Today’s stack is a mixed bag of comics and some fiction for kids!
City Spies: Mission Manhattan by James Ponti
We’ll start with this middle grade novel, which is the fifth book in the City Spy series. I’ve written about the previous books in this series here (1 2 3 4), and I’ve really enjoyed following the story of these kids. In case you’re new to the series, it’s about a group of kids who have been recruited to be a top-secret MI6 team by a man code-named Mother, sent to infiltrate places where adult spies would be too conspicuous. Each kid has a codename based on the city where they were recruited, and they each have a special expertise. One fun feature is that in each book, we do get a little bit of focus on one of the characters in particular, getting to know a bit more about their background and how they were recruited, while still advancing the overarching plot.
Rio is the street magician—he’s good at sleight of hand and talking his way into things (or out of trouble). In this book, he gets to meet Beatriz, a young environmental activist who is scheduled to speak at a UN conference in Venice. (Don’t worry—we eventually get to Manhattan.) He foils a bomb threat but that brings all sorts of attention, which isn’t great for a spy. The team follows Beatriz to the US, still trying to figure out where the threat came from and where the perpetrators might strike next. In the meantime, we also get a bit more about Cairo, the newest recruit—who happens to be Mother’s son. There was a bit of distrust in the previous book because Cairo’s mother is working for the bad guys, and they’re still figuring out whether he’s really on their side, but this book gives him a chance to start proving himself a little more.
I liked the way that Beatriz inspires people in the book to speak out about climate change, and I imagine her character was inspired in part by Greta Thunberg. It grounds the book—which could feel fanciful given the spy kids premise—in the real world and the issues that kids are hearing about today. It helps to give kids agency in the story, which ideally will translate to words and actions in real life, too.
Absolute Zeros: Camp Launchpad written by Greg Smith and Michael Tanner, illustrated by Gabrielle Gomez
It’s time for space camp!
Camp Launchpad has lost a bit of its sheen—it used to be the best space camp in Florida, but it’s been in decline, with outdated equipment and run-down facilities. Everyone who can afford it would rather go to the shiny Star-X Camp run by tech billionaire Xander Santos (not hard to guess who inspired this particular character). In fact, if the camp doesn’t win the inter-camp Space Race competition—they haven’t even placed in decades—then this might be their last summer in business.
Val, whose mom is an astronaut, is a space geek and appreciates the history at Camp Launchpad—she seems to be the only one who’s super excited to be there. Mark’s dad is the Vice President, and he could surely afford Star-X, but the VP has fond memories of Camp Launchpad and is good friends with the camp director. The nostalgia is lost on Mark, who would rather be anywhere else. Finally, there’s Pete, who has a good head for mechanics but is a bit closed-off from the other campers, for reasons that aren’t fully clear at first. The three of them do not hit it off when they first meet, but they end up stuck in a pod together, forced to work as a team (which they fail at miserably).
As you probably expect, though, they gradually learn to work with their individual strengths, and are chosen to represent Camp Launchpad in the high-stakes Space Race. Although the underdog story is a familiar one and you can kind of tell where the story is going to end up, it was still satisfying to see how things come together, and I did come to like these three campers by the end of the book.
The Adventures of Team Pom: Squid Happens and The Last Dodo by Isabel Roxas
These two books are a little older—published in 2021 and 2022 originally—but I just read them recently. Agnes, Roberta, and Ruby are the odd ones out at the Salmagundi Boys and Girls Club—they just didn’t really fit in with any of the existing groups. Since it takes three kids to form a club, they decided to join up and just call it Team Pom after their three different interests: Pigeons, Oceanography, and … Miscellaneous. And while forming a club does make them eligible for the synchronized swim contest, it didn’t really make for a very cohesive performance.
That’s before they discover a giant squid in a closed-off section of the club and decide to incorporate it into their act. Meanwhile, a pair of strange mice (who appear to be nearly human-sized and wearing suits and bowler hats) are on the trail, searching for the squid for some unknown purposes. Good thing for the girls, the mice aren’t very competent, which leads to a lot of slapstick humor.
