Middle-grade readers—and Disney fans—should find this adventure starring a courageous hero both entertaining and empowering.
Powered by various stylish illustration media (pencil drawings and watercolor paintings) that reflect the historical backdrop, Cleary’s graphic novel features heroic Disney character Mulan.
Structured largely in the form of a journal, the story begins with Mulan back at her countryside home as the nation gets ready for the Spring Festival. Heralded as a returning war hero by her family and friends, including the dragon Mushu, love interest Capt. Shang, and others, Mulan is uncomfortable with all the unwanted attention. But when she receives an urgent message from the emperor asking for her help (“China is in a moment of upheaval. The palace is beset with hidden dangers, and my own life has been threatened…you [are] the perfect person to infiltrate the court and uncover the source of these threats on my life”), she accepts the dangerous mission and travels to the Imperial Palace. Once there, she uncovers a disturbing conspiracy: A secret group of powerful dissenters, called the Golden Tiger, is plotting to overthrow the emperor and wipe out the country’s old nemeses, the Huns, once and for all. This graphic novel explores similar themes to the original movie. First and foremost is Mulan’s ongoing search for self and finding her place in the world. Set in a strictly regimented culture where gender roles were unyielding, especially for women—like subservience and taking care of domestic affairs—Mulan, the “soldier girl,” uses her savvy and intelligence to maneuver her way through complex and often repressive customs and belief systems. At story’s end, she realizes the importance of being true to herself and following her own individual path. These themes, compelling in a historical context, are just as timely in today’s sociopolitical landscape and should resonate intimately with young readers dealing with the same issues of self-discovery. The mix of artwork media—comic pencils by Innocente, comic paints by Cardinali, and watercolor illustrations by Urbinati—complement the story’s fantastical folkloric tone well.
Middle-grade readers—and Disney fans—should find this adventure starring a courageous hero both entertaining and empowering.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781545824610
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Papercutz
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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