I immediately fell for the art in this book, all of the whimsical, magical creatures and landscapes of Teacup island. The story opens with orphan goblin siblings Pella and Bix's home being threatened by a series of earthquakes. Goblin lore says that earthquakes happen when the Earth Queen is unhappy. Reckless Pella, the younger sister, decides to head into the Enchanted Forest to confront the Earth Queen. Anxious Bix has to chase after her to try and save her, even though Bix has always been told that no one returns from the Enchanted Forest. Both sisters paths lead them towards different allies and enemies, dodging dangerous wildlife and carnivorous plants. I really liked all of the goblin and troll characters in the story, but was less captivated by the powerful beings who lived in the forest's center. I think their motivations fell a bit flat for me. But I still think this is a very charming book for young readers, who likely wouldn't notice the minor things that bothered me.

El is a magic-user in a world where 90% of magical children are eaten by monsters before they come of age. To keep magical children safe, many powerful magical communities banned together to create a school, which is suspended in the Void, and so inhabited by a much small percentage of monsters. In the Scholomance, only 40% of children are eaten, and the lucky and powerful make alliances to watch either other's backs. El is not lucky, but she is powerful, and she has survived into her third year of magical education with hard work and extreme diligence. But graduation is nearing and if she hopes to get out of the school alive, she will have to do perhaps the hardest thing of all, which is make a friend. This a fast-paced and compelling riff on the magical boarding school story, clearly writing against Harry Potter. There is no central villain in this tale except how people with privilege will do anything to maintain it, and will leverage the promise of privilege to divide the less advantaged and turn them against each other. The cast of the story is deliberately diverse, and languages and cultures are built into the magic systems and worldbuilding in an engaging way. There is a setup of a romance between the popular golden boy and our grumpy, pessimistic main character, but it managed to avoid a lot of YA romance pitfalls and I am curious to see how it will unfold in the sequel. I listened to the 11 hour audiobook in 2 days.

I really like the title and cover of this book, but unfortunately they set me up with an expectation of what this book was going to be, and then the actual book turned out to be quite a lot different from my expectations. Once I was able to relax into the pace of the book I was actually reading, I enjoyed it a lot, but I had to get over an initial gut reaction of confusion followed by grumpiness over the first quarter or so of the text. This memoir covers scenes of Bechdel's childhood that weren't as deeply explored in Fun Home, then really hits its stride in telling of the period of her life after the end that book and up into her fifties. It focuses on how the twin obsessions with making art and pursuing physical exercise to the point of exhaustion have woven through her life and how exercise has at times lead to a beautiful mental quietness (hard to achieve when you are an anxious, overworked cartoonist). I miss the spot blacks of her previous books, but the delicate watercolors are very enjoyable, and they especially shine in highlighting sunrises and sunsets over the landscapes Bechdel and her literary heroes ride, ski, hike, and run through.

I burned through this audiobook at about the same furious rate as the first one, even though it is several hours longer. It maintained the same energy and excitement of the first book, and ended on even bigger of a cliffhanger. I don't want to say much about the plot because it's better to go in blind. However, I really enjoyed all of the ways in which both this book and the previous one are writing back against Harry Potter and deliberately challenging points from that series. For example, a major complaint of mine about the Harry Potter epilogue is that Hogwarts has not been reformed in any way to make it a better educational institution- the house system has not been abolished, and it's hard to imagine that the quality of the teaching has improved either. I really wanted the main character, El, of this series to fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the terrible magical boarding school of this series, the Scholomance, so that no future student would have to go through the horrible challenges that she had faced. I can comfortably say say that yes, she did indeed do that!

Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer, disable, femme writer, organizer, activist, educator. They have toured extensively with a disable performance art group, Sins Invalid, and several of the essays focus on ways to take care of oneself while traveling and touring venues that are likely less accessible than their websites claim. As someone who hopes to book tour in the future with a disabled co-author, this gave me a lot of food for thought about committing to booking only wheelchair accessible venues and other ways I might plan my own events to be more open to all, from hiring sign interpreters to having fragrance-free zones. I also really enjoyed the histories and stories of the early Disability Justice movement, the thoughts on chronic illness and creativity, and on care webs and mutual aid for disabled people designed by disabled people. This is a book I will likely buy to refer back to in the future (as I sadly now have to give back the library copy I've been hoarding for 4 months).

A complex, multi-layered sequel to the Newberry Award-winning New Kid, this comic focuses on the friendship of Jordan, Drew, and Liam as they all head into their 8th grade year at Riverdale Academy. The book tackles issues of racial micro-aggressions, colorism, classism, and the cringey efforts of white teachers to connect with the few students of color at an otherwise mostly white and expensive private school. A good mix of visual humor and fun references to other popular YA comics helps lift the tone of what might otherwise be a heavier book. I don't know of too many other comics addressing the pressures of interracial friendships in quite this way, so I am very glad this one exists!