
You Belong Here By Sara Phoebe Miller Art by Morgan Beem Macmillan, 2025 ISBN: 9781250822307
Company Age Rating: 14 – 18
NFNT Age Recommendation: Older Teen (16-18), Teen (13-16) , Character Representation: Jewish ,
While not the first graphic novel to be written about the atrocities of the Holocaust (and surely not the last), Ginette Kolinka’s Adieu Birkenau approaches the subject with a surprising amount of levity and accessibility. The comic splits its time between the present (well, the present of 2020), in which the 95-year-old Kolinka re-visits the Auschwitz-Birkenau prison camp with a group of students, and the events of the past. Kolinka recounts her early life in France, her large family’s attempt to escape Nazi persecution, and most notably the experience of trying to survive in camp as she was being abused, humiliated, and dehumanized.
Kolinka and her co-writers J.D. Morvan and Victor Matet present her time in the concentration camp with a matter-of-factness that avoids the dramatic, emotionally-wrought approach one might expect of a Holocaust survivor’s story. This comes across less as objectivity and more so like a survivor who has almost curated her memories so as to not be incapacitated by them. Indeed, memories seem to be a major theme of Adieu Birkenau.
It’s difficult to read Adieu Birkenau without viewing it in the context of the great tradition of memoirs that use comics and graphic novels as a way to process extremely traumatizing events, such as They Called Us Enemy, Persepolis, March, and especially Maus. Like those books, Kolinka’s work is deeply concerned with memory, and how it plays a role in processing grief. Kolinka is exceedingly upfront about how her memory is unreliable and that her tendency to block out some of the most horrendous aspects allowed her to survive. This is cleverly conveyed visually, as figures in the camps are often depicted as dark, vaguely human-shaped clouds, as if Kolinka can only remember the slightest impression of them. In the back half of the book, panels often contain scenes from both the past and present, as if to remind the reader that these events long past are still very much alive today.
Artists Cesc and Efa bring a sense of whimsy and warmth to the art that seems more informed by the animation of Disney or Studio Ghibli than most comic illustration. Characters have soft, rounded features, and big, expressive eyes that give the reader an immediate glance into their thoughts and feelings. The playfulness of the line work contrasts greatly, however, with the subtle brown and gray tones that characterize much of the graphic novel and add to the dreariness and despair of recounting life in a prison camp.
Although Adieu Birkenau is recommended for adults, there is very little that would make it inappropriate for younger readers–especially if you’re looking for an accessible way to introduce them to the horrors of the Holocaust. There are brief depictions of nudity in recounting the ways the Nazis forced the prisoners to strip down in the camps, but it’s handled very carefully and clearly used to highlight the sense of embarrassment and dehumanization that Jewish prisoners were subjected to. The most gruesome imagery one might expect to find in a comic written by a Holocaust survivor is also not explicitly shown–which certainly ties into the way that Kolinka repressed the worst aspects of her experience just to survive.
If you like stories that put a human face on big, overwhelming tragedies, like the previously mentioned Maus, then Adieu Birkenau will be right up your alley. Kolinka approaches the subject matter with much more humor than, say, Art Spiegelman, but she doesn’t gloss over the ways that trauma sticks with survivors and how our memory plays an important role in processing such horrors. It is a worthwhile addition to the hugely important genre of comics by creators trying to make sense of real world horrors.
Adieu Birkenau By Ginette Kolinka, Jean-David Morvan, and Victor Matet Art by Ricard Efa and Cesc F. Dalmases SelfMadeHero, 2024 ISBN: 9781914224232
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18) Creator Representation: French, Jewish Character Representation: French, Jewish
It’s 1905 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The times are… well, they’re getting even worse.
Meschugge tells the tale of a strange series of gristly murders that take place within the Jewish ghetto. Ms. Nathansen (she is only ever referred to by her surname), a typist, is recruited by the town magistrate to infiltrate the ghetto and assist the police. In the magistrate’s words: ‘and you just happen to be Jewish yourself, right?’ Nathansen’s work is immediately life-threatening, and the magistrate’s plan of simply sending in someone who is Jewish to commune with the other Jewish residents is quickly thwarted. The refugees mostly don’t speak Danish, and they have already witnessed many horrors and don’t trust the police to help them. They keep their gossip circles tight and Ms. Nathansen is on the outside looking in—she is not like them. Even as she gains the trust of a select few residents, her intel job never ceases to be dangerous, confusing, and sinister.
