Over the Wall by Peter Wartman
This appears to be the start of a series about a younger sister who is trying to find her older brother who recently went over the wall that surrounds an ancient metropolis and never came back. However, no one ever comes back from over the wall. What is preventing people from coming back? What readers learn is that past humans have employed demons to help with tasks in return for names and stories. The demons got greedy and started eating the names of people so others would forget them and be forgotten. But not all demons are bad, right? One appears to want to help locate this lost brother.
The Flying Couch by Amy Kurzweil
There are many memoirs out there that three generations of women, but this one is beautifully done through art. This book covers Bubbe’s, or grandma’s, escape from the Warsaw ghetto, her mother who is a psychologist constantly psychoanalyzing, and Amy, a Jewish artist trying to figure out her place in the world.
Each of this voices provides something necessary to the story from a birth-rite trip to Israel, to moving into a retirement community and Bubbe’s often funny accent and perspective. Readers will relate to the idiosyncrasies that we all have in our individual families and discovering our identities.
Camp Midnight by Steven T. Seagle and Jason Adam Katzenstein
We have all heard of those dreaded summer camp stories. Readers should also be familiar with the “step-monster” element too, the unwanted new interest of your dad who wants nothing to do with you and can’t wait to send you away. That is exactly what happens to Skye in Camp Midnight, but this camp is unlike any she has heard of. They sleep during the day and focus on revealing their true selves in the dark when the moon comes out. There are all kinds of monsters, witches, and ghouls here and they are all waiting for Skye to reveal her true self to the other campers. But what if she isn’t a monster? How can she escape this camp? And what do the other campers show her about her true self?
Deep Dark Fears by Fran Krause
Probably my favorite of these four titles, the author/illustrator has an author note at the beginning about where the idea and fears came from. So this is a book that starts with fear #1 and illustrates that through fear #100. Many are legitimate fears and others are laugh-out-loud funny!
All four of these graphic novels would be fine in a middle school. I indulged on reading them while sitting at my desk after I unpacked them and was processing them for circulation. Since I have put them on display, all of them have been checked out so clearly my patrons were hungry for some new material.
This book appears to be happy and cute; simple title, simple cover, but there is so much more inside! This is a story told from alternating perspectives. Dess narrates half of the chapters and comes from a family of criminals. Her father is a gang member and her mom is a drug addict. Dess’ whole life has been about survival and sinking into the shadows to stay out of the way. The one thing she does understand is loyalty to her half brother and protecting him regardless of who is his parent.
