Text copyright 2009 Mary Labatt. Illustrations copyright 2009 Jo Rioux.

First, off, let me disclose a personal bias: As the father of a four-year-old, I have a keen interest in publishers like Kids Can Press is committing to books that take a thoughtful, nuanced, and honest approach to the challenges nine-year-old girls face as they navigate friendships and family and make some crucial decisions about their role and abilities in this world. I'm especially thrilled to see them in the highly accessible, engaging format of the graphic novel, which I've appreciated as serious medium ever since discovering Maus in high school, and never looked at in the same way since reading Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. Put those two together and you have a reviewer who will gladly read titles like Claire and the Water Wish and Dracula Madness: A Sam & Friends Mystery cover to cover the night he gets them in the mail from the publisher.

Claire is a go-getting girl who exhibits the usual fleeting doubts of a well-adjusted but thoughtful kid, yet remains grounded in her own personality and perspective. She isn't afraid to think for herself, get in and out of a jam, help out an adult just to be nice, or speak her mind when she's angry. Claire and the Water Wish is the second in a planned ongoing series, and it artfully carries readers through a variety of equally important relationship plots - Claire's confusion about changes in her social circle and her best friend's interests and personality - as it builds an adventure story out of multiple strands that initially seem unrelated (a shy new girl at school, a class project on an endangered species, and a local lake that turns out to be an illegal dumping ground for a local feedlot).


Copyright 2009 Janice Poon

What struck me most about the storyline of Janice Poon's Claire and the Water Wish was its subtlety. I was raised on Archie comics (talk about toxic teen role models), where plots were straightforward enough for Moose and everyone had one driving motivation. Reggie tried to make you feel terrible, Betty tried to win Archie's love, Archie tried to deny his secret love for Jughead. In Claire stories, individual characters cannot be assessed in a single take - there is an ebb and flow to relationships that is decidedly non-comic-bookish, where characters have general attitudes but their interactions vary. Claire does not have "enemies" and "friends," she has friends and acquaintances whose allegiances and needs shift throughout the story and who may confuse her or create moments of interior conflict. Interstitial pages from her diary provide summaries of her feelings on matters but they are also not the whole story. Just as Claire books insist that young girls consider each other as multifaceted creatures, they create a space for a young reader to have their own reactions and thoughts without being railroaded into an opinion about what they see. This is one of the things that distinguishes a graphic novel from a "comic book."

Claire and the Water Wish will be released March 1, but is currently available for pre-order.

Mary Labatt and Jo Rioux's collaboration Dracula Madness is the first in a very different series - more strictly adventure-based, more fantastical, and a bit prettier. Varied patterns of story panes, a cleaner and more evocative drawing style, and a simple, central mystery make Sam & Friends mysteries a fun, simple update to the old-fashioned, girl-solves-mystery tradition.

The "Sam" in Sam & Friends is a dog (a girl, short for Samantha), who moves in next door to a young girl, Jennie.

As in Claire books, Sam & Friends graphic novels have more to offer than may first meet the eye. In this case, it's humor. An initially world-weary attitude on the part of Sam herself - boredom with her new neighborhood and the uninspiring lives of the humans around her (they feed her dog food; she'd prefer any of a number of gag-inducing combinations of ingredients from the fridge) is sure to draw pre-teens in and establish a level of credibility with young readers. From Jennie and Sam's first glimpse of each other as the dog moves into her new home, it's clear that this is a story that values creatures with spunk. Jenni looks down from her window at Sam and thinks, "Why is that dumb dog staring at me?" and in the next pane, we see Sam looking up at Jennie, thinking, "What's the matter with that dopey kid?"

But the two quickly become friends, as Jennie is fortunate enough to have "the gift" of being able to read Sam's thoughts, a fact the two discover when she takes Sam for a walk. Things get even better when, as Sam gets on the scent of a potential mystery, she quickly reveals that she isn't jaded and impossible to please, but simply has high expectations of her surroundings, and is willing to actively pursue adventure - even if it means taking a few risks.

Along the way, Labatt milks her story for humor of a type that makes the world of Sam & Friends feel wholly fleshed-out in a way that makes you want to spend more time in them. Jennie, for example, begins feeding Sam whatever it is Sam asks for, without much commentary until midway through the book when Noel, Jenni's unhelpful older brother, asks offhandedly, "What is that dog eating?" as Sam chows down on a bowl of ketchup-drenched popcorn in the corner of the pane. The smart, economical rhythms of Labatt's dialogue and the quick jumps Rioux makes between captured moments in a scene make this a graphic novel that tells a very straightforward and even simple type of story with real smarts.

I'd highly recommend both graphic novels for kids ages 8-10.

You can purchase these and other Kids Can Press books from the company's website or from the Amazon.com links above. We'll be reviewing several books for younger kids from Kids Can's diverse lineup in the weeks to come, so stay tuned!

Material from Claire and the Water Wish, by Janice Poon is used by permission of Kids Can Press Ltd., Toronto. Text and illustrations copyright 2009 Janice Poon. Material from Dracula Madness, written by Mary Labatt and illustrated by Jo Rioux is used by permission of Kids Can Press Ltd., Toronto. Text copyright 2009 Mary Labatt. Illustrations copyright 2009 Jo Rioux. - Jeremiah