We're back with exciting new books published in the last few months. There's a little something for everyone! We have collections of comic strips, biographical graphic novels, manga both new and ongoing, and much more. So, why not add to your TBR lists with non-fiction and fiction graphic novels and manga new to and coming soon to the library?
Keep an eye on our New Books and Recently Ordered links in our catalog as well as Recently Released for Teens and Recently Ordered for Teens links to stay informed on these new arrivals and more.
Do you love comic books? Keep an eye out for these library events!
Come celebrate Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, May 6, all day at the Millhopper Branch. Feel free to come dressed as your favorite character or tell us who your favorite comic book character is. One free comic book per person, while supplies last!
Come celebrate Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, May 6, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Alachua Branch. We'll be making buttons and handing out one free comic book per person, while supplies last!
Participate in a Create a Comic Book Workshop with local artist, Emmanuel Payne, on Saturday, May 6, at 1 p.m. at Library Partnership Branch. Learn about the art of designing comics, create your own characters, and plot lines.
Join us as we make Recycled Comic Book Crafts on Saturday, May 6, at 2 p.m. at Micanopy Branch. Celebrate Free Comic Book Day by recycling some old worn comics into exciting new crafts! Learn how to use parts of these comics to create stickers, buttons, bookmarks, and much more.
Join us for Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, May 6, at 2 p.m. at High Springs Branch. We’ll be watching a film, making buttons, drawing our own comics, and eating snacks. Bring the whole family for day of superheroics and fun.
Busy or on the go? Try reading your favorite graphic novels and manga as eBooks with the Libby App.
Graphic Novels
Non-Fiction
A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat
Dan's always been a good kid. He's the kind of kid who listens to his teachers, helps his mom with grocery shopping, and stays out of trouble. But being a good kid doesn't stop him from being bullied and feeling like he's invisible, which is why Dan has low expectations when his parents send him on a class trip to Europe.
At first, he's right. He's stuck with the same girls from his middle school who love to make fun of him, and he doesn't know why his teacher insisted he come on this trip. But as he travels through France, Germany, Switzerland, and England, a series of first experiences begin to change him—first Fanta, first fondue, first time stealing a bike from German punk rockers... and first love.
Funny, heartwarming, and poignant, A First Time for Everything is a feel-good coming-of-age memoir based on New York Times bestselling author and Caldecott Medal winner Dan Santat's awkward middle school years. It celebrates a time that is universally challenging for many of us, but also life-changing as well.
Esther's Notebooks: Tales from my Ten-Year-Old Life by Riad Sattouf
Every week, the comic book artist Riad Sattouf talks to his friend's daughter, Esther. She tells him about her life, about school, her friends, her hopes, dreams, and fears, and then he works it up into a comic strip.
This book consists of 52 of those strips, telling between them the story of a year in the life of this sharp, spirited and hilarious child. The result is a moving, insightful and utterly addictive glimpse into the real lives of children growing up in today's world.
Where I'm Coming From: Selected Strips 1991-2005 by Barbara Brandon-Croft
This collection by the nationally syndicated cartoonist features such characters as Lekesia the activist, and man-dependent Sonya.
Queenie: Godmother of Harlem by Elizabeth Colomba
Queenie follows the life of Stephanie Saint-Clair—the infamous criminal who made herself a legend in Harlem in the 1930s. Born on a plantation in the French colony of Martinique, Saint-Clair left the island in 1912 and headed for the United States, eager to make a new life for herself. In New York she found success, rising up through poverty and battling extreme racism to become the ruthless queen of Harlem’s mafia and a fierce defender of the Black community.
A racketeer and a bootlegger, Saint-Clair dedicated her wealth and compassion to the struggling masses of Harlem, giving loans and paying debts to those around her. But with Prohibition ending, and under threat by Italian mobsters seeking to take control of her operation, she launched a merciless war to save her territory and her skin. In an America still swollen by depression and segregation, Saint-Clair understood that her image was a tool she could use to establish her power and wield as a weapon against her opponents.