This psychological horror thriller is done in stark grayscale with strong contrast between highlights and shadows, occasionally giving it a noir aesthetic (fitting, really). It is rendered simply and realistically, with strong shapes and hard lines. There is quite a lot of blood and bloody wounds depicted. There’s even a few premonitions that depict mass graves of human corpses (as opposed to faceless skeletons).
Meschugge, though absolutely riveting and fascinating, is definitely for older readers. Even further, older readers who can really stomach the violence. I would not say any of it is gratuitous—it has meaning and function within the story, but certainly, not everyone is going to be able to tolerate seeing brutality perpetrated against members of a marginalized group.
The story offers interesting historical insights and some unknown lore (to me) about Jewish mysticism/kabbalah. I have a soft spot for learning about these sorts of things – fringe beliefs within an established religious system, little-known facts about history, and how those things sometimes collide together. Although the story is fictional, it is firmly grounded in a very real setting. The novel depicts class differences as it does its violence: stark, and with honest brutality. Meschugge absolutely refuses to show the Jewish community as a monolith – perhaps the first time I have personally come across this in media.
My personal recommendation is that this novel should go to the right reader. I was absolutely hooked on the story, I think it’s real page-turner, but the sheer amount of blood is always going to have varying mileage for different readers. Folks who liked Silence of the Lambs will likely enjoy Meschugge. I know I did!
Meschugge The Madman’s Maze Vol. By Benni Bødker Art by Christian Højgaard FairSquare Graphics, 2024 ISBN: 9781960171122
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
In mid-90s Paris, eighteen-year-old Nina is struggling to find her path. The daughter of a Black Muslim from Gambia and a Polish Jewish woman whose family narrowly escaped the Holocaust, Nina feels out of place almost everywhere: the university she attends, the parties thrown by fellow students, and definitely her ballet classes, where she is told “You’re a great dancer, but Sleeping Beauty is not Black.” When her ballet teacher suggests that she is not a good fit because “the corps de ballet must appear uniform,” Nina quits, feeling more adrift and rejected than ever. But when she discovers track and field – and a coach who says she has great potential as a runner—Nina is intrigued. She’s also intrigued by Jackson, a handsome runner on the team.
Nina joins the team, works hard, and soon qualifies for the regional championships. Finally, people are celebrating her accomplishments. But then things take a turn: three other athletes sexually assault Nina in the locker room after the championships. She doesn’t tell anyone, but the trauma eats at her. Meanwhile her crush, Jackson, keeps giving her mixed messages. Nina starts smoking and drinking, getting into trouble at school and on the running team. Her family, her best friend, and the running team’s sympathetic doctor are worried. Can Nina find her way through these challenges to a bright future?
This book is an adaptation of a semi-autobiographical novel. The author, Rachel Khan, shares Nina’s heritage and went from classical dance to track and field at about Nina’s age. In a forward to the graphic novel, Khan calls it a coming of age story about trying to find your way when you “don’t look like anyone around” and are deeply aware of the “weighty history” of your family.
While the running element adds interest, the real focus is Nina’s emotional life. As the book goes on, she speaks out more: she snaps at her racially insensitive professor, argues with her running coach, and tells off a classmate for seeing her as “exotic.” Though her anger is usually justified—after all, she faces problems as serious as racism and sexual violence – she sometimes has reactions that may feel odd or surprising to readers. For instance, when the running team’s doctor admonishes her for using drugs, she responds “I don’t need any lectures from you, Karim. My father is the child of slaves who was then adopted. So I could care less about your team and its stupid honor.” In this case, even the doctor pushes back, asking “What’s that got to do with your getting high”.
Despite her struggles, Nina has good things going for her. She adores her family and her Jewish religious community. She has a supportive best friend and, by the end of the book, a new romance. Her success on the track also boosts her self-esteem and helps her finally feel like she belongs.
The scene when three other athletes sexually assault Nina is not explicit, nor does she ever recount the incident on the page, but readers see her trauma and physical injuries. The book has a little other violence, like pushing and hitting between Nina and a running team rival, and some swearing. There is no nudity, and nothing more intimate than a couple of kisses. Nina reflects on and discusses religion and race, which both feature heavily in her experiences.
The artwork is a simple but expressive cartoon style. The characters are dynamic and distinctive. There is a wide variety of settings: Nina’s home, her school, the track, and more. Some are drawn with detail and interest, while others are sketched in and simplified, keeping them firmly in the background. The color scheme supports the mood and feel of different scenes: cozy neutrals in Nina’s family home, sunny brights when she runs on the track, and so on.
