Three new graphic novels with nonbinary protagonists give chapter book and middle grade readers three very different stories of friendship, community, and compassion.
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Seeing Stars! (Batcat Book #4), by Meggie Ramm (Abrams Fanfare) is the fourth volume in the delightful series aimed at chapter-book readers. Here, Batcat is eagerly awaiting the arrival of a wishing star on Spooky Isle. The star grants one resident of the isle one wish, serious or silly. When this year’s star appears, however, falling to the isle as a glowing orb, it doesn’t seem to grant anyone’s wish.
Batcat is disappointed that their wish hasn’t been granted. They become quiet, withdrawn, and … blue, literally and figuratively. It’s up to friend Al the Ghost, with a little assistance from the Island Witch, to help their friend. (See full review for more on why, although it’s a spoiler.) Ramm manages to make Batcat and Al’s life charmingly hilarious while also offering a substantive but age-appropriate look at how to help someone dealing with sadness, grief, and perhaps depression.
If you or the young readers in your life haven’t yet met the two nonbinary friends, this volume can work as a standalone, although you’ll miss a few references to things established earlier in the series (like how Batcat and Al come to live together). It’s such a treat of a series, though, that if you read one, you’ll likely want to read them all. (Start here.)
The Froggy Library, by Julie Fiveash (Levine Querido), for middle grade readers, also deals with issues of grief. Diné author/illustrator and librarian Fiveash’s debut book and is engaging, quirky, and surprisingly moving. Anura, a young frog, is spending the summer with their grandmother in Soggy Stump, a (fictional) Navajo community in the southwest. They love that the local library has manga, and are happy to take a job there—but the job becomes more than they anticipated when they are asked to help create a community archive to help capture what makes Soggy Stump special.
Anura sets off to speak with a variety of community members, from their grandmother’s best friend to a surly emo teen, and begins to learn about the residents’ relationship with the land, the way weaving is a form of storytelling, and about newer forms of storytelling, like zines. At the same time, they examine their relationship to their own heritage and come to see how a community needs more than just a collection of things to represent it.
Fiveash adds another layer to the story, too, when Anura’s Grandma must go into hospice care, leading to an exploration of grief, memory, and community that ties back to the earlier themes. Despite the sometimes heavy topics, though, Fiveash weaves in humor and whimsy to keep the story from cloying or feeling pedantic. There’s a delightful charm to it along with unexpected depth, making it highly recommended.
Clock Hands, by Marieke Nijkamp, illustrated by Sylvia Bi (Greenwillow), is the sequel to the terrific middle grade graphic novel Ink Girls, although it can be read as a standalone story. Again set in the city of Siannera, loosely modeled on late medieval Sienna, this volume stars a youth named Vale, who lives with their grandparents. Vale dreams of being a metalworker’s apprentice, but their family does not have the money to pay the necessary fees to the guild.
Indeed, the guilds rule the city—and while they provide needed training and support for their members, they are also highly protective of their control over skilled trades. The Margini, those outside the guilds, have little power or say in their society. Clockmaker Maestro Giuseppe and his daughter Stella, however, have arrived in the city from abroad. Giuseppe doesn’t care about the guilds; he just wants to build the city’s first astronomical clock. After a chance encounter, he sees Vale’s talent, and invites them to apprentice in his workshop. It’s everything Vale dreamed of—until the guilds take exception to Giuseppe’s flouting of their rules, with violent results.
Vale and Stella work with their friends and the wider community to organize the Margini into a united group that can oppose the guilds. The guild thugs are ruthless, however, and the guild masters equally dangerous. Will justice prevail?
As in the first volume, this one explores themes of privilege, (in)justice, and the power of collective action, set in a richly textured and racially diverse world. Despite the imagined historical setting, readers should find much that resonates with socioeconomic dynamics in the world today—and much that inspires.