Authors Elizabeth Colomba and Aurelie Levy's meticulous details—in both story and art—bring Saint-Clair’s story to life in a tense narrative, against a sometimes bloody backdrop of jazz and voodoo. The story tackles the themes of colonization, corruption, police violence, and racial identity, but above all, Queenie celebrates the genius of a woman forgotten by history.
Rosa Parks & Claudette Colvin: Civil Rights Heroes by Tracey Baptiste, illustrated by Shauna J. Grant
A Black woman who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus sparked a bus boycott and became part of one of the most iconic moments in American history. Yet, few know that Rosa Parks had actively worked toward social justice her whole life. And even fewer know that the seeds of the statewide bus boycott were first planted by a teenager named Claudette Colvin, who was arrested on similar charges months earlier. Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin inspired a nation, showing how positive change can start with a single defiant act. Their actions have become the stuff of legend, but there is so much more to their lives, their stories, and the movement they began.
Last on His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century by Adrian Matejka
On the morning of July 4, 1910, thousands of boxing fans stormed a newly built stadium in Reno, Nevada, to witness an epic showdown. Jack Johnson, the world’s first Black heavyweight champion—and most infamous athlete in the world because of his race—was paired against Jim Jeffries, a former heavyweight champion then heralded as the “great white hope.” It was the height of the Jim Crow era, and spectators were eager for Jeffries to restore the racial hierarchy that Johnson had pummeled with his quick fists.
Transporting readers directly into the ring, artist Youssef Daoudi and poet Adrian Matejka intersperse dramatic boxing action with vivid flashbacks to reveal how Johnson, the self-educated son of formerly enslaved parents, reached the pinnacle of sport—all while facing down a racist justice system. Through a combination of breathtaking illustrations and striking verse, Last on His Feet honors a contentious civil rights figure who has for more than a century been denied his proper due.
Fiction
The Adventure Zone: The Eleventh Hour by Clint McElroy
The fifth installment in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Adventure Zone graphic novel series, a meta-fictional D&D adventure story based on the smash hit podcast.
The Bureau of Balance has located yet another Grand Relic, and this time it's... time? A small mining town called Refuge has been locked away behind an arcane bubble, and somewhere inside it, the Temporal Chalice is causing unknown mayhem. Taako, Magnus, and Merle are launched into their investigation, but they've barely had a chance to get their feet under them before the situation literally falls apart. When the town clocktower strikes noon, Refuge and its citizens are destroyed in a sudden chaos of flame and ruin, and our heroes' relic hunting—along with their lives—comes to an abrupt end.
But woah, what's this? It's 11 a.m., they're alive again, and Refuge definitely hasn't just been exploded? Looks like a classic time loop, friends. This town is trapped in its final hour, and so are the three of them. In order to escape, they'll not only have to solve the mystery of what happened to the Chalice, but they'll also have to resist what it offers: the chance to rewrite the worst days of their own pasts.
Read from the beginning of the series!
A work of fiction inspired by a true story, Matt Tavares’s debut graphic novel dramatizes the historic struggle for gender equality in high school sports.
It is 1975 in Indiana, and the Wilkins Regional High School girls’ basketball team is in its rookie season. Despite being undefeated, they practice at night in the elementary school and play to empty bleachers. Unlike the boys’ team, the Lady Bears have no buses to deliver them to away games and no uniforms, much less a laundry service. They make their own uniforms out of T-shirts and electrical tape. And with help from a committed female coach, they push through to improbable victory after improbable victory. Illustrated in full color, this story about the ongoing battle of women striving for equality in sports rings with honesty, bravery, and heart.
Archie Bongiovanni, the comics artist behind the hit A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns, explores queerness in this shockingly frank and funny graphic novel.
Best friends and chosen family Chris, Elise, Jo, and Alex work hard to keep themselves afloat. Their regular brunches hold them together even as the rest of their lives threaten to fall apart. In an effort to avoid being the oldest gays at the party, the crew decides to put on a new queer event called Grind—specifically for homos in their dirty thirties.
Grind is a welcome distraction from their real problems: after a messy divorce, Chris adjusts to being a single parent while struggling to reconnect to their queer community. Elise is caught between feelings for her boss and the career of her dreams. Jo tries to navigate the murky boundaries of being a supportive friend and taking care of her own needs. And Alex is guarding a secret that might change his friendships forever.
