2026 Eisner Nominees: Kids

​This post is the second in a series of three.

Earlier this week I reviewed this year’s Eisner nominees for Early Readers. Today I review the nominees for Kids (see my post of May 19 for an overview of all the young readers’ categories). See below. Again, it's a strong category! 

BTW, clicking on a title will take you to a publisher's page about that title. I've denoted the book I think I'll vote for with a ♥​ (remember, the voting deadline is June 5).

First, though, I have to say that I would have loved to see Jose Pimienta's Halfway to Somewhere in this category. It's a brave and inventive graphic novel about immigration, assimilation pressure, and cultural and linguistic resistance. Pimienta's deep characterization and refusal of easy answers impressed me, and I'm sorry not to see his book here.

​I reviewed Halfway to Somewhere here on 1/20/2026. If you haven't read it, do seek it out!

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Now, on to the nominees:​

Creature Clinic, by Gavin Aung Than, color by Megan Huang, design by Yan L. Moy (First Second)

A hospital in “Myth Valley” treats creatures from myth and legend: trolls, unicorns, et cetera. Humans are emphatically unwelcome. So, what happens when a human, lost and injured, arrives, then decides that he wants to work there? How will resident Kara Orc hide this human from the hospital’s intimidating chief of medicine, who happens to be her own mother? Cute, antic and fairly predictable, with a Hotel Transylvania-like premise that grants Aung Than license to hijack familiar tales and characters. I dig the crisp cartooning, smart layouts and surprising gags, plus, the welcome attention to medical ethics and narrative medicine.

Oasis, by Guojing (Godwin Books/Henry Holt)

In a dystopian future, two “left-behind” children wait in the desert for their mother to return from her grinding industrial job in faraway Oasis City. Meanwhile, they reactivate a derelict robot (design-wise, an echo of Lang’s Metropolis) that becomes their doting “AI Mom.” This strange book is at times uncanny, even disturbing, but also sentimental. Its tone is hard to peg. Visually, it’s transporting, its parched world rendered in a gray-to-sepia palette achieved with pencil and toner powder (I was reminded of Tan’s The Arrival). The layouts are smartly uncluttered, the text sparse. The abrupt ending left me dazed, unconvinced.

Chickenpox, by Remy Lai, color by Ninakupenda Gaillard, design by Lisa Vega and Sharismar Rodriguez (Henry Holt and Company)

Twelve-year-old Abby, big sister to four siblings, would like nothing more than to be an only child and hang with her older friends. However, she and her squirrelly sibs are struck with chickenpox and forced to quarantine together. Cue the raw comedy and bruised feelings! This lightly fictionalized memoir, told from the POV of the author’s older sister, happens in Indonesia in the mid-1990s, but you’d hardly know it; this is very much a Raina-style middle-grade sitcom. Lai’s cartooning, however, favors metaphor and hyperbole, and Abby, egocentric and resentful, is a pill. Vivid, funny, with expected lessons but sharp edges. 

​A Song for You and I, by K. O’Neill, design by Juliet Goodman (RH Graphic). Featured in my Favorites of 2025.

O’Neill (The Tea Dragon Society, etc.) has been building a body of work that blends medievalesque high fantasy and Miyazaki-esque pastoralism with anticapitalist, genderqueer, and ecotopian vibes. Community, bonds of obligation, and ritual are abiding themes. The work is subdued, melancholy, and implicitly post-traumatic, yet somehow hopeful. It’s also gorgeously drawn. This may be their best book yet: the tale of a headstrong young ranger who makes a terrible mistake, then atones for it by helping out a young shepherd. Each helps the other live more fully, and freely. This lovely, loving book made my Favorites of 2025. My pick!

​Night Chef, by Mika Song, design by Bob Bianchini (RH Graphic)

A lone raccoon hides in the walls of a restaurant and emulates the human chefs she sees. Imagining herself as “Night Chef,” she cooks while the humans are away. When an egg she wants to cook hatches, revealing a crow chick, Night Chef sets out to take the hatchling home to roost. The journey entails evading an angry (implicitly, rabid) owl, meeting other critters in community, and learning something about her own origins. This aesthetically delicate book, brush-inked and watercolored, is warm, smart, and often surprising. I dig its distinctive characters, telling dialogue, beautifully organic art, and unforced thematic depths.

​The Cartoonists Club, by Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud, inking by Ray Baehr, color by Benjamni C. Hollman, lettering by Jesse Post (Graphix/Scholastic)

This book about an after-school comics-making club is many things at once: a Raina-style middle-grade dramedy about kids alone and together, a formalistic metacomic and how-to manual, a loving nudge to young artists’ creativity, and a paean to comics as participatory culture. Basically, it sells the idea of comics, as well as an inclusive communal ethos surrounding comics. The story captures many of the things that, separately, Telgemeier and McCloud have done so well. Perhaps that is why I found it a touch predictable. Still, I expect it will be a very important book for many. Reviewed here on 10/08/2025.