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LEGENDS OF ZITA THE SPACEGIRL by Ben Hatke Kirkus Star

LEGENDS OF ZITA THE SPACEGIRL

From the Zita the Spacegirl series, volume 2

by Ben Hatke & illustrated by Ben Hatke

Pub Date: Sept. 4th, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59643-447-9
Publisher: First Second/Roaring Brook

Lovable Zita returns in a charmingly dashing interplanetary adventure to save yet another doomed planet from impending peril.

After saving both a planet and her best friend, Zita has achieved renown as an intergalactic hero and is greeted with adulation wherever she travels. In the midst of her fame, a lone, archaic Imprint-o-Tron—a robot that was built for companionship but took its "imprinting" too far—spies a Zita poster and immediately takes on her likeness. The bot’s mimicry is so exact that it quickly becomes difficult to tell the real Zita from the impostor. A sudden turn of events leads to the real Zita making a felonious—although necessary—decision, instantly transforming her public image from that of hero to outlaw. Faced with saving another planet, the real and fake Zitas must find a middle ground and work together, redefining what it really means to be a hero when they set out to rescue the Lumponians from the cutely named but very deadly Star Hearts, villainous parasites capable of destroying entire planets. Hatke’s arrestingly vibrant art commands instant adoration of its reader. Zita’s moxie is positively contagious, and her adventures are un-put-downable. Readers would be hard-pressed to not find something to like in these tales; they’re a winning formula of eye-catching aesthetics and plot and creativity, adeptly executed.

Imaginative and utterly bewitching.

(Graphic science fiction. 9-12)