Yesterday I reviewed this year’s Eisner Award nominees for Early Readers. Today I turn to the nominees for Kids, which I assume means roughly middle-grade readers, around 8 to 12 years old (see my post of May 17 for an overview of all young readers’ categories). Once again, I’ve tried to describe every book fairly, while acknowledging my favorites. I’ll be back soon with a third and final post about the nominees for Teens. 

This is all about getting ready to cast my votes before the June 6 deadline! (For information about voting, see here).

Buzzing, by Samuel Sattin and Rye Hickman (Little, Brown Ink)
A book for our time: a neurodivergent Bildungsroman, plus a paean to creative and queer community, in the form of a Dungeons & Dragons-like RPG that gives the protagonist, a young man with OCD, a group of nonjudgmental friends with whom he can be free. He just has to persuade his anxious mother that playing the RPG will be good, not bad, for him. OCD is a familiar topic in disability-themed comics, but Buzzing does something new. Intrusive thoughts are cleverly represented through visual metaphor (a swarm of bees, buzzing), while the cartooning is lively and the cast delightful. Vivid!

Mabuhay! by Zachary Sterling (Scholastic Graphix)
A Filipino American brother and sister struggle to balance assimilation pressures at school with filial obligations at home. Forced to work on their family’s food truck, they are alienated and resentful – until their family must unite to, I guess, save the world? This acculturation fantasy starts with everyday complaints and embarrassments, then lurches into magic and monsters inspired by Filipino folklore. Sterling’s elastic, manga-flavored cartooning shows his expertise in animation design: characters are distinct, and emote hugely, with broad expressions. The action is frenetic; the plot feels juryrigged. The lessons in filial piety are rather on the nose, I think. 

Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir, by Pedro Martín (Dial Books for Young Readers).
This memoir made my Best-of-2023 list for The Comics Journal. Young Pedro, his many siblings, and mom and dad make an epic road trip to the family’s ancestral hometown in Mexico, there to reunite with his grandfather. Americanized Pedro is often startled by what he learns on the way. Exuberant and graphically tricky, with many inventive, diagram-like pages, Mexikid is a loving tribute to family in all its quirkiness and complexity. In the home stretch, Martín shifts, convincingly, from hilarity to grief, tenderness, and new depths. I’m teaching this in the fall, and it’s my strong favorite in this category.

Missing You, by Phellip Willian and Melissa Garabeli. translation by Fabio Ramos (Oni Press)
Neotenic cuteness (think Bambi) vies with hard-won lessons about grief and letting go in this gorgeous, disquieting book. A family nurses a wounded fawn back to health, even as they cope with the loss of one of their own. Caring for the deer seems to heal their own hurts, yet they know the deer must someday go back to the woods. Prepare yourself for the inevitable parting (and note, along the way, the deer’s own sad backstory, its own remembered parting). Garabeli’s sumptuous watercolors and elegant pages boost the already considerable power of this of course manipulative, yet beguiling, heartwringer. 

Saving Sunshine, by Saadia Faruqi and Shazleen Khan (First Second)
Feuding twins, sister and brother, make peace during a family trip to Key West. There they learn to care for each other, even as they nurse an enormous loggerhead turtle that lies ailing on the beach. As Muslims from a Pakistani American family, they share a history of struggling against racism and Islamophobia, which informs both their quarreling and their reconciliation. Rendered in digital watercolor, with some lovely, open pages, this book at first leans into adult-centered didacticism (these kids need to learn a lesson), but happily brings nuance and sympathy as it goes. So: predictable arc, but surprising details. 

Some final thoughts: I'm surprised that Dan Santat's A First Time for Everything was not nominated in this category. It is contending in the category of Best Graphic Memoir, though. (Interestingly, most of the nominated memoirs this year could be considered either middle-grade or YA books.)

I obtained all of the above books from the Los Angeles Public Library, save one, Missing You. My sense is that graphic novels published by the children's imprints of the "Big 5 (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster) are easy to find in LAPL. Unsurprisingly, so are books from Scholastic, the market leader in children's GN publishing. With other presses, or children's imprints that are not so well known, I had trouble; for example, I could not find a couple of nominated books from Oni Press.  

We know that the middle-grade graphic novel is (besides manga) the busiest and most profitable sector in US comics publishing. It is also a sector that produces a lot of formulaic work. Reigning themes in middle-grade comics perhaps reflect reigning themes in children's book publishing, period: social negotiation among friends, acculturation, loyalty to family and culture, displacement, loss. Often an adult-centered didacticism clings to books with these themes: I note that the young protagonists of Mabuhay! and Saving Sunshine complain about their parents' decisions, but there is never any suggestion that the parents might need to question their choices (what parents do is not up for debate). When reading middle-grade comics, I often have a feeling that I know just what is happening, and what prosocial messages are meant to be reinforced. I get impatient with that feeling.

