I knew I wanted to read this book because it is about an important and often overlooked piece of ugly American history. I was happily surprised to find it also a pleasure to read! Takei, with two co-writers, weaves together the story of the four years his family spent living in internment camps during the early 1940s with the larger story of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and Takei's later social justice work. What a life he has had! One of his first breakout acting roles was in the civil-rights-themed musical "Fly Blackbird" which lead to an opportunity to meet Martin Luther King Jr.; while working on a political campaign as a young man, Takei met Eleanor Roosevelt; much later he was appointed by President Clinton to the Japan-US friendship Commission and he helped found the Japanese American History Museum in Los Angeles (partly using money he received from the US government as compensation for the internment). Only lightly touched on here are his Star Trek years and his work for LGBTQ rights, which I imagine could fill several more books. The art is simple, but very effective, capturing the struggles and bright small joys of a fragmented childhood.

This was the first Le Guin book I read, out of sequence, in seventh grade. I was drawn in first by the gorgeous cover art by Rebecca Guay, and then by the story. Arha was taken from her family at five years old and has lived since then in a dusty, dry world of ritual and ceremony in the middle of the desert. She is the reincarnation of the high priestess of the nameless dark powers of the Earth. Her birthright is a rough black robe, a never ending and never changing series of dances, prayers, chants, sacrifices; and access to the Tombs, a vast network of underground caves and tunnels forming a labyrinth whose turning she memorizes. The labyrinth is a terrible place and I loved it so much. Labyrinths have always held a very poignant place in my imagination, based on several vivid childhood encounters. In the end, the labyrinth becomes a place that Arha needs to escape and seeks to destroy; but as a teen, I half wanted her (and myself) to just stay there forever. To me at age 12, the confining, but well-known, patterns of Arha's life and the turns of the labyrinth seemed less scary and maybe preferable to the total disruption that her growth and freedom required.

This fast paced, fun, pulp tale introduces Madison Jackson, a young bisexual journalist trying to work her way up from intern to full reporter at The Boston Lede. She works night shifts listening to police scanners in hopes of getting a scope and eventually a byline. When wealthy socialite Dahlia Kennedy is found covered in blood at the scene of her husband's corpse, she is arrested on suspicion of murder both of her husband and her missing son. For some reason, Dahlia chooses to speak to Madison and no one else from the press. Madison has to wade through Dahlia's tangle of hints and lies to try and find the truth. This story is not a murder mystery in the sense that the reader could solve the crime through clues laid out in the text. A few of the twist and turns seemed to come kind of out of left field, but I enjoyed Madison's relationship with her work crush, sexy butch Lexington Ford, her newspaper mentors, her long-suffering police source, and her rivalry with her hotshot opposite number at the city's trashier paper. I have a feeling this book may be the first of the series; I'll look forward to more if/when they arrive! The art and colors are both very lovely, and I enjoy seeing a diverse cast like this in a crime story.

I read a sample of this book a few months ago on The Nib and knew I was going to enjoy it. Malaka Gharib draws in a loose, expressive style with a limited color palette that perfectly fits with this short but satisfying memoir. Gharib tells how each of her parents came to California as immigrants; her mother from the Philippians, her father from Egypt. When they married and had their daughter, they thought they were on the road to the American Dream. But the marriage didn't last, and Malaka ended with half-siblings on both sides of a family scattered across the globe. She talks about her elementary and high school days as one of many kids from mixed cultures in the Southern California town of Cerritos. Her classmates there were Indian-American, Taiwanese-American, Iranian-American, Japanese-American, Pakistani-American, Mexican-American, Korean-American, Palestinian-American and more. Landing at the extremely white Syracuse University for college took some adjusting. Gharib includes recipes, paper dolls, a tear-out single page zine, quizzes and quotes from friends along with the narrative of spending summers in Cairo with her father, years dealing migroagressions while working in Washington DC, and meeting the man who would eventually become her husband.