In the second book, we learn more about C.A.O.S.—Criminal Agents of Steve. Steve is behind the various plots to recover the squid, and he’s got a new plot that is intended to avenge the dodos for humanity’s responsibility in their extinction. It’s all very wacky and there’s some silly dodo-related equipment.
These are fairly short books, but my daughter and I found them pretty entertaining. If your kids like a bit of absurd humor in their stories, these really fit the bill. I also love the way the book celebrates these misfit kids with their niche interests and obsessions. The second book does promise more to come, though it doesn’t look like there’s a third book yet.
Lightfall Book One: The Girl & the Galdurian by Tim Probert
Another older comic book (from 2020), Lightfall begins with a young girl named Bea gathering ingredients for her adoptive grandpa, the Pig Wizard. She runs into Cad, who looks a bit like an overgrown axolotl and is a member of the thought-to-be-extinct Galdurians. He’s actually looking for the Pig Wizard for help, but when they return home he’s gone—with a cryptic note about “The Seal of the Restless Sleeper” and something he forgot to do. Bea and Cad set out to look for him, which starts an epic adventure that includes giant crab-monsters, sneaky thieves, and mysterious soldiers.
Cad meets every challenge with enthusiasm and glee—although he doesn’t know what happened to his family, he is always optimistic and ready for anything. Bea, on the other hand, worries and sometimes falls into dark moods—her anxiety is pictured as dark tangling wisps. It takes her a little while to warm up to Cad, but she eventually sees that she can rely on him to stick with her on this quest.
There are strange things afoot—presumably this Restless Sleeper that the Pig Wizard referenced—and there are hints of forgotten histories and hidden origins that we’ll presumably learn more about later. I like the artwork, which is kind of cartoony but still manages to be spooky when it needs to be, and has really rich colors. It’s a bit longer than a lot of kids’ comic books, at nearly 250 pages, which gives the story room to develop. I didn’t get a copy of the second book but plan to look it up now; I see that the third book is expected in April this year, so it’ll be a good time to get caught up.
Amulet Book 9: Waverider by Kazu Kibuishi
Speaking of catching up, here’s a series that I kind of lost track of over the years: the first Amulet book was published way back in 2008, and I wrote about it when the third book was released in 2010. I know I got at least up to Book 5 and then for some reason I didn’t get sent any more and I’d find out later when I’d see them at a bookstore and pick them up then. But at some point I fell behind and hadn’t gotten caught up. Well, 16 years later, Waverider finally concludes the tale! I received a copy and decided to read it just to see how much I could follow, and though I could get the gist of things it had just been so long that I’d forgotten a lot of the details and how some of the characters fit into things. My youngest is now 10—she wasn’t even around when we got started with the series!—so she and I have been going through the series again together. I’m really enjoying the trip back through the books and am up to Book 6 so far.
Waverider has a lot of story threads to tie up, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a lot of new plot happening. Emily is still learning how everything is connected: the stones, Ikol, the shadows, her powers. There’s a big build up to the final confrontation. One of the things that I’ve always appreciated about the Amulet series is that there’s a lot of ambiguity involved: the stone gives Emily amazing abilities that she can use for good, but the voice of the stone constantly seeks more control over her. Characters can have a change of heart—enemies can become allies, and not everything is accomplished simply by overpowering the adversary.
There is a lengthy section that serves a bit like an epilogue, and that’s the part that felt a bit squeezed. There are so many characters and places that we’ve been introduced to over the last decade and a half, and it takes several pages to bring closure to it all. I’ll definitely need to revisit this final volume after our re-read of the entire series, but I know this is one that a lot of readers have been waiting for!
My Current Stack
I’ve got a couple of time travel (or at least time travel-adjacent) books in my queue. I just finished The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard, about a valley whose past and future lie just across the mountains on either side. At the moment I’m reading The Daytripper by James Goodhand, about a guy who keeps waking up on a different day of his life, jumping forward and backward in time. More on those in an upcoming column!
Disclosure: I received copies or proofs of these books for review; affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and sends your money to independent booksellers.
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