That said, I've enjoyed reading almost all of this year's middle-grade nominees. To me, the most interesting ones by far are Buzzing and Mexikid, as they are the most formally inventive. It happens that they are also the ones that most clearly resist the thumping didacticism I'm complaining about. Not coincidentally, they have the most complex adult characters as well (though props to Missing You for showing adults and children grieving together). 

This year's Eisner Award nominations were announced on May 16, and my last post here was a rundown of the nominees in certain categories, especially those focused on young audiences: Early Readers, Kids, and Teens. Since then, I've been requesting books from the Los Angeles Public Library so that I can read all the nominees in those three categories before the June 6 deadline for voting.

Award competitions are inevitably biased and troublesome, I know, but as I said last year, I appreciate the heuristic value of this yearly exercise. When the Eisner noms are announced, I start gathering books like crazy! The process keeps me in the swim of things (as a former Eisner judge, I like to stay involved). I note that last year LAPL was able to supply me with most of the nominees, and the same has been true this year; young readers' graphic books appear to be well represented in my public library. 

This post, the first of three, focuses on the Early Readers nominations, which I have finished reading as of today. I've tried to describe each nominee fairly, while spotlighting my favorites. Posts on the Kids and Teens categories will follow soon. 

​Bigfoot and Nessie: The Art of Getting Noticed, by Chelsea M. Campbell and Laura Knetzger (Penguin Workshop)
Two cryptids – Bigfoot, who cannot get noticed by the world, and Nessie, who would rather not be – form a mutually affirming friendship. Together, they make art when no one is looking, bonding over spontaneous creative risk-taking. Yet their friendship is tested when Bigfoot achieves the fame he hungers for. This is one of those cartooned books that looks simple on the surface but is restlessly designed and dense. Knetzger’s bright, candy-colored pages are elaborate and multilayered, sometimes perhaps to the point of confusion; a spread of the two friends drawing chalk art is a wonder. A fragile conceit, lovingly rendered.

​Burt the Beetle Lives Here! by Ashley Spires (Kids Can Press)
Burt, a June beetle, thinks it might be best to get out from under his leaf and find a more permanent home. It turns out that what works for carpenter ants, tent caterpillars, wasps, or cathedral termites doesn’t work for him. As Burt bounces from one slapstick moment to another, trying out different things, the bland, omniscient narration keeps informing him (and us) about what he and other critters need. Crisp digital cartooning and subtly varied layouts (most pages have fewer than four panels) serve both the humor and the science lesson. Format-wise, this reminds me of a TOON book.

​Go-Go Guys, by Rowboat Watkins (Chronicle Books)
Thumping iambs and breathless running text lend a lockstep rhythm, but also surprises, to a rollicking picture book about revved-up “guys” who cannot go to sleep (but end up going to the moon). The art is at once wild and decorous: full of energy, yet within safe, neat bounds. Watkins’ drawings (seemingly pencil and watercolor, but perhaps also digital?) have the delicacy of Arnold Lobel, but then again, his screwball humor recalls James Marshall. The book is perhaps not as anarchic as it wants to be, but I dig the sudden lunges and dynamic layouts. A great read-aloud, I bet.

​The Light Inside, by Dan Misdea (Penguin Workshop)
This pint-sized book (5.75 x 5.75 inches, 32 pages) tells a gentle, wordless story about a child with a jack-o’-lantern head who travels through a spooky landscape to recover his stuffed animal, taken by a black cat. Creepy things turn out to be benign, and adversaries turn out to be helpers. The story has an almost beatific calm despite the Gothic trappings. Misdea, a New Yorker cartoonist, prioritizes design and simplicity (his uncle, Patrick McDonnell of Mutts fame, has been an inspiration). The book’s small pages somehow make room for between three and seven panels each, with perfect clarity. Charming.

Milk and Mocha: Our Little Happiness, by Melani Sie (Andrews McMeel)
Collected strips about two bears and their pet dino, from the heavily merchandised social media phenom MilkMochaBear. These characters began as stickers for the LINE app – emoji, basically – and have since spread. The comics strike me as ideal for Instagram: short, spare, and cute, in the kawaii sense, with a whiff of Sanrio. But are they for early readers? They read as humorous valentines for adult couples: bite-sized comic affirmations of love and domesticity. Often, they involve social media (the bears are continually on their phones). The humor depends on routine and slight nuances. I confess, this nomination puzzles me.

Tacos Today: El Toro & Friends, by Raúl the Third, colors by Elaine Bay (Versify)
My emphatic pick in this category, this vibrant, positively Kirbyesque explosion of energy boasts super-cool characters and restive page design. A diverse cast of anthropomorphic critter-kids from “Ricky Ratón’s School of Lucha” gets mucha hambre and goes out for tacos, though they don’t have the dinero to pay. A demonstration of their lucha skills saves the day. Raúl the Third draws up a storm here, with a punky, inky roughness that translates beautifully into digitally finished pages (OMG, Bay’s colors!). Mingled Spanish and English text, and myriad background cues, make this a multicultural bonanza inviting read-aloud interaction and conversation. Fantastic.

