See the Sea Monster Here! Kraken Me Up by Jeffery Ebbeler

"BRING IN YOUR PETS!" ENTONES THE MASTER OF CEREMONIES.

Kids with all kind of critters have come together for the competition. There's a pretty pig, a hen nesting in her owner's hair, a lovable llama, and a . . .

KRAKEN!

(GULP!)

Never mind that he is BIG! One kid recognizes what he IS. A Kraken is a sea monster from the deepest deeps of the oceans of the world!

"A KRAKEN CAN EAT A SHIP!" YELLS THE KID WITH THE LLAMA.

His owner defends her pet:

"HE'S NOT MEAN! HE IS SHY."

The girl tells how she met him beside the sea and how they became friends.

But the other exhibitors in the Pet Show are not convinced. Izzie the Kraken is not allowed to compete. He's banished to the nearest body of water, a farm pond, into which he barely fits!

"FIND A WAY TO MAKE THEM SMILE," THE GIRL WHISPERS INTO HIS, ER, EAR, (OR WHATEVER THAT IS!)

BLAH-ZOOP! Kraken rares back and sprays his purple ink all over the kids, their parents, and the M.C.! For a moment they all are too astonished and amazed to move, so Kraken demonstrates the possibilities of face-painting with octopus ink on his own face. Suddenly, the kids see the potential of their situation.

Soon everyone is finger-painting each other with purple ink and giggling. But then the sea monster begins to cough.

HACK! HACK!

"THAT KRAKEN IS HACKIN,'" SAYS ONE PURPLE-PAINTED KID.

And Kracken hacks up a sailing ship, complete with cannons, cutlasses, captain, swabies, and all! The kid with the llama has to take credit for his prediction.

"I TOLD YOU THEY EAT SHIPS!" HE BRAGS.

And the crusty old ship's captain climbs out of the ship's quarters at last.

"YAR!

"WE BE IN THAT BELLY FOR FIFTY YEARS!!"style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Oswald;

"IT'S ABOUT TIME WE HAD SOME FUN."

Kraken has cracked up the whole crew, and it's the most memorable day ever at the Pet Show, in comic author-illustrator Jeffery Ebbeler's latest graphic comic book, Kraken Me Up (I Like to Read Comics) (Holiday House, 2021). Jeffery Ebbeler's graphic storybook puts all his comic artwork experience to bear on this one with as jolly a tall ship tall tale as a kid can imagine.

Says School Library Journal, "Girl and kraken are winners in any collection, especially where graphic novels for emerging readers are needed."

Cherchez La Femme! Hug It Out! (Big Nate by Lincoln Pierce

Big Nate, the middle schooler class slacker, is plugging his way through sixth grade, complaining that his teacher Mrs. Godfrey's loud voice is keeping him from sleeping in class. And that's not ALL! His friend Francis is still a fount of annoying trivia facts, his grandparents volunteer to chaperone the field trip to the museum, and the class pet, Sherman the Hamster, is still sulking sarcastically under his shavings.

"YOU'RE SO LUCKY, SHERMAN. YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL LIKE WE DO.

NO TESTS, NO HOMEWORK, NO SCREAMING TEACHERS..."

(AND A 4-YEAR LIFESPAN.
SHUT UP, KID.)

Big Nate gets to catch up on his napping when he gets beaned in a baseball game, but then Mrs. Godfrey does more than keep Nate from snoozing in class. His conference with her scares him sleepless!

"I'M SURE YOU'RE AWARE, NATE THAT YOU'RE IN DANGER OF NEEDING TO ATTEND SUMMER SCHOOL. I'D SAY SOME TUTORING IS IN ORDER BEFORE THE FINAL EXAM.

I'LL SELECT YOUR TUTOR."

And so Big Nate finds his fate is in the hands of his arch-nemesis, GINA, the most annoying know-it-all in the class. Will a late spring cram session save Big Nate's summer?

Against the odds, his tutor Gina pulls it off and Big Nate makes a 94 on the final exam. School's out and Nate is free to be... a summer slacker!

