Staff Picks: Top Titles of 2024

Nonbinary teen Ash feels like no one understands or listens to them, not about their identity or the things they care about. So, they make a plan to find their grandfather’s secret cabin and live there on their own. However, they quickly find that living alone in the wild is more challenging than expected. Told in the form of journal entries, Ash's Cabin is a thoughtful story about finding ways to live in a world where you don't easily fit.

I was enthralled with the story and its framing, and Wang’s beautiful artwork captures Ash’s adventures and world. Readers who enjoyed survival stories such as Hatchet and/or are seeking stories about acceptance will want to pick up Ash’s Cabin.

Megan Rupe

What would you do if you found out, despite doing everything right to win a full-ride scholarship to your #1 school, that the funding for the scholarship has mysteriously dried up, and you now have to pay for tuition on your own? If you're Molly Bauer, you read everything you can find about financial aid from the school and find a loophole. This loophole is that at Peachtree Institute of Collegiate Arts if you are on an athletic team that wins at least one game, you are eligible for a full-ride athletic scholarship. Molly has played softball most of her life, so now she must get together enough art students to put together a softball team and train them up enough to win one game.

Fans of "Check, Please!" will love Ukazu's second story of found family and college sports.

Tayla Cardillo

Tessa Hulls' grandmother and mother managed to escape communist China, only for her grandmother to fall into madness. Hulls explores how these historical events impacted her grandmother, unravels her family’s lore and coping mechanisms, and how everything impacted her family.

With stunning black-and-white illustrations, Hulls delves into her family’s history and her own experiences in an accessible, thoughtful narrative. I was completely engrossed in Feeding Ghosts, and I encourage you to pick it up if you are looking for a powerful family memoir.

“Hull’s family story takes place in the aftermath of China’s Communist Party’s rise to power; therefore, many difficult topics are discussed, including violence, famine, abuse, and cannibalism. There is also discussion of suicide and mental illness.”

Megan Rupe

This memoir follows the creator through much of their life so far, taking the reader on a journey from childhood to young adulthood and how that has also been a journey of gender and ways to visually represent who they are in hair and dress. In all of this, they also discuss how, for some people, gender is truly a journey with no destination, that the gender binary is restrictive to just about everyone, and that it's okay to change and keep changing and to not know. There's always time to try things on.

Blurbs compare this book to Gender Queer and The Fire Never Goes Out, and it's easy to see why, since both also show a person's journey across gender and presentation over time and how finding the right words, and shedding the wrong ones, can be an incredible and validating experience while still also being difficult. Really, this one is a great read for people wanting to support a queer person in their life as much as it is for young queer folks trying to figure it all out.

Shannan Prukop

After Indu was found alone on the moon, he and his mother, Dariya, lived on a spaceship where Indu felt secure. When his mother marries, they move from their familiar spaceship home to New Earth. On New Earth, Indu struggles to find a place for himself until he can no longer take it and asks the moon to come and get him.

This incredibly sweet story warmed my heart. I loved the charming, expressive character designs, expansive setting, character dynamics, and Indu’s narrative arc. Fans of stories that portray strong relationships, such as Steven Universe and Owl House, or thoughtful stories about queerness and acceptance, such as Blue Delliquanti’s work or Molly Knox Ostertag’s Witch Boy, will gravitate toward Lunar Boy.

Misgendering

Megan Rupe

Valentina thinks her family is cursed to never have happiness in love. Her father never moved on after the loss of her mother, and she feels like him, that she is destined to be alone. When 2 potential suitors come into her life, the outgoing Leslie and the distant Jae, her idyllic version of St. Valentine as a joyful cupid-like figure turns into a haunting vision that tells her that she has one year to find love, or she will be alone forever. Will Leslie or Jae be the person who touches her heart and saves her from this fate?

Fans of "Heartstopper" and "All the Boys I've Loved Before" will enjoy this story about fate, family, and falling in love.

Estranged parents, discussions of the death of a parent.

Tayla Cardillo

Our story opens with Jane finding out, after the death of her parents, that the house she grew up in and everything in it will go to her less-than-savory cousin purely because she's an unmarried young woman. She has a week to figure out something to prevent this, so she tries proposing to Peter, the son of a fisher family who hates the job, only to be laughed at. But then Peter gets kidnapped by a mermaid, of all things. Jane may be considered plain by everyone, but it turns out she's pretty determined and clever, going to the bottom of the ocean, saving a selkie, and dealing with three mermaids to try and get a boy back who doesn't even like her.

This book is perfect for readers of Anzu and the Realm of Darkness or The Pale Queen, stories featuring an undervalued and less confident main character who experiences something fantastical and a little awful to discover that, actually, they're stronger and better than they or anyone else realized.

Shannan Prukop

Best Friends Clay and Kyle have always known they were funny; from cracking jokes, while working stage crew in the school play to open mic nights at a local cafe, they always seem to know how to get a laugh. When Clay decides to try out for an acting part in the school play, a serious production of "Guys and Dolls," she quickly realizes she needs an outlet to joke around. She and Kyle decided to start a podcast where they give comical advice to their fellow middle school students. Will a school play, a budding crush, and making a podcast be too much for Clay to handle?

Fans of "Growing Pains" and "The Tryout" will enjoy this story.

Tayla Cardillo

Konosuke is a samurai almost in name only; he can't hold a sword, as all metal crumples and pushes away if it gets too close to him. In general his life is difficult, not being able to handle money or metal utensils, looking like an oddity to the people of his town. Then Tsuki enters his life, and for the first time, he feels like there's hope for the future, only to have her taken away by strange people who wield unusual abilities. Now he'll do anything to get back the life and love he had started to hope for, even if it means entering a world he knows nothing about.

This manga has a lot going for it, from stunning art to historical notes about the time period and region it's set in, great fight scenes, and the supernatural angle, that has appeal for a lot of readers. It's not overly dense with history or cartoonish with supernatural content, so while VIZ has the series as Teen+, there's a lot of appeal for adults with this one.

Bugs, dead bodies, discussion of violence against women.

Shannan Prukop

Rotem is the only one in her friend group who enjoys the Sunrise series, though she really has an obsession. After seeing Ayala reading, Rotem suggests she read Sunrise, and the best possible outcome happens when Ayala also loves the books. Ayala even shows her on the internet how fans of the series are called sunheads and news about the movie coming out in America. But when their friendship shifts in a direction neither is ready for, they drift apart. When they reunite after some time and processing, things look a little different, but the love of Sunrise is the same.

Sunhead is a great choice for readers of graphic novels like The Deep Dark or Bloom, where the major themes are reckoning with who someone is and how they fit into the world around them, though this one is firmly rooted in reality with no supernatural or fantasy elements. This comic also does not spell everything out for the reader, instead leaving lots of open space and moments to let them sit with the characters, much like manga similar to Cross Game.

Shannan Prukop

Mags is suffocating under the weight of her responsibilities. She has to care for her grandmother and feed her monster in the basement. When an old friend returns to town, Mags has an opportunity to do things differently, if only she’ll take the chance.

I love Knox Ostertag’s work for its lovely art and emotional beats, and in The Deep Dark, she delivers on both counts. Read this if you are looking for a story about carrying difficult emotional weight.

Violence; some blood; mental illness; abusive relationship

Megan Rupe