Jarrett Krosoczka is a New York Times best-selling author of many fun, light books for kids. Now he tells the story of his own childhood in a moving and honest memoir. Jarrett's mother was a heroin addict who was in and out of half-way homes and jails for most of his childhood. He was raised instead by his grandparents, who loved and supported him in their own imperfect way. They nurtured his growing art talents and beamed at his eighth grade and high school graduations. They also drank too much, sometimes fought, and expressed deeply mixed feelings about the slender relationships Jarrett maintained with his birth parents. I'm very glad that Jarrett decided to tell his story. He writes that he was saved by art, and I think his work will save others.

Margaret was brought to the convent of Saint Elysia on a remote island off the coast of Albion as a baby. She has lived there her whole life with the handful of sisters, servants, goats, chickens and seals. For many years, the only other "children" on the island were the wooden carving of the Sorrowful Son in his mother's arms in the church, and the portrait of Princess Eleanor sitting at her father King Edmund's side. Margaret prays for a companion and eventually she gets her wish when William MacCormick, son of a Esscotian Laird, and his mother are sent to the island as political prisoners. Set in an alternate early 17th century, this comic picks and chooses from the events of Elizabeth I's early years, woven together with many richly illustrated diversions into convent life. Margaret explains to the reader how the religious hours are divided; how the pieces of a chess board move; the standard diet at the convent; many folk tales and saint's stories and even some embroidery stitches. The whole book is painted in watercolors, which is very impressive. It reminds me favorably of some of my favorite medieval young adult books, and I have a feeling it will join them on many school library shelves!

Olive makes a wish that her cat, Henry, could hang out with her all the time like a real best friend. When she wakes up in the morning, he is the size of a human and can speak English- though he's still covered in fur and afraid of water. Olive lends him some of her dresses and they start figuring out how to make this new roommate situation work. He and Olive both work part time jobs, eat pizza, go to parties, and just try to get by. Each chapter is a short story, with new outfits and a new problem to solve. Is the cute boy texting Olive asking her on a date, or is he just a friend? Will Olive ever be able to sell any of her paintings? What will Olive's parents think of Henry? Will Henry ever learn to read, or take a shower? This book is silly, sweet, and charmingly illustrated. I wish I owned half as many cute jackets.

Vita Ayala weaves together the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with a high-stakes family drama set in modern day New York City. Elysia Puente gets a phone call from her estranged younger brother Angel, begging for help. When the call cuts off, Elysia heads out into a torrential storm to find him. She follows clues and hints down into the storm-barricaded subway... or possibly the underworld. Demons, rats, mafia, and specters of her past rise up with the water as Elysia searches desperately for Angel, hoping to find him before it's too late.

This book of short stories contains one which was made into a film titled Arrival which came out in 2017, and was then re-released with that same title. That story is just one of eight in this very strong collection. "Tower of Babylon" is narrated by a stone cutter, Hillalum, hired by the creators of the famous tower. They have nearly reached the vault of heaven, which seems to be made of a smooth white marble. It takes Hillalum and his fellow workers a full month to climb to the tower's summit before they can set out on the daunting task of breaching heaven. "Understand" and "Divide by Zero" both contain super-smart individuals ultimately undone by their own intelligence. The standout piece is "Story of Your Life", in which a professor of linguistics is hired by the US government to learn the language of an alien race, which has set up a series of mysterious mirror-like communication devices all over the world. As she learns both their written and oral languages she begins to gain strange insights into how these new being think outside of linear time. "Seventy-Two Letters" is set in an alternate Victorian England in which Jewish mysticism has influenced the development of a new branch of science with staggering practical and theoretical applications. "Hell is an Absence of God" introduces a world in which angelic visitations are extremely common, and effect humans similarly to localized natural disasters. Then there are two shorter more meta pieces, one written as a introduction to a scientific journal and one as a transcription of a documentary both in future worlds in which new scientific advancements have drastically changed human life. A very enjoyable book.