Nina’s experience—drawn from the author’s own—will resonate with some readers and perhaps be illuminating for others. Though it is fictionalized, the book may appeal to fans of memoirs.
I Run to Make My Heart Beat By Rachel Khan Art by Aude Massot FairSquare Comics, 2024 ISBN: 9781960171054
Related media: Book to Comic
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+) Creator Representation: French, Gambian, , Character Representation: French, Gambian, Jewish ,
Gaytheist: Coming Out of My Orthodox Childhood is Lonnie Mann’s graphic memoir about growing up in and eventually leaving his Orthodox Jewish family and community.
His family’s religious lifestyle served rigid cultural norms, especially around gender, sexuality, and traditional family life. Mann portrays the burden of his parents’ expectations, their angry outbursts, and their harsh and punitive nature. For example, Lonnie’s dad, sick of his son’s moping, forces him to remain at the dinner table until Lonnie shares why he has been so upset lately. Rather than inviting conversation, his dad sits silently nursing a shot, until Lonnie writes “I’m gay” on a piece of paper and hands it to him. After getting into a fight with his mom, Lonnie has to prepare his own lunches and dinners because his mom stops cooking for him. Lonnie eventually makes some close friends he can be himself around. He explains, “Becoming friends with Michelle and her other non-Orthodox friends felt like a series of short mental vacations. From the emotional prison of my family…from my community’s expectations of me marrying a girl…from the nearly endless list of moment-to-moment religious rules that controlled my every action…” (250).
The artwork consists of mostly pale watercolors and gentle lines. It lends some softness to the heavy themes of the story and intensifies when it needs to. The most emotional scenes involve Lonnie’s interactions with his parents. The coming out to his dad scene includes two full page panels without any text. A crying Lonnie hands the confessional paper to his dad. The opposite page is split, with a close-up of Lonnie sobbing on one side, and a close-up of his dad looking forlornly down at the paper on the other side. The colors are contrasting blues and yellows, creating a powerful visual representation. Later, while on a drive with his mom, Lonnie mentions to her that he won’t always be Orthodox. She blows up at him, and the rage on her face, with Lonnie terrified in the back seat of the car, clearly demonstrates what their relationship has become and why Lonnie needs to get away.
Gaytheist shines a light on Orthodox Jewish life and its rejection of homosexuality and other nonconformist identities. It offers a personal, highly emotional story that teenage and adult readers can connect with. Fans of both coming out and coming-of-age stories will enjoy Mann’s book.
Gaytheist: Coming Out of My Orthodox Childhood By Lonnie Mann Art by Lonnie Mann, Ryan Gatts Street Noise Books, 2024 ISBN: 9781951491277
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18) Creator Representation: Gay Character Representation: Gay, Jewish
The Girl Who Sang is a Holocaust survival memoir by Estelle Nadel and illustrator Sammy Savos that tells the former’s story of hiding from the Nazis and eventually fleeing her native Poland.
Born Enia Feld, the author’s story begins in April 1939 in Borek, in southern Poland. Enia is the youngest child in her family. Her older brothers are Shia and Minashe and her older sister is Sonjia. Her family are practicing Jews who farm and are friends with their Gentile (non-Jewish) neighbors. When the tale begins, the family are celebrating Passover and discussing the news about Hitler and the Nazi’s military advances. Readers see the family gathering together, preparing matzah, and praying in Hebrew, showing Jewish life to readers unfamiliar with their customs.
The book is told in five chronological parts introduced with the range of years during which each part occurs. Estelle remembers how the Nazis invaded Poland, forced Jews to wear the Star of David, displaced them from their homes, and rounded them up for transport to ghettos and death camps. Some of the non-Jews covertly sheltered their Jewish neighbors, which is how Enia and her brothers escaped the horrendous fate of other family members and friends. However, just because they did not end up in a death camp does not mean they had an easy time surviving.
One aspect of the book I appreciated was seeing the shades of morality that some characters portrayed. For example, one neighbor agrees to conceal Enia, her mother, and two brothers, but only for one night as he fears for his own life should the Gestapo discover his betrayal. Is such a character kind, malevolent, neither, or something in between? In another instance, Shia escapes the jail he and Enia have been imprisoned in, and dashes away before Enia can catch up. The terrified Enia freezes on the spot and breaks down crying. Shia later admits he heard her crying, but stayed away, afraid that she would get them both caught. What does the reader think of Shia’s actions? He instructed Enia on how to escape before getting free himself, but then he left her alone after he promised he would wait for her.
