Here are some I thought looked particularly enjoyable:
For the Minis
Middle Grade
Young Adult
Enough to keep you busy for a while? Don’t worry, I’m already on the hunt for more. If you have any recommendations, give me a shout out on Twitter @BookRiot.
Fans can even learn to draw The Cat Crusader from easy, illustrated instructions at the back of the book so they can continue the team’s adventures beyond the confines of the back cover. Yay for another relatively mess free activity!
But how are Norma and Belly going to get their paws on this untried treat?
Problem solving and team work! Something the littles are just starting to ease into from parallel play and a skill they’ll need to build in the coming years. No reason not to start early with a cute-as-can-be anthropomorphic caper!
After Emily and Navin’s father dies in an accident, they move into their great-grandfather’s creepy old house. At first, they think it’s just normal weird. And then their mother is kidnapped by a tentacle monster. Determined to rescue her, the kids follow the creature into a magical world where they go on a fantastic journey.
My daughter absconded with the entire box the moment it arrived and I had to pry it out of her room to make sure I had the right covers to write this, so…mission accomplished, Mr. Kibuishi. My only caveat: there is a family death early in the first book and the second parent disappears toward the end of the same volume. That may upset some kids more than usual in this trash fire timeline so make sure you’re available for reassurance should they need it or consider reading that first book together.
One day, though, one of Drew’s drawings does fails to stop at harmless pranks; it picks up on her emotions and becomes a manifestation of her hurt, fear, and anxiety and tears through not only her doodles and their home, but her friends’ art projects as well. What can Drew do to fix the mess? How can she make it up to her friends? What if they don’t want to be her friends anymore? Each worry only makes the monster stronger and more difficult to defeat.
Until the very friends Drew is so worried about remind her that sometimes, creativity is a team effort…
What would you do if you could do anything? Would you take what you wanted or would you make the world better for others?
If you could stay a kid forever, would you?
Personally, I wouldn’t want to repeat my childhood for Jeff Bezos’s entire bank account and, alas, growing up is sort of inevitable. The twist in Gownley’s smart, über sassy, and cheekily knowing graphic novel is that he knows it, too, which is why, as his main character Kirby Finn tries to convince his friends not to grow up, he—and they—are inching toward adulthood anyway. It’s a rough journey for everyone, fictional and actual kids alike, but 7 Good Reasons Not to Grow Up is here to remind the real kids on the cusp that the wonderful surprises (reunions, first kisses, new adventures) make the bumps worth it.
Except Katie’s upstairs neighbor has 217 cats and is always needs Katie to mind her hoard when the local supervillain is out committing crimes. Is Madeline the culprit? How are the cats involved? Why is it taking her best friend so long to write back from camp, and who is this boy she keeps going on about when she does?
I had the chance to listen to Colleen and Stephanie chat about Katie a bit during a Random House Graphics online event in August and I can’t wait to get a look at the finished book—especially all of the cats and their individual personalities.
1: Don’t cry. 2: Don’t snitch. 3: Get revenge.
A tense, terse, affecting adaptation of Reynolds’s novel by the same name, Long Way Down is the story of a single life condensed down into a 60 second elevator journey that will determine Will’s entire future. So much can happen in a minute. In a minute, your father can be alive and then dead. Your uncle. The first girl you kissed. Your brother. You.
Decisions that seem small can shatter worlds or put them back together. It all depends on the choices you make in a moment.
Novgodoroff’s watercolors are a gorgeous, urgent addition to Reynolds’s story and dialogue, a perfect choice to augment a book every young adult, and every parent, should read.
