 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and today I'm going to be sharing two recent reads that are both middle grade graphic novels and I'm really excited to talk about them with you. The first one is Invisible by Christina Diaz Gonzalez and Gabriela Epstein. This was a graphic novel that I found on my local library's Libby app so if you're in Australia you can definitely find it on Libby. This is the story of five mismatched students who all come from different Latino backgrounds and at first they find themselves sitting sort of in the office at their school and they don't really know why they're there. They think they're in trouble and as the story progresses we sort of see how they met and how everything that is set up at the start came to be. So all five of them find themselves in a breakfast community service club as part of their school's community service program and some of them don't speak English as well as they do their native language. Others do speak English well but don't speak Spanish well and they really don't get along because they're all the different stereotypes but they come together when they meet a homeless woman who is living out of her car with her young daughter and they become determined to help them out. This is a really great story, not only about Latino and Latina identity. It is also dual language so you get both English and Spanish in the book. You have a variety of different characters who all have different strengths. They all have different backgrounds. None of them know what the other kids are experiencing because at the moment they're just very concerned with what's going on with them so they don't really take time to find out. You know that one of them is living out of a motel room with their family, the other has been separated from their parents and is living with an aunt and has uncertain living circumstances. One of the characters struggles to read. I'm not quite sure if it's dyslexia or if it's just the translation from Spanish to English but there is that representation of a teenager who can't read and feeling really self-conscious about that and so you have all of these different backgrounds and experiences coming together and eventually these kids working together to try and help out this mother and her child and it was just a really wonderful read. It's sort of done in the same style as the New Babysitter Club graphic novels and Reina Telmeyer's graphic novels as well so if you have kids who like those graphic novels they'll probably enjoy this one but I really really enjoyed it and it was nice to see that representation on page. So I did read this digitally through the Libby app but this one would be a great one to have on shelves in schools for sure. The next graphic novel I want to talk about is Lightfall Book 1 The Girl and the Galdurian by Tim Probert. This is one that I can't remember where I saw it talked about but I saw it and I was really intrigued and I actually purchased a copy of it. The artwork in this is just stunning. I love the colors and I love the art style of the characters. It's very whimsical and beautiful. This is the story of Bee who lives in a tonics and tinctures shop in the forest. She lives with her grandfather the pig wizard and one day she goes out to gather supplies for him and she ends up meeting Kat who is the last of the Galdurians. When they get back to her grandfather's shop he is not there. He's left a note for them and so the two decide to set out to try and find him. They find themselves caught up in all sorts of things from varying types of weather to being kidnapped to fighting off enemies to running afoul of thieves and all the time having to not only get to know one another but try and figure out what is going on with the pig wizard and it was really, really fun. I would definitely be interested in continuing this series. I really loved that this book had a focus on recognizing the strengths in others and in particular Bee who feels very uncertain and nervous a lot of the time and it manifests as this black smoke and these tendrils of blackness that just encircle her and make her feel really unsure of herself. She's always kept that at bay because she's always been the guardian of one of her grandfather's special trinkets, this eternal flame in a jar, but that gets stolen through the story and so she has to find ways to cope with her fear and her anxiety. I also love the beautiful friendship that develops between Bee and Kat. It was just lovely. So those are two recent graphic novels that I have read. I found them really, really interesting reads. I will leave links to them down below so you can check them out and find out more about them if you would like to and if you have any recommendations for other middle grade graphic novels that I should read please feel free to let me know down below. If you'd like to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a flame emoji otherwise I hope that wherever you're in the world you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.