In Clydeo Takes a Bite out of Life (2024), the adorable sheepdog pup discovered his passion: whipping up delectable dishes. Now his family members, their many faces shaggily half-hidden, ask the young baker for peanut-butter cookie treats. Kitchen-confident Clydeo gets to work. Thinking it prudent to taste the new ingredient before using it, he gulps down a huge spoonful, only to find his mouth glued shut. Speechless, he attempts to convey his predicament to his baffled relatives, by pointing, grunting, miming, and drawing—to no avail. A note is equally useless: His handwriting is illegible. But Mom sees the jar and (of course) guesses the situation. Can she help him? She offers milk, but, unable to swallow, he pours milk over himself. Happily, a straw does the trick! Now everyone has just one final question: “Where are our peanut butter cookies?” Clydeo isn’t bothered. He’ll bake again—but now it will be sugar cookies! Peanut butter has stymied many a young foodie, and readers will cheer for a solution as the pages fly past. The anthropomorphic but cartoon-cute dogs animate every page, and pale teal backgrounds make even those pages not in multiple colors appear fresh and vibrant.

Ziva is a Maine coon cat who lives with the Freedmans. It’s unclear what happened before she arrived there, because although she’s sweet and calm with them, she finds strangers upsetting: “Ziva would leap like lightning. Claws out. Eyes blazing. Like she was guarding something only she could see.” One day, Elsie arrives to stay with the Freedmans. (All the humans are depicted with pale skin.) Again, it’s unclear what transpired, but the girl looks sad and doesn’t smile or speak. Ziva doesn’t hiss at Elsie, but sits quietly nearby, observing her. Elsie sleeps and the cat slumbers at the foot of her bed—and in the morning, Ziva purrs when the youngster greets her. Eventually, they become friends. Gerstner’s watercolor-style illustrations are well-executed and show a wonderful range of realistic cat expressions. The story is reminiscent of Chandra Ghosh Ippen’s Argo & Me(2022), illustrated by Erich Ippen Jr., in which a child placed in foster care bonds with an animal-shelter dog, but here, neither Elsie nor Ziva has a backstory. Some readers may find this frustrating, but leaving these open to interpretation may effectively allow many young people to see themselves in Elsie’s situation.

At the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., Calamity Jane recounts her exploits to a diverse crowd of spectators. The crowd audibly gasps as the former Pony Express rider—known to friends by her birth name, Martha—describes how she bested a desperado armed only with a meat cleaver. Buffalo Bill Cody, his Cowboy Band, and mighty warriors of the Lakota tribe all converge on the stage for a “rousing climactic performance.” On her break, Jane takes trespassing young waifs under her wing, offering them food from her tent alongside a more personal version of her life story. Ultimately, Jane leaves and goes west. Van Sciver’s successful graphic nonfiction formula sends another tall tale packing. An author’s note preempts the narrative with essential historical context on harmful stereotypes and caricatures of Lakota people. Backmatter from contemporary Indigenous scholar and professor Dr. Susana Geliga (Sicangu Lakota and Boriken Taino) expands this context even further to truly center Indigenous perspectives against the mythic “Wild American West.” Sepia tones and crosshatching call to mind classic Western comics; the color palette also effectively delineates flashbacks from the story’s present. Photographs add authenticity to the lore, while Jane’s unreliability as a narrator and figure is brought into question and deliciously muddies the truth.

Filmmaker and poet Snow uses birds as a metaphor for immigration in this story of a family—who have apparently journeyed to a new country—returning to China for a visit. Nervous to fly, the child wants to go home, but Mama gestures to the cranes flying alongside the plane (“They are your aunties”) and explains that “our family expands across borders. We belong in the sky.” She adds, “Long ago, when we were birds, we soared across the seas.” Snow’s illustrations are as grand as the book’s language: “The skies were our highways; the stars were our street signs.” Migrating birds holding the shape of people within their bodies fly amid a deep blue cosmos of stars. Mama notes that when the birds became people, flying down to Earth with the stars within them, those unfamiliar with the skies “built steel walls” that patrolled and surveilled, “splitting families in two.” Little Snow and Mama descend on the back of a giant bird and then have dinner with Grandma and her family. The juxtaposition of magical metaphor and the psychedelic colors of everyday life at Grandma’s house feel surreal but perfectly convey the feeling of mystery and wonder at this world in which souls can soar. Young readers will understand Snow’s message viscerally, while adults will appreciate the political implications.

In this second installment of the author’s fantasy series, teenager Timothy Brennan continues to deal with the recent discovery that he is not a human; rather, he is an elf with some talents of the sídhe, or fairies. In the previous entry, Timothy learned of the existence of elves and his place in their society—he is the seventh son of a seventh son in the lineage of Tuathla (Timothy’s grandmother), the recently deceased ruler of the elves. In addition to his grandmother, Timothy has also lost Aenya, the sídhe who helped him adapt to Sídhlin, the elf world, in the previous book. Aenya was apparently killed by Cadwaladr, an elf who is attempting to take over Sídhlin and was in cahoots with Timothy’s now dead uncle. Cadwaladr enlists the help of a sinister sídhe, Siofra, who infiltrates Sídhlin to assassinate Timothy and any elf elders who stand in his way. But unbeknownst to anyone, Aenya survived in Slaíne, which in human legends was referred to as Eden. The author succeeds at catching readers up with the story so far without resorting to excessive exposition dumps; not everything referenced is explained in detail, but he provides enough information to prevent readers from getting lost. Nilsen writes with a gritty sense of realism and excels at conveying fast-paced action in descriptions of battles and in other set pieces throughout the novel. Timothy is an amusing protagonist; despite his sad backstory, he keeps a sense of humor, often teasing his elf friends by using phrases (like “What up?”) that they do not understand. Still, he has a lot of characteristics stereotypical of a protagonist in a male power fantasy: Before he knew he was an elf, he was “a video game playing, high school geek,” yet he secretly has great power and manages to woo a beautiful sídhe. Still, fans of action-oriented fantasy will find the prose and plot compelling.