But fate steps in at... of all places, at the amusement park, where Francis loses his lunch on the UPCHUCKER, and Nate finds himself paired on THE FLAMETHROWER with a girl--a girl he's never seen before... and...

SHE'S WICKED CUTE!

Big Nate is IN LOVE, but the cute girl disappears into the crowd before Nate can even find out her name, and now his summer vacation suddenly has MEANING and PURPOSE, in Lincoln Pierce's Big Nate: Hug It Out! (Volume 21) in his mega-popular graphic book series. Although Pierce's cartoon books are categorized as light humorous fare for middle readers, his comic skills have  gained plenty of more mature followers as well, continuing his best-seller status---along with those other hit cartoon graphic series, Dav Pilkey's The Adventures of Captain Underpants: Color Edition and Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Diary of a Wimpy Kid 1). Share this one with Pierce's latest, Big Nate: Blow the Roof Off! (Volume 22) and Big Nate: The Gerbil Ate My Homework (Volume 23).

Meet The Creator: MEGA Awesome Notebook by Kevin Moore

A long time ago in a microwave far far away....

Mom! Mom!

A kid wakes up in a silent house. In the kitchen there's a note:

Sorry, sweetie!Had to leave early for work. Lunch is in the fridge.Mom X0XX0

Pulling a slice of cold pizza from the fridge, he put its paper plate down on top of his green notebook and rushing to nuke it, he puts both in the microwave.

A cloud of awesomeness was released into the world.

When the kid recovers, he rushes for school. and when he opens his notebook, he begins to draw a dude he names Dud. And then a dog for Dud. And then another Dud. (They are a pair of palindrome pals!) Ha! Now it's a duel of Duds. The two compete at efforts to erase each other. It's a nasty little battle between the two little duds.

This is war, with a series of characters--the dumpy algebra teacher, a little smart alecky Einstein, devils, dragons, monsters, space cats, aliens, warring medieval fantasy critters, even Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer. Dud #I even creates Little Cretin, who provides rude sounds from several orifices.The Kid thinks it's time to shut down the whole notebook world.

SLAM!

The Kid stuffs his notebook into his backpack and it falls out as he runs down the hall, leaving footprints that say, "You're Not Crazy!" behind him. He runs for the front office to call Mom, who can't leave work to check him out. The school secretary offers him a Tylenol.

But as he trudges to his next class, he meets a girl named Val, who returns his notebook.

"It's hilarious," she says with a shy smile.

Inside the green notebook, Dud has had enough. He finds The Way Out and runs into the creator, who explains the notebook.

"It's where the creator hides his fears. Where no one can see."

And maybe the way to erase those fears is to face them out in the world, where they really live, in Kevin Minor's Mega Awesome Notebook (Schiffer Publishing, 2019), in which the real conflict is working out his fears about his family split-up. Resolving the conflicts inside and outside are one of the difficult tasks in early adolescence. Dealing with divorced parents, awkwardness with a girl, a grouchy math teacher, those can be more dread than dragons and deadly erasers, but maybe if he tells Val about his day....? That may just be the Way Out.

Playoff! DUGOUT: The Zombie Steals Home by Scott Morse

Wouldja listen to that crowd today!
A sold-out stadium!

All to see the Rookie sensation!

Stacy is, as we say, a legend in her own mind. But one boast is true!

This is a kid that's been breathin' baseball since she was born!

Stacy and her sister are both baseball crazy, but Stacy's team is on a losing streak, and her twin Gina's team is on fire going into the playoffs. It's embarrassing! Trying to summon up some spirit on the way to the game, Stacy bumbles into just that, summoning up the spirit of a long-dead local baseball sensation while "practicing" a little of her Grandma's magic on her pitcher's glove.

He's not exactly good-looking, kind of a zombie, really, but he clearly loves the game and it seems he's still got the right stuff to get the bottom-of-the-league Rooks on the winning side of the ledger. After scaring the bejeezus out of the kids, their ghostly manager is disguised in a size XXXL tropical shirt and hat and manages to steer them, after many spirited adventures, toward victory on the diamond, but not, however, without a little off-field assistance from the sisters' magical Grandma....

