Twelve-year-old Isaac Itkin has just been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), depicted in this graphic novel as swarms of bees buzzing around his head, offering unhelpful thoughts about how he looks, why he’s “weird” and “stupid,” or why he has to do certain repetitive actions to ward off bad luck. He’s started therapy, which doesn’t seem to be helping, but he finds his buzzing thoughts are less intrusive when he’s around the new group of friends who have invited him to their game of Swamps & Sorcery (think Dungeons & Dragons). He feels welcomed and included—and even gets his first crush on another student in the group, Micah, who is nonbinary.
His overprotective single mother is worried, however, that playing games might intensify his compulsions. She reluctantly lets him join his friends, until Isaac fails a test at school and she insists he stay home where there are fewer distractions. Isaac must find a way to show his mother (and himself) that he can manage his own life. He finds support in a helpful school counselor—and, surprisingly, in his older sister Miriam, who has been resentful of the attention their mother pays to Isaac, but comes to ally with him against their mother’s misunderstandings of them both.
Isaac and Micah’s relationship deepens, too, and I love the sweet and slow way illustrator Rye Hickman shows this happening, with a glance or a touch. There’s none of the angsty “Do they like like me?” that we see in many middle grade novels; their relationship just evolves. There’s also no “issue” whatsoever about Micah’s gender or about Isaac liking someone who isn’t a girl. Micah in fact notably shares with Isaac their own feelings of being nonbinary, helping Isaac see that being “normal” or “weird” is a matter of perspective. “People like us, who know we’re weird? We need to stick together. So that someday … we change what normal means,” they explain.
The whole book has a warmheartedness that should give it a broad appeal. There are gentle touches of humor as well, particularly in the sequences in which Isaac and friends are shown in-character during their Swamps & Sorcery campaigns. While the story looks closely at living with OCD, it is also about family, friends, growing up, and finding strength in difference. It is about being willing to change, too, as Isaac’s mother comes to reevaluate her actions. A side plot about a popular fantasy book series has obvious echoes to Harry Potter, but has been reimagined with a Black author and queer characters, a delightful added touch.
I cannot speak to the accuracy of how the book represents having OCD, but I’ll trust author Samuel Sattin, who speaks in the acknowledgments about his own “thought bees.” (I’ll note, too, that the bee metaphor is also one used in Kathryn Ormsbee’s semi-autobiographical 2022 graphic novel Growing Pangs, about a queer tween with OCD. Presumably this is a metaphor that resonates, and not an example of plagiarism; both books may have been in production at the same time.)
Isaac and his family have light brown skin and dark wavy hair. Micah is White, and other friends are Filipino and Latine. One friend is a gender creative girl.
Highly recommended.