Some final thoughts: This category feels more adventurous this year than it did last year. My emphatic faves are The Light Inside and especially Tacos Today, but most of the books are interesting, and several of them are visually daring. I continue to be interested in the way this category makes room for picture books, which is an important, underacknowledged format for children’s comics. That's encouraging.

BTW, I did not know any of these books before the Eisner nominations were announced. I found all of them save one (Milk and Mocha) through LAPL. ​

The nominations for this year's Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (celebrating work published in 2023) were just announced yesterday. ​Of course I'm already looking up and bookmarking things I want to read, with a big thank you to judges Ryan Claytor, Chris Couch, Andréa Gilroy, Joseph Illidge, Mathias Lewis, and Jillian Rudes!

I always learn from, and of course debate, the Eisner nominations. Unsurprisingly, there are always some choices that leave me bewildered and omissions that make me sad. But I know what this job is like from the inside out (having served as an Eisner judge in 2013). It's not easy. Yes, it's delightful work, but it's heavy, and it's not casual. It takes a lot of negotiation. Props to the judges for making the tough calls and shining spotlights on so many deserving works.

Below are the nominees in the three categories of special interest to KinderComics, that is, those focused on young readers: Early Readers, Kids, and Teens. I've also noted two other categories of special interest to me that I think are particularly strong this year, Best Graphic Memoir and Best Academic/Scholarly Work. Where possible, I've linked the title of each work to a publisher's webpage, FYI. 

In the weeks ahead, and especially prior to the June 6 voting deadline, I hope to read and comment on many of the nominees in Early Readers, Kids, and Teens categories. Thus far, I've read only a few. I have requests out at my local branch of LAPL for as many of these books as I can get! I've found that bingeing on the Eisner noms each year is a great learning experience!

Best Publication for Early Readers
​I'm ashamed to say that I haven't read any of these yet!
​​

• Bigfoot and Nessie: The Art of Getting Noticed, by Chelsea M. Campbell and Laura Knetzger (Penguin Workshop/Penguin Random House)
• Burt the Beetle Lives Here! by Ashley Spires (Kids Can Press)
• Go-Go Guys, by Rowboat Watkins (Chronicle Books)
• The Light Inside, by Dan Misdea (Penguin Workshop/Penguin Random House)
• Milk and Mocha: Our Little Happiness, by Melani Sie (Andrews McMeel)
• Tacos Today: El Toro & Friends, by Raúl the Third (HarperCollins/Versify)

Best Graphic Memoir
This is the category I'm most prepared for this year, having read four out of the six noms so far. I'm interested to see that several of these could also be nominated in young readers' categories.
​

• Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam, by Thien Pham (First Second/Macmillan). A wonderful book, again part of my Best of 2023 list. I reviewed it here on June 28, 2023.
• A First Time for Everything, by Dan Santat (First Second/Macmillan)
• In Limbo, by Deb JJ Lee (First Second/Macmillan). Another great one that I reviewed here, back on June 27, 2023. It also made my Best of 2023.
• Memento Mori, by Tiitu Takalo, translation by Maria Schroderus (Oni Press). I haven't read this one yet.
• Sunshine: How One Camp Taught Me About Life, Death, and Hope, by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Scholastic Graphix). Nor have I read this one.
• The Talk, by Darrin Bell (Henry Holt). And yet another that made my Best of 2023.

Best Academic/Scholarly Work
A fantastic group this year! Innovative and important work all round.
​

• Asian Political Cartoons, by John A. Lent (University Press of Mississippi)
• The Claremont Run: Subverting Gender in the X- Men, by J. Andrew Deman (University of Texas Press)
• Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in the Golden Age of American Comics, edited by Qiana Whitted (Rutgers University Press)
• If Shehrazad Drew: Critical Writings on Arab Comics, by George Khoury-Jad (Sawaf Center for Arab Comics Studies and American University of Beirut Press)
• In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s, by Margaret Galvan (University of Minnesota Press)
• Super Bodies: Comic Book Illustration, Artistic Styles, and Narrative Impact, by Jeffrey A. Brown (University of Texas Press)

I won't begin to make predictions about which books and creators will win. Suffice to say that my reading for the next few weeks will be interesting!

PS. Among the Eisner noms I've read lately that didn't make my Best of 2023 list, but I wish had, are Mexikid; A First Time for Everything; Bill Griffith's Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller; K. Wroten's Eden II; Tillie Walden's Clementine, Book Two; ​and Kelly Sue DeConnick et al.'s Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.

PPS. Among things I dearly wish had made the Eisner ballot? Noah Van Sciver's Maple Terrace; Wes Craig's Kaya; Ryan Holmberg's translation of Tsuge's Nejishiki; Ryan North et al.'s Fantastic Four; Craig Thompson's Ginseng Roots; Tom King and Elsa Charretier's continuing Love Everlasting; Tom Kaczynski's Cartoon Dialectics #4; Joe Kessler's The Gull Yettin; Seth's Palookaville #24; Chantal Montellier's Social Fiction; and Daniel Clowes's Monica. Insert a big Schulzian SIGH here for all of these. <3