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. ​

I like to keep up with the Eisner Awards. I'm a former judge, I value recognitions of excellence in the comics world (even when they're contentious), and I like staying in touch with the process. Honestly, it can be hard to find and read every single nominee, but each year I pay particular attention to, and try to spend time with, all the nominees in the young readers' categories. Currently, that means three categories: Early Readers, Kids (ages 9-12), and Teens. Over the past week, I've read about ten books to get up to speed! 

This year's Eisner process has been especially vexed and controversial (leading to a retroactive withdrawal from the ballot). The ballot has been a bit mystifying to me, with some, IMO, startling omissions and puzzling categorizations. But controversy is in the nature of the awards, and I still appreciate the heuristic value of this, let's say, yearly exercise. Here are my thoughts on the Early Reader, Kids, and Teens categories:

Early Readers: I admit, this is not a category that interests me much this year. There are some lovely images here (for sheer sumptuousness, Dav's Disneyesque watercolors are hard to beat), and some nice comic bits (the page-turns of Higgins, the pacing of Willems), but for the most part these books strike me as pat and aesthetically undaring. There's a lot of shtick here, which tires me out. I miss seeing some good TOON Books in this category; 2022 seems to have been fallow for them. That said, my choice here is this charming, quietly ironic, aesthetically delicate take on friendship and learning:

​Kids (9-12): This is a more interesting category by far, in fact one of the deepest in this year's ballot. The craft on display is impressive (dig the cartooning in Frizzy and Swim Team), and the ambition (dig the near-wordless storytelling of Isla to Island, a complex tale of immigration, loss, and discovery; or the interactive, formally ingenious Adventuregame). But my hands-down choice is Little Monarchs, an extraordinary piece of worldmaking, which is cartooned with an Alex Toth-like economy that reminds me of elegant classicists like Jaime Hernandez, R. Kikuo Johnson, and Chris Samnee. An amazing book, so dense, involving, subtle, and beautiful:

​Teens: It's nice to see Tillie Walden in this category, for a book that is a change of pace for her. But I think the outstanding title here is the already much-talked about, groundbreaking Wash Day Diaries, a suite of stories about four Black women and the strength of their friendship and interconnection. Every character in this book has a backstory, but Rowser and Smith smartly leave us guessing, focusing on the energy, grace, and good humor of the four. Darkness marks the edges of the story, but joy wins out. The book seems casual, the way eavesdropping on good friends can, but that's deceptive; there's a lot going on. The chapter devoted to their "group chat" is a wonder of form as well as characterization. I admit that I didn't see this as a YA book at first, but then, I usually have that reaction to books that turn out to be very good YA books!

A few observations:

• Some of the nominees in these categories strike me as utopian. Then again, some of them, even some of the very same ones, try to tackle very serious, socially and psychologically fraught themes from within the conventions of young readers' books. Frizzy, for example, deals with internalized racism and anti-Blackness among Latinos, while Swim Team deals with white racism as an obstacle to Black swimming culture. These books are affirming, and tie up all their loose ends neatly. They also show the bravery of children healing the hearts of wounded adults. I don't know whether to chafe at their determined positivity, which I worry leads to pat conclusions, or admire their gutsiness for essaying such themes in the first place!
• I've read three books in the past week that explore the politics of beauty, and contest racist beauty standards, through loving, detailed depictions of Black girls and women doing their hair. Frizzy makes this its very subject, while Swim Team addresses the issue briefly. Wash Day Diaries contains long, joyous, sensuous sequences of hair care. This reminds me: I've got to reread Ebony Flowers' Hot Comb soon!
• The tension between "comic book" and "picture book" will likely continue to be felt in the Early Readers category. I'm not sure that that's a firm distinction (I and colleagues of mine have worried this bone before), but I did notice myself making the distinction when running through the category. The page-turning in Higgins' Hey, Bruce! really put me in mind of this.

I look forward to casting my votes, tonight. But before 9pm Pacific!
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