This inclusive fantasy adventure passes the Bechdel test with flying colors.
This splashy fantasy graphic novel blends rollicking adventure with inclusive teen themes.
Though bustling with goblins, witches, ghosts, and skeletons, this beautifully drawn graphic novel addresses important questions facing even mortal kids. It tells the story of Beetle, a young goblin and aspiring witch who is torn between hanging out at the mall with pal Blob Ghost and serious study. When childhood friend Kat Hollowbone returns to Beetle’s town to apprentice with her sorceress aunt, it disrupts Beetle’s friendship with Blob Ghost as well as Beetle’s ideas about identity and relationships. The story quickly develops urgency as Kat’s aunt emerges as a villain intent on demolishing the mall, thereby endangering Blob Ghost, who is bound to that location. Layne’s renderings of her paranormal cast are highly evocative. Green-skinned Beetle has large, pointy ears and a tufted tail; skeletal Aunt Hollowbones has a spindly bird skull for a head. Climactic action scenes are expertly rendered. Diversity is a strength in this female-driven text, which features a tenderly portrayed LGBTQ+ love story between Kat and Beetle. Wise older women act as mentors, body diversity is casually positive, and Blob Ghost uses they/them pronouns throughout. Amid the fantasy elements, Beetle, Kat, and Blob Ghost text, video chat, post pictures online, and look at one another’s social media feeds—and Beetle is forced, grumbling, to take the bus to the mall.
This inclusive fantasy adventure passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. (Graphic fantasy. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4153-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A spectacular return to a magical world.
Following the events of Impossible Creatures (2024), a devoted Guardian teams up with a brave princess to fight her power-hungry uncle and save the Archipelago’s dragons from a strange new threat.
Jacques the dragon summons Christopher Forrester back to the Archipelago from the human world: Dragons are dying, and no one knows why. Meanwhile, on the island of Dousha, Princess Anya’s grandfather, King Halam, has been murdered, and her father accused—though she knows he’s innocent. When Christopher and Anya take refuge on the islet of Glimt, the Berserker Nighthand helps them see how their twin missions to save the dragons and free Anya’s father are connected. They work together to create an antidote for the poison that’s killing the dragons and to keep Anya and her father safe from her murderous uncle. Meanwhile, Nighthand and Irian, the part-nereid ocean scholar, pursue their own important secret mission. Divided into three parts—“Castle,” “Dragons,” and “Revenge”—and containing elements of fairy tales, fantasy, and Shakespeare, this story continues the storyline established in the series opener, yet because it introduces new characters and obstacles, it could also stand alone. Dark-blond Anya (“five feet tall and all of it claws”) is a match for white-presenting Christopher, who, though he still misses Mal, finds that “it made a difference to have someone to move through the world with again. A friend changed the feel of the universe.” Mackenzie’s delicate, otherworldly art adorns the text.
A spectacular return to a magical world. (map, bestiary) (Fantasy. 10-15)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593809907
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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