While navigating exes at work, physical and mental exhaustion, and drinking way, way too much on weekdays, this chosen family proves that being messy doesn’t always go away with age.
Teen Titans: Robin by Kami Garcia
Raven Roth, Garfield Logan, Maxine Navarro, and Damian Wayne are on the run… from Slade Wilson, from H.I.V.E., and from the horrible experiments H.I.V.E. conducted at their expense.
But where will they go? Who can they trust?
Dick Grayson just wants to know what happened to his brother, Damian. Is Damian okay? Does he need help? Why hasn’t he been in contact? And why did his tracking device go silent?
One thing is for sure—they all need answers and there is only one person that might be able to help the them defeat H.I.V.E. for good.
Manga
Non-Fiction
The Girl That Can't Get a Girlfriend by Mieri Hiranishi
From first crush to first crushed! The autobiographical manga about one woman’s quest for the hot short-haired girlfriend of her dreams!
Mieri is an awkward, nerdy college student with no dating experience, and her previous crushes on fellow butch women have all ended in disaster. That all changes when she meets Ash and has her feelings returned for the first time—but when first love turns to first heartbreak, Mieri will do everything possible to win Ash back. Based on true events, this is a hilarious and heart-wrenching story about love, loneliness, and the true meaning of finding one’s own happy ending.
Fiction
Choujin X: Volume 1 by Sui Ishida
Dark humor and quirky horror unite in this tale of clashing heroes and monsters from the creator of Tokyo Ghoul and Tokyo Ghoul: re!
When an airplane goes down in a plume of black smoke near their city, best friends Tokio and Azuma join the volunteer search and rescue team. But instead of a wreck of twisted metal, they discover that the plane suffered minimal damage and that over 200 of the passengers are still alive! With their services no longer needed, the friends head for home, but on the way, they run into an old enemy who has picked up some bizarre new powers and an obsession with destroying them. Now Tokio and Azuma only have one chance to make it out alive—by becoming the superpowered creatures known as choujin!
Being a superpowered creature isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Tokio has to hide his transformation from his family and dodge a truancy charge at school, all while dealing with an increasing number of odd incidents happening around town!
Mermaid Scales and the Town of Sand by Yoko Komori
Everyone besides Tokiko denies the existence of merpeople, and yet the town holds a secret annual festival to honor them. Can she solve the mystery of what is real and what is fantasy...?
When Tokiko’s parents’ marriage falls apart, she and her father move from the bustling city to a sleepy coastal town to live with her grandmother. Starting sixth grade in a new school where everyone has known each other their whole lives isn’t easy. Things start to look up when local boy Narumi, another outsider of sorts, wants to be friends.
But then strange memories start to surface.
Swimming in the ocean… Drowning…
Getting saved by… a merman?
My Hero Academia: Volume 34, United States of America by Kohei Horikoshi
All For One's will has taken root in Tomura's mind, and this new entity is now a global threat. Even so, the United Nations is hesitant to dispatch heroes to Japan, but Star and Stripe—the U.S.A.'s number one hero—arrives to tackle this menace head-on.
Read from the beginning of the series!
Heaven's Design Team: Volume 8 by Hebi-Zou, Tsuta Suzuki, Tarako
God created the heavens and the Earth—but, a little-known fact, he outsourced the animals to the office of Heaven's Design Team! This hilarious and educational manga features weird real-life animals and puts even some humdrum critters in a strange new light.
CAN THIS CRISIS BE AVERTED?
A virus has taken over a production plant up in Heaven! With no time to lose, Shimoda must put heads together with the designers to make sure the threat is contained before too much real damage is done. They hatch a plan to go back in time to earlier that morning to prevent the takeover, but will their efforts be enough?
Read from the beginning of the series!
Confessions of a Shy Baker: Volume 1 by Masaomi Ito
Toshimitsu Yamamura, who runs a real estate business, and Genta Tsubakisaka, a caregiver, live together contentedly. In his spare time, Toshimitsu loves baking and making candies, and coincidentally, Gonta loves eating them! While their day-to-day lives might be full of difficulties and stresses, the time they spend together at their home café is a sweet treat.