Choctaw youngsters and amateur sleuths tackle their first case—missing ice cream—in this irresistible middle-grade graphic novel.
When summer brings the blistering heat, people in a small community on an unnamed reservation scrounge for loose change for frozen treats. This year, however, the ice cream truck is a no-show. Fifth grader Tasembo would prefer staying indoors with video games. But when his crush, Okchanlush, wants to know what happened to the ice cream man, Tasembo sees a chance to prove himself as a card-carrying detective. He doesn’t have much beyond a hand-scrawled card, but he quickly recruits his brainy neighbor, Nuseka, into the Rez Dog Detective Agency. Finding the ice cream man is easy but only deepens the mystery; someone swiped his inventory, leaving Tasembo, Nuseka, and Tasembo’s trusty dog, Billy Jack, to trail a thief. As an investigator, the lovably goofy Tasembo is clueless, but Nuseka has the know-how and the lab (aka her bedroom) to point right to a culprit. Judd and Jacob’s story is endlessly fun and funny. Nuseka gathers legit evidence (e.g., fingerprints) and schools Tasembo on all the gumshoe lingo. While Tasembo seemingly annoys Nuseka, they’re unquestionably good friends. There’s likewise educational value for younger readers, from translated Choctaw words (e.g. keyu, meaning no) to the mild, solvable mystery. The book teems with comedy told through visuals, and illustrator Perker, who’s drawn for Marvel, DC, and the New Yorker, layers details onto every character and colorful backdrop. The ice cream man, for one, looks like an ice cream cone, complete with a perfectly round head like the scoop on top. The writers and the illustrator round out this novel with hilarious faux ads. Includes instructions for making a tin-cup phone and a mini air conditioner.
Unforgettable kid detectives plus dazzling artwork make this book a must-have.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-943988-33-4
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Literati Press Comics and Novels
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Stonekeeper Emily frees the elves from their monstrous masked ruler and sets out to rejoin her brother and mother in the series’ penultimate episode.
The multistranded storyline picks up with Emily’s return to the world of Alledia. Now a fiery, destructive phoenix struggling to regain control of her actions, Emily goes on to follow her brother Navin and allies as they battle invading shadows on the nearby world of Typhon, then switches back to human form for a climactic confrontation with the Elf King—in the course of which Emily rips off his mask to a chorus of “ERGH!! NO!!! GRAH! RRGH!! AAAGH!” to expose a rousingly hideous face. Cute animal heads on many figures (the result of a curse) and a scene with benevolent-looking trees provide at least a bit of relief from the grim expressions that all the human and humanoid elven characters almost invariably wear. But along with emphatic sound effects, the battle and action scenes in the cleanly drawn, if sometimes cramped, panels feature huge blasts of fire or energy, intricately detailed giant robots, weirdly eyeless monsters, and wild escapades aplenty to keep the pace’s pedal to the metal. Aliens and AIs in the cast come in a variety of hues, elves are a uniform gray, and except for a brief encounter between Emily and a slightly darker lad, the (uncursed) humans default to white.
Kibuishi gives his epic tale a hefty nudge toward its long-building climax while giving readers plenty of reasons to stick around for it. (Graphic fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-545-85002-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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Sunny, in seventh grade, finds her score on the Groovy Meter taking some wild swings as her friends’ interests move in different directions.
In a motif that haunts her throughout, Sunny succumbs to a teen magazine’s personality quiz and sees her tally seesaw radically. Her BF Deb has suddenly switched focus to boys, clothes, and bands such as the Bee Gees (this is 1977)—dismissing trick-or-treating and wearing galoshes on rainy days as “babyish.” Meanwhile, Sunny takes delight in joining nerdy neighbors Lev, Brian, and Arun in regular sessions of Dungeons and Dragons (as a fighter character, so cool). The storytelling is predominantly visual in this episodic outing, with just occasional snatches of dialogue and pithy labels to fill in details or mark the passage of time; frequent reaction shots deftly capture Sunny’s feelings of being pulled this way and that. Tellingly, in the Holms’ panels (colored by Pien), Sunny’s depicted as significantly smaller than Deb, visually underscoring her developmental awkwardness. Deb’s comment that “we’re too old to be playing games like that” leads Sunny to drop out of the D&D circle and even go to the school’s staggeringly dull spring dance. Sunny’s mostly white circle of peers expands and becomes more diverse as she continues to navigate her way through the dark chambers and misty passages of early adolescence. Lev is an Orthodox Jew, Arun is South Asian, and Regina, another female friend, has brown skin.
The dice are rolling readers’ way in this third outing. (Graphic historical fiction. 10-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-23314-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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