Thirteen-year-old Patricia "Sweet Pea" DiMarco is experiencing some significant changes. Her parents have agreed to an amicable divorce and will live on the same street in similar houses to minimize their daughter's discomfort with this new family dynamic.
She is simultaneously negotiating a falling-out with her former best friend and the repercussions from thoughtlessness toward her new best friend. This girl is headed for a world of hurt.
Then there's her neighbor, the eccentric advice columnist Miss Flora Mae who leaves town and asks Sweet Pea to forward advice requests and then deliver the answers to the newspaper editor. Sweet Pea succumbs to temptation and reads letters addressed to Miss Flora Mae. She decides to dispense her own advice and sets up an elaborate scheme to impersonate Miss Flora Mae in print. Sometimes the plan works. Sometimes it doesn't. How she extricates herself from a situation of her own making, salvages damages friendships, and rebuilds trust makes for a humorous, heartwarming tale.

Stacey Lee addresses racism, worker's rights, immigration, and women's suffrage from a unique perspective: a Chinese girl living in Atlanta Georgia in the late 1800s.
​Seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan loses her job as a milliner and must return to the demeaning life of a lady's maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. She and immigrant Old Gin secretly live in a tunnel beneath a newspaper printer's shop. She faces discrimination on several fronts. She’s an orphan, female, and Chinese .

An intelligent and resourceful young woman, she is determined to protect Old Gin and rise above her current circumstances. She finds a way, pseudonymously penning a local newspaper's advice column "Dear Miss Sweetie." Many questions are of the mundane sort: unruly children, troubled marriages, making a hat fit properly. She doesn’t stop there. Under the cloak of anonymity, she speaks out forcefully on racial and gender inequality. Her column is a success and newspaper subscriptions skyrocket.

Penny Rose is lonely. In the past, she has always enjoyed friendships with other children in her neighborhood. Now everything has changed. Her family moved and she can't connect with any of her new classmates. She spends her free time sequestered in the shed in her family’s backyard, creating a collection of tiny robots from found objects: outdated technology, broken bits and pieces, even a set of false teeth. She names each creation and fills her days tinkering with these mini-friends.

Then she meets her nerdy neighbor Lark. A budding ornithologist, Lark has a yard brimming with an incredible collection of birdhouses created from assorted curiosities that the birds leave for her,

​The girls want to dress up as robots for Halloween.
​Although their plans fall through, young readers can create a cardboard robot costume and make their own magic.

The Year We Fell From Space is a searing portrait of a young girl in conflict.
​Liberty Johansen distances herself from her classmates when she refuses to participate in school playground activities such as marriages and excommunications. And she’s not afraid to let her views be known.
​It’s stupid...We’re in sixth grade. Having weddings is stupid.

​She shoulders a massive self-imposed burden, trying to keep her family together, attempting to maintain peace and a sense of normalcy in situations which are beyond her control.
She is fascinated with astronomy and creates her own star maps. Her interest in the stars becomes her safe place. She discovers an unusual rock and believes that it is a meteorite, sent from the skies directly to her. The rock becomes her solace, her companion, and her confidante.

Lib views herself and her world through the lens of her current circumstances: sixth-grade outcast, protector for her younger sister, and dutiful daughter to her separated parents.

Liberty's life is filled with hikes, gazing at the night sky, campfires, and s'mores. And smeelings.
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Smeelings are "smells that make feelings."
I'm sending a toasted gooey s'more with lots of smeelings to King. Thanks for this poignant portrayal of a young girl and her family coping with mental illness. Its a story that has found a home in my heart.

Reynolds has penned a novel comprised of interconnected stories. Read independently they are insightful vignettes, zeroing in on the ten city blocks students attending Lattimer Middle School traverse each day. Collectively the stories reveal the hearts of those bound together by geography. The lives of these unique individuals intersect in unexpected ways.

In the push and pull of everyday life, we meet students affected by life-altering events such as sickle cell anemia, cancer, dementia, incarceration, and gay-shaming.

These ten blocks are jam-packed with a rich assortment of sensory details.

In 1939 Germany invaded Poland, creating ripples of conflict throughout Europe. Hostilities intensified when the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany and the Germans began relentlessly bombing London. British parents sought to protect their families from these attacks. One option was sending children out of the country. Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB) arranged to transport youngsters ages five through fifteen to relative safety in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. A luxury ocean liner, the SS City of Benares set sail on September 12, 1940 departing from Liverpool and bound for Canada. The ship carried 406 people. Passengers included 90 CORB children along with their chaperones. Terror struck five days into the journey when a German U-boat fired a torpedo, sinking the City of Benares.
​Torpedoed: The True Story of the Sinking of “The Children’s Ship” chronicles this catastrophe and the fate of its few survivors.

It is interesting to view the cover art for the three books in Tracey Baptiste's Jumbies series. The Jumbies, features a frightened young Corinne moving cautiously through a dark wood, ominous-looking eyes following her. Rise of the Jumbies depicts Corrine submersed in water, body entangled in the coiling tail of Mama D’Leau.

Corinne’s island is experiencing a rare occurrence: torrential rains accompanied by vicious lightning strikes. This is not normal. Corrine suspects that jumbies are the cause of this destruction. She learns to her surprise that this is not the work of Mama D’Leau.  

