This week (to no one’s surprise) I read a lot of new graphic novels, manga, and comic books that we got into the library. I try to keep up with the new materials that come in so I can recommend books easier but sometimes we get so many new ones all at once! And with trying to pack and move it’s been a little stressful. But I did get a few read in between all the packing and moving so onto the books!
The first book that I really enjoyed is called The Cardboard Kingdom by Chad Sell. This is a really cute and colorful book about summer fun and finding yourself. It starts off with a few kids playing around with some cardboard that they’ve made into costumes and props and develops into something more over the summer. There are all sorts of cute kids that come into the picture as the summer progresses. A good mix of boys and girls and plenty of different skin tones as well. The kids learn to play together – even if they didn’t get along at first or even if they started out as the neighborhood bully. They come together to build an imagination fueled cardboard kingdom where the play and have fun together. There are some lessons learned as the summer goes on but this is mostly a really adorable graphic novel about summer fun. I really liked it and I would highly recommend it!
The next book that I really enjoyed this week is called Sanity and Tallulah by Molly Brooks. This book is FANTASTIC!! I love the friendship between Sanity and Tallulah. I wanted to hang out with them so badly throughout the whole time I was reading it. This is one of those books that I loved as an adult but really would have adored and probably re-read multiple times as a child. It had a little bit of spooky-ness, some sci-fi, friendship, and mystery all rolled up into one. This book is geared towards middle graders but I really think tweens and some teens would love this book too. I would recommend it to kids that like sci-fi but really anyone would enjoy this.
Next up I read volume five of A Silent Voice which is a manga by Yoshitoki Oima. I have read this entire series and I believe I’ve talked about it here before but this volume was a really nice one. If you are not familiar with the story, the main character, Shoya, was a horrible bully to his deaf classmate Shoko and led a small band of children to torment her. They bullied her so much that she ended up changing schools. This series is about Shoya trying to apologize and make it up to Shoko. The thing that I really like about this series is that they don’t shy away from depicting the bullying. They show all of it. It makes it hard to read in some places. And they also deal with how Shoya feels about what he did in the past and how he much he desperately wants to make up for it. I also like that fact that they don’t just focus on Shoko. They bring in her mom and family members that were also affected by Shoya’s bullying and show how they feel towards him and how much it affected them as well. This is not a series that has a lot of happy feel-good stuff in it but it is very well done and the subject matter is something that I think a lot of kids should read about. It teaches them that their actions don’t only affect one person. They can affect whole families and cause issues that some people will have to deal with for many years to come. I highly recommend this series even with the heavy themes that it deals with.
The next book that I read and really enjoyed this week is another one that deals with some heavy topics. It is called Monster: A Graphic Novel by Walter Dean Myers and adapted by Guy A. Sims. I will admit that I have not read the original book so I went into this blind. Our MC Steve Harmon is accused of being a lookout in a robbery where someone was killed. This book follows his trial. Not knowing anything going into this I think was a good thing. I have heard of the book before but it has been awhile. I didn’t know the outcome of the trial as I was reading so there was a lot of suspense as the book went along. I really enjoyed that the book was all in black, white, and shades of grey. Even of you have never read the book that this graphic novel is based on, I would highly recommend this book.
One of the last books I read this week is a manga called Delicious Dungeon by Ryoko Kui. This was one of my favorites of the week! It is so cute and the story is really interesting as well. This first volume is all about a group of adventurers who were venturing into a dungeon when one of their members gets eaten by a dragon and the rest of the party gets killed. Once they re-spawn outside the dungeon, they realize that they don’t have enough money or food to go back into the dungeon and rescue their friend. So they decide to eat the dungeon creatures that they find along the way! I really loved this manga and I highly recommend it especially if you are a fan of other cooking manga (like Sweetness and Lightning!).
That is it for this week! I hope you are had a great week. I’m almost done moving (but there’s so much stress involved with moving, it’s not fun!). I’d love to hear from you guys in the comments!
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