"I had to cast a memory spell on the whole town!

You've got a ways to go, ladies."

It's all in good spirits, in Scott Morse's Dugout: The Zombie Steals Home (Graphix/Scholastic Press, 2019). Artist Morse has all the right stuff for this comedic cartooned graphic novel that combines a gnarly but helpful zombie and a playoff baseball game series, in a no-doubt novel approach to that favorite summertime sport that has the Rooks considering changing their team name to The Zombies!

School Library Journal's call: "This madcap tale of strikeouts and sibling rivalry will do well in most young graphic novel collections.

THE BARK KNIGHT RISES! Dog Man and the Cat Kid by Dav Piikey

George:"What up, Poochies? We're George and Harold."

Harold: "Me, too! As you may remember, we're in 5th Grade now."

George: "That means we're totally mature. Anyhoo, our new teacher has been making us read all of these old-timey books lately. So anyway, East of Eden is actually a pretty cool book about good and evil and stuff."

Harold: "It totally inspired us! So now we started making a brand-new Dog Man graphic novel!

It's a tale of good... ... a tale of evil... and STUFF!"

Yes, dear readers, Dog Man (that modern medical transplant miracle--a canine police dog's head on a sturdy human cop's body) is back again. It seems that Petey (The World's Evilest Cat) is back, bent on revenge against his arch enemy, Dog Man. In the last installment of their story, Petey attempted to clone himself, the better to defeat Dog Man, but to his dismay, his clone comes out of the box as Petey, an itty bitty kitty, too sweet for maleficent mischief, who is adopted from the Free Kitty box by the unknowing Dog Man.

But Pete the Evilest Cat has plans to pervert his clone by way of the worst sort of cat chicanery. Disguised as the Mary Poppins-ish Kitty Sitter, Pete tries to flip poor Petey into an instrument of evil, but it's a hard sell--until Pete discovers that kittens are suckers for ice cream cones--and pretend-play as supervillains.

Pete the Evilest Etc.: "Finally I get to dump this old lady disguise and dress like my true self... A filthy...rotten... deplorable... despicable... loathsome... IGNOMINIOUS... SUPERVILLAIN!

And now it's your turn! We start with a mask... add a cape... and finish with retractable steel claws....

Dude! We are TOTALLY rockin' these bad guys costumes!"

Petey the Kitty: "This is just for PRETEND, right?"

Pete the Evilest: "Sure kid! It's ALL just for make-believe!"

Can Pete the Evilest Cat corrupt Petey the Kitty's innocence in a nefarious plot to sink the hortatory movie of Dog Man's crime-fighting career being filmed at Gassy Behemoth Studios? Or will Petey's basic goodness and a bunch of Dav Pilkey-esque gizmos overcome evil once more? Will Pete find himself foiled yet again? It's all there in the already best-selling sequel, Dog Man and Cat Kid: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 4) (Graphix/Scholastic Press, 2018). Filled with Pilkey's usual story-telling devices, hilarious sight-gags, fun flip pages, kooky characters, a cameo, er, ending from Captain Underpants, and a bunch of sly John Steinbeck take-offs that adults will appreciate, this one is yet another example of that certain brand of frenetic silliness unique to Pilkey's trademark type of graphic comic novel.  Pilkey is surely the genius of his particular and peculiar genre.

Other books in this series are Dog Man: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 1), Dog Man Unleashed: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 2), and Dog Man: A Tale Of Two Kitties (Dog Man 3) (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition), and the forthcoming Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 5).

Watch the terrific and appropriately clamorous book trailer here!

Back Off, Tiny Tim! A Very Baby Mouse Christmas by Jennifer L. Holm

Baby Mouse will do whatever it takes to make sure she gets the present she wants this year--even if she must outsmart Santa himself!

