By G. Willow Wilson
A Pakistani-American Muslim teenager in Jersey City wakes up with superpowers, and the hardest part is still getting past her curfew.
Kamala Khan is sixteen, lives in Jersey City, and writes Avengers fan fiction she'd die if anyone saw. Her father wants a doctor in the family. Her older brother is far more devout than she is. Her mother is certain she'll meet a boy and throw her life away. So Kamala sneaks out to the party she's been forbidden to attend, and on the walk home a strange mist rolls in off the water and changes her. She wakes up able to stretch, shrink, and grow, and the first body she takes is her hero Carol Danvers, blonde hair and all, because that's what she figured a superhero was supposed to look like. Learning she can be Ms. Marvel and still be Kamala takes the rest of the book.
Kamala is funny, embarrassing, furious, and instantly recognizable to any twelve-year-old who's ever been the only one of something in a room. The superhero material is genuinely good, with fights and a villain and a cliffhanger. But the part your child will carry home is a girl arguing with her parents about a curfew while working out which pieces of herself she gets to keep. Wilson writes it as a regular Marvel comic, action and all, and that's what lets it walk right past a child's guard on the way to its real subject. I don't think there's a better-written book of its kind on the shelf right now.