Batcat, the adorable half-bat, half-cat, is back for their second graphic novel adventure! This time, Batcat heads to the Mermaid Lagoon for some “me time” away from their (nice but occasionally annoying) roommate Al the Ghost. At the beach, however, they find the mermaids in an uproar because someone is stealing the colors from their tails! When the mermaids tempt Batcat with a bag of their famous fish tacos, Batcat agrees to help them discover the source of this horror—leading to a confrontation with a sea serpent, a ghost pirate, and more sort-of-but-not-really-spooky denizens of Spooky Isle.
The book leans into its silliness, making it a great choice for new chapter book readers up through middle-grade graphic novel aficionados (though it would be a fun family read-aloud, too). Under the humor, however, are subtle messages about friendship, confronting one’s fears, and looking below someone’s surface. Batcat’s nonbinary identity is incidental to the main story, but backmatter includes “Non-binary Facts” (drawn in the same graphic style as the rest of the book), as well as a few pages on how to draw Batcat and Al.
As I said about the first volume in the series, I’m often skeptical of animal analogies about LGBTQ people in general—but Batcat is such a fun series that I think it might work. As a cisgender person, I recognize my limits in assessing analogies about nonbinary folks, but author/illustrator Meggie Ramm is nonbinary themself, so I’ll trust that Batcat will resonate with at least some nonbinary readers (among others). I found the book to be a delight, and recommend it heartily.
