11-13)ĭies Drear? Ohio abolitionist, keeper of a key station on the Underground Railroad, bearer of a hypercharged name that is not even noted as odd. Meanwhile, those looking for a touch of the familiar will find it in Sunny's biggest victories, which are entirely non-magical (the detailed dynamism of Sunny's soccer match is more thrilling than her magical world saving). Though Sunny's initiative is thin-she is pushed into most of her choices by her friends and by Leopard adults-the worldbuilding for Leopard society is stellar, packed with details that will enthrall readers bored with the same old magical worlds. Now she spends the day in mundane Lamb school and sneaks out at night to learn magic with her cadre of Leopard friends: a handsome American bad boy, an arrogant girl who is Orlu’s childhood friend and Orlu himself. Sunny, it seems, is a Leopard person, one of the magical folk who live in a world mostly populated by ignorant Lambs. When a boy in her class, Orlu, rescues her from a beating, Sunny is drawn in to a magical world she's never known existed. She can't play soccer with the boys because, as she says, 'being albino made the sun my enemy,' and she has only enemies at school. Who can't love a story about a Nigerian-American 12-year-old with albinism who discovers latent magical abilities and saves the world? Sunny lives in Nigeria after spending the first nine years of her life in New York. This first in a series flourishes up to its nail-biting cliffhanger: expect interest for the subsequent offering to positively bloom. His interpretation of the familiar fairy tale is richly imagined, giving girls-including one on the spectrum-equal weight in the adventure rather than staying true to the male-dominated original.

Hatke is a master visual storyteller through sparse, carefully chosen text, his largely image-based story enthralls from one action-packed panel to the next. Joined by his home-schooled neighbor Lilly, the white children spend their summer learning the quirks and magic of the garden until they unearth an evil lurking within it. Maddy and Jack accept his deal and quickly discover that these seeds are anything but ordinary-they are magical and dangerous. One fateful day at a flea market, he happens upon a vendor (whom fans of Hatke's Zita the Spacegirl will immediately recognize) who offers him a mysterious box of seeds in exchange for his mother's car. Jack certainly doesn't have an easy life: with past-due notices piling up, his mother works all the time, leaving him to care for his nearly mute autistic sister, Maddy. A comic-book riff on the classic tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” in which an impoverished young boy learns that his new garden has a mind of its own.

Ben hatke mighty jack