By Kat Leyh
A fearless girl makes friends with the old woman the whole town calls a witch, and finds out the witch rumors are true, right down to the ghosts and the roadkill skeletons.
Snap is a fierce girl who isn't scared of much, least of all the old woman down the road that every child in town swears is a witch. When Snap's dog turns up pregnant, she winds up on Jacks's porch and learns Jacks makes her living the strangest way Snap has ever heard of: she collects roadkill, cleans it down to the bone, and sells the beautiful articulated skeletons online. Snap wants in. She becomes Jacks's apprentice, and slowly finds out the witch rumors are true after all. Jacks can see the ghosts of dead animals, and there's real magic here to be taught. Running underneath are two quieter stories: Snap's best friend Lu figuring out that she's a girl, and an old love between Jacks and Snap's own grandmother that never fully ended.
Hand this to a child who's ready to hear that a graphic novel can hold a whole real world. Kat Leyh fits more into 240 pages than a lot of novels manage. There's friendship, a first taste of magic, Lu figuring out she's a girl, a grandmother's lost love, and one genuinely scary night, and the art is so alive that none of it feels like homework. Snap herself is the kind of heroine a child wants to be, brave and loud and loyal to the bone, and the book trusts your child with big, tangled feelings without ever going heavy. If you still half-wonder whether comics really count as reading, this is one I'd point to.