Huracan, a Mayan mythological entity, is the force behind the devastating storms. This god of lightning, wind, storm, and fire is out for revenge and is intent on destroying all of the island’s inhabitants.

It is up to one girl to save everyone on the island.
​She must negotiate mountain rockslides, avoid underwater volcanoes, and face a killer whale. She resolves to free Mama D’Leau who is trapped underwater. She must find her aunt Severine and return her to the island.   Several of these tasks require Corinne to take mermaid form. In the process, she risks losing her memory and even her life in order to save her family and friends.

Wunder Ellis is a miracologist, a person who collects evidence of miracles. From the time he was six years old, he became aware of phenomena that could not be explained with traditional logic. He records and numbers these entries in a journal titled The Miraculous. 

Wunder's faith in miracles is destroyed when his infant sister dies. He no longer believes. He removes all evidence of miracles from his room: a Calendar of the Saints, statues of angels, books and scriptures from many different faiths, and his framed baby photo inscribed with the Willa Cather quote Where there is great love there are always miracles.

The Miraculous is a story of grief, viewed from the perspective of faith. Faith that is lost and faith that is eventually regained. Wunder and his father worship at St. Gerard's, a traditional Christian church. However, the narrative includes references to numerous faith traditions including Jesa, the Korean ceremony to honor the dead, the Hand of Fatima, and the Twin Miracle of the Buddha. His newly found friend Faye wears a black cloak and is a student of the paranormal, specializing in the study of witches and ghosts.

It’s Halloween and thirteen-year-old Moth Hush has given a lot of thought to the costume that she will wear to school. She decides that she will definitely ​be a witch. Black dress. Pointed hat. Nothing unusual about that.
​The girl who doesn't fit in decides that a traditional Halloween costume is a great way to assimilate. Maybe not.
​While trying to help the new kid in school, she discovers that she has extraordinary powers. Her mother confirms that she is, in fact, a witch. Moth learns that she comes from a long line of witches, both her mother and maternal grandmother are witches.

Local lore tells of a witch colony that disappeared centuries ago. Each year students reenact the story. In a strange twist of fate, Moth the costume assistant and her friend Charlie assume the roles of their ancestors in the production. Will they follow the script, or will they choose to reject the town’s traditional witch mythology and create a new reality?

This wide-eyed thirteen-year-old navigates the perilous life of middle school while simultaneously exploring Hecate, a witch’s realm existing in a parallel universe. It's new and exciting but strange and frightening. When history collides with the present, old wounds are reopened and past injustices exposed.

Three generations of witches. ​Three manifestations of Hecate: maiden, mother, crone. Three different perspectives on the practice of witchcraft. Mothers try to protect daughters. Daughters seek to break away and create a new life. Who is right?

Magic is an integral story element. Moth explores the past by jumping into her mother’s diary with a cat who is the reincarnation of a family friend and benefactor. Moth's mother, who appears ageless, reveals that she was born in 1675.

Nobody can fashion a tale quite like master story-spinner Katherine Rundell. ​
​Her previous books have taken her readers to Africa, Paris, Russia, and the Amazon rainforest. Now she turns her considerable storytelling skills to North America. The Good Thieves is set in New York City during the 1920’s, an era of speakeasies and bootleg liquor. It was a time rife with crime and corruption, when mob bosses could shamelessly pay their way into influencing government officials. Much of the action takes place at familiar city landmarks: Central Park, Plaza Hotel, Main Library, subway, the Bowery.

Vita and her mother travel to America to rescue her grandfather. Due to a fraudulent scheme perpetuated by crime lord Victor Sorrotore, Grandfather has lost the family home, a magnificent old castle. The swindle has left him destitute.

Uber-talented Raina Telgemeier has done it again. She has created a companion volume to her endearing and enduring classics Smile and Sisters. Guts is also autobiographical. It recounts Telgemeier’s bouts with stress and the mental, social, and emotional costs of anxiety. This may be her most personal book to date, detailing her childhood panic attacks, phobias, and anxiety. She opens up about the distress that she experienced and her body's responses to these fears. ​

Raina brilliantly uses the graphic novel format to tell her story. She knows when to over-fill a panel or page with people and actions, reinforcing her suffocating claustrophic feelings. Panel placement is an integral part of the story, at times horizontal bands move from the top of the bottom of the page.  Full page panels set the scene and provide important background information.  A full page is a significant statement which invites readers to pause. One of my favorites is the full-page image of her sneakers.  As readers pause to consider what it feels like to look down at shoes and become "grounded" they can experience the value of this technique.

Facial expressions and body language are a hallmark of her work. She effectively captures fear, frustration, and eventually, self-confidence.

Panels which are predominantly green signal her moments of extreme distress. A swirling mass of worry and doubt encircle Raina in various shades of green.

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​Thanks Raina. It takes courage to relive painful childhood experiences. It takes talent to accurately record your experiences in comic format. It takes empathy to share your journey through dark moments with young readers. It takes intention to seek help through therapy.
You are a woman of courage, talent, empathy, and guts.
Readers are fortunate that their beloved author has shared her story.
Thank you.