The panels of the book are well organized and easy to follow. The characters’ facial expressions and actions move the story along. Simple backgrounds keep most of the focus in the foreground where the characters are positioned. The color palette of dim earth tones preserves the solemn tone of the book and again keeps attention on the characters. Scenes of violence depict beating, shooting, and blood spatter. One instance of this is a firing squad. Blood paints the wall behind the people who have crumpled into corpses on the ground. In another scene, Nazi soldiers beat and then murder Chaya, who refuses to tell them where her children are hidden. This history and imagery are painful, but important to learn about for children who are old enough to do so.
Recommend The Girl Who Sang to older kids and tweens who like the I Survived series and other historical or biographical books.
The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival By Estelle Nadel Art by Sammy Savos Macmillan Roaring Brook, 2024 ISBN: 9781250247766
Publisher Age Rating: ages 10-14 NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13)
Creator Representation: Polish, Jewish Character Representation: Polish, Jewish
couple Liam and Milo navigating their maturing relationship. This slice of life romantic comic was adapted from real life couple Harcum and White’s webtoon in February and promises more volumes to come. Fresh out of high school, the pair are growing into young adults and trying to allow their relationship to grow with them. Liam and Milo are in a very interesting phase, kind of semi-out to their families (who bring their own baggage into their relationship) and striving to make room for each other as their lives grow fuller. Liam doesn’t know what he wants out of his future and Milo seems plagued with self doubt, but they keep circling back to find comfort in each other. This volume catches our couple at a very real, very vulnerable time where a high school relationship can evolve into an adult one or where it can flounder under the weight of growing up.
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.
but finding yourself overwhelmed at the prospect? Aron Nels Steinke’s Speechless is a middle grade graphic novel about Mira, a sixth grader who can’t always find her voice and what she wants to say, no matter how hard she tries at it.
Echoes of October is built around a simple yet difficult question. The sort of question that children often ask and adults wish they could answer.
On the first day of senior year, Essie Rosen has it all figured out. She has plans for college, supportive friends, and she’s dating the boy next door. But as the school year unfolds, her perfect life starts to fall apart. Her boyfriend breaks up with her, her best friend has stopped responding to her texts, and her college dreams are on the rocks, all while under the scrutiny of her perfectionist mother. Things get even more complicated when she meets Christopher, an alluring junior, whose older brother set her own brother, Gabe, down the path to drug addiction. Essie just wants to know where she belongs, but everyone around her wants to tell her how to live her life.
Birkenau approaches the subject with a surprising amount of levity and accessibility. The comic splits its time between the present (well, the present of 2020), in which the 95-year-old Kolinka re-visits the Auschwitz-Birkenau prison camp with a group of students, and the events of the past. Kolinka recounts her early life in France, her large family’s attempt to escape Nazi persecution, and most notably the experience of trying to survive in camp as she was being abused, humiliated, and dehumanized.
gristly murders that take place within the Jewish ghetto. Ms. Nathansen (she is only ever referred to by her surname), a typist, is recruited by the town magistrate to infiltrate the ghetto and assist the police. In the magistrate’s words: ‘and you just happen to be Jewish yourself, right?’ Nathansen’s work is immediately life-threatening, and the magistrate’s plan of simply sending in someone who is Jewish to commune with the other Jewish residents is quickly thwarted. The refugees mostly don’t speak Danish, and they have already witnessed many horrors and don’t trust the police to help them. They keep their gossip circles tight and Ms. Nathansen is on the outside looking in—she is not like them. Even as she gains the trust of a select few residents, her intel job never ceases to be dangerous, confusing, and sinister.
In mid-90s Paris, eighteen-year-old Nina is struggling to find her path. The daughter of a Black Muslim from Gambia and a Polish Jewish woman whose family narrowly escaped the Holocaust, Nina feels out of place almost everywhere: the university she attends, the parties thrown by fellow students, and definitely her ballet classes, where she is told “You’re a great dancer, but Sleeping Beauty is not Black.” When her ballet teacher suggests that she is not a good fit because “the corps de ballet must appear uniform,” Nina quits, feeling more adrift and rejected than ever. But when she discovers track and field – and a coach who says she has great potential as a runner—Nina is intrigued. She’s also intrigued by Jackson, a handsome runner on the team.
Gaytheist: Coming Out of My Orthodox Childhood is Lonnie Mann’s graphic memoir about growing up in and eventually leaving his Orthodox Jewish family and community.
The Girl Who Sang is a Holocaust survival memoir by Estelle Nadel and illustrator Sammy Savos that tells the former’s story of hiding from the Nazis and eventually fleeing her native Poland.
