I loved this so much, my god.

I blindly chose this off of a list of YA & middle grade comics for my Year of Comics reading challenge. Pure luck on my part. Our main character, Snapdragon, is a young girl who finds herself in a partnership with the local scary woman in the woods, Jacks. Snap helps her with animal bone reconstruction from roadkill (which she sells to academics, museums and collectors) in return for Jacks' continuing help with a passel of baby possums Snap found one day. During the course of their continuing friendship, Snap discovers that magic is real and Jacks knows how to wield it - thus the creation of a witchy mentorship.

I could go on for pages and pages about the relationships in this book—from Snap's best friend Lulu, who we see socially transition from a cisgender boy to a girl who is a lot happier with her presentation, to Snap's incredibly supportive (and a little bit overworked) single mother, to the care Jacks had for Snap's entire family because she loved Snap's grandmother Jessamine as a young woman (and beyond). There were social difficulties mentioned in course of the narrative (former friends bullying Lulu, problems with wlw relationships in the case of Jacks and Jessamine) but they never dominated the story: everyone was who they were unapologetically, even when it hurt.

The reunion between Jacks and Jessamine after the main plot was resolved was so good, it made me cry. I'm crying just writing about it now. That they were apart because of their disagreement on having children and not because ~society forced them apart~ makes it an even sweeter moment of homecoming.