BabyMouse wants a Whiz-Bang, the electronic gizmo du jour, It's a phone; it texts; it's a video game and music player; it does everything her heart desires--except straighten her permanently kinked whiskers. But that's a story for another day.

Right now, BabyMouse has to make sure that Whiz-Bang is in her stocking on Christmas morning, and she plans her campaign as carefully as a military tactician. She drops hints like mad at home; she writes a personal letter to Santa making her case, and just in case the mail goes astray, she disguises herself as a tot in line to see Santa at the Mall. She enters a best-holiday-decorated locker contest at school hoping to win one, with disastrous results to her locker door. She searches all the usual hiding places on closet shelves at home, but only succeeds in inducing avalanches of old boots and mittens. She thinks about nothing but Whiz-Bangs as she goes to Wilson's for Hanukkah, takes in the Nutcracker ballet, featuring the Dance of the Sugar Plum Whiz-Bang, and even has a disturbing dream where she is Scrooge, visited by the three Ghosts of Mean Girls.

"No crumbs for YOU, Bob Crachett. I need to sell my cupcakes so I can buy a Whiz-Bang."

Finally Christmas morning arrives. Under her tree BabyMouse finds--a doll house!

"Does Santa even READ those letters?"

And then--her faith is restored. There is one more small, rectangular package for her, and inside--Oh, Joy!--a Whiz-Bang! There's just one problem.

"Batteries not included."

"Typical" said BabyMouse.

Will BabyMouse find the true meaning of Christmas with her family while her much-wanted Whiz-Bang lies battery-less? You betcha!

In three-time Newbery author Jennifer Holm's A Very BabyMouse Christmas (Random House, 2011) our heroine finds fun and fulfillment with her family, ably abetted by the cartoons of brother Matthew Holm, in book #5 of her best-selling middle grade graphic novels. Baby Mouse gets the spirit of Christmas right at last.

"Sometimes the best presents are the ones you don't expect."

National Book Award Finalist: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Hugo is a desperate orphan, living inside the walls of a Paris railroad station with the broken, flame-singed, and corroded figure of a mechanical man, an automaton created by his father. Hugo also lives with persistent mysteries. The automaton and a notebook of related diagrams and drawings are all that are left of Hugo's father, who died in a fire in the museum where the robotic man had been warehoused, and the tiny apartment within the station is all that is left of Hugo's uncle, the drunken timekeeper of the station's clocks who disappeared suddenly, leaving Hugo alone to carry on his work.

Fearing life in an orphanage, Hugo conceals his uncle's presumed death by keeping the clocks running and survives by stealing food from the station's shops. When he can, Hugo also steals mechanical parts from a crotchety old toy maker's kiosk to repair the automaton, a seated humanoid figure which apparently was designed to write or draw when wound up with a now-lost key. When Hugo is seized during a theft, the storekeeper confiscates his notebook and warns him to stay away. The toy maker's goddaughter Isabelle, however, secretly returns the notebook and, discovering Hugo's hideaway, becomes involved in solving the mystery of the robot's design and purpose.

The clues begin to fall together as Hugo realizes that Isabelle is wearing the key to the automaton as a pendant, and when the two children finally make the machine work, they determine from the picture it draws that the machine was indeed made for a work of the renowned early filmmaker Georges Melies. Investigations by the two determine that Melies is in actuality Isabelle's godfather, the irascible toymaker, and when the French Film Academy becomes aware of their findings, Melies is paid for his long-unclaimed work, adopts Hugo, and presides over a gala showing of his 87 early works which had been unrecognized for years. At this glittering affair a new automaton, created together by Melies and Hugo Cabret, proceeds to produce a complex work of 159 illustrations and a story of 26,159 words, entitled, voila', The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

What has made this tale a sensation among reviewers is not simply the story itself, but the way it is told in text and in an intricate series of graphic illustrations. The Invention of Hugo Cabret has been described as part graphic novel and part film, a masterwork which may change the nature of children's fiction.

Selznick's book was a 2007 National Book Award Finalist and is likely to be considered for one of the Newbery awards as well.