Very sad and very gay, and a much quicker read than I'd anticipated. The protagonist is David, an American living in Paris to escape himself. He's not a very sympathetic character, except in the sense that his situation made me reflect on how hard it is to live openly and without shame when society is completely disgusted by one's sexuality. The book has a certain element of mystery which I was glad I knew nothing about, so I'll say no more about the plot here. I definitely want to read more James Baldwin.

This novel is told in verse, which was a surprise to me when I opened up the cover. Some of the poems are written by the main character, Michael, but most narrate his life from a first person point of view. Michael is born in London to a Cypriot Greek mother and a Jamaican father, who leaves Michael and his mom behind. At six years old he asks his mother for a Barbie, and in elementary school all his friends are girls. He comes out as gay in high school by asking a fellow male drama student out, and he is rejected, but kindly. The second half of the book takes place entirely during Mike's first year at university, where he joins the Drag club, makes his first Black friend, has sex for the first time. Drag and performance give him a space to full explore, for the first time, the full aspects of his identity- mixed race, black and queer, writer and performer, unseen and seen.

An annual favorite from my childhood. Short and sweet.

I remember this series of episodes as some of my very favorite from the whole TAZ Balance arc, and I feel like the comic is really finding it's feet as well. There are a ton of great action sequences, the jokes are there, and some beautiful and emotional slash pages. It's still really hard for me not to compare each page to my memories of listening to the podcast- I think that whichever version (pod or comics) a person experiences first, that version will probably always be their favorite.

Fortunately, The Milk is probably Neil Gaiman's most child-appropriate children's book to date. The story is fun and the illustrations are charming, but I missed the dark weirdness of his usual children's fare.

I can't tell you how excited I was to check this beautiful picture book out from my local library. It's illustrated by Chamisa Kellogg, a friend who I met in the THIRD GRADE! We were two of the most "artsy" kids in our class all the way through high school, and now we are both published illustrators <3 This short, accessible text uses metaphors of weather to talk about emotion, specifically how emotions like sadness and anger are natural, and that we all experience them like passing storms. The unnamed main characters walk to school, through fields, puddles and rain showers, and see a gorgeous rainbow at the end.

Skye Shin, the main character of this story, is Korean-American, fat, bisexual, and wildly talented. She goes behind her strict, disapproving mother's back to audition for an LA-based kpop talent scout TV show and is accepted in both the singing and dancing categories. She wants to be the kind of role model she lacked as a child: a glam, unapologetic, plus-sized star. But standing in her way is a harsh judging team of Korean music professionals; toxic beauty standards; and forty fellow contestants, including Henry Cho- an instagram famous pretty boy. This is a super fast, fun, easy read. I hope there's a sequel in the works!

This story is an interesting mix of fact and fiction. The author writes about an alternate reality in which she, at age 17, was transported back in time to the 1940s to catch glimpses of her grandmother as a teen. Her grandmother was one of roughly 120,000 Japanese-Americans forced into an internment camp during WWII. Teenage Kiku finds herself living next door to her grandmother's family in an un-insulated wooden barrack in the Topaz, Arizona camp. But she is unable to gather the courage to meet her grandma- and also, Kiku does not speak Japanese, one of many forms of cultural loss which effects her family generations after the camps. Instead Kiku befriends some of the other high schoolers in camp and gains a deeper understanding of the hardships they faced, such as food shortages and loyalty tests. The book is beautifully illustrated in a palette heavy in blues, rusts, and dusty browns. The story unfolds a bit slowly, but it brings an important and accessible new look at this time period. It would be a good companion to George Takai's They Called Us Enemy, and Hughes acknowledges her debt to Octavia Bulter's Kindred in the end notes.

Natsume, a teenage orphan who has been passed between extended family homes his whole life, can see things. Specifically, Yokai and ghosts. When he discovers a handwritten book made by his grandmother full of the names of Yokai she stole, he realizes that what he has is an uncomfortable inheritance. Knowing the names allows him to control the spirits, but instead Natsume decides to return the names and try to help some of these supernatural beings find peace. The more Yokai he meets, the more Natsume realizes they aren't so different from humans after all. A very charming beginning to a series I plan to keep reading!