The latest edition of Booklist​’s Guide to Graphic Novels in Libraries is live and, as always, the digital version is free to all readers! As with previous years, you’ll read our latest thoughts about comic bans and the growth of manga, but you’ll also learn how to slow down while reading this unique format, its many subgenres, and its potential in higher education. And don’t miss this year’s original comics either, of course! Read the digital edition now!

Narwhal: Unicorn of the Arctic
by Candace Fleming, illustrated by Deena So’Oteh

​Fleming adds to her oeuvre of picture books introducing distinctive animals with this lyrical paean to the world’s smallest whale.

Essentials: Whale-y Great Reads
by Julia Smith

Whether attacking boats, swallowing kayakers, deploying defensive poop clouds, or having their speech decoded by AI, odds are whales have swum into your news or social media feeds recently. But what do you really know about these marine giants? Here are some books to satiate those curious about cetaceans.

The Booklist Interview: Darrin Bell
by Tracy D. F. Resonance

Pulitzer Prize–winning editorial cartoonist Darrin Bell’s graphic novel, The Talk, appeared on numerous “best of the year” lists and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. The audiobook is also outstanding, with an exciting cast and a cinematic soundscape. Bell spoke with Booklist reviewer Tracy D. F. Resonance.

10 Questions for Rainbow Rowell
​By John Charles

Rainbow Rowell is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and the Simon Snow Trilogy, as well as several other award-winning novels, short stories, and comics. Rainbow lives in Omaha, Nebraska, just like most of her characters. 

10 Questions for Sophie Sullivan
By John Charles

Sophie Sullivan (she/her) is a Canadian author as well as a cookie-eating, Diet Pepsi–drinking, Disney enthusiast who loves reading and writing romance in almost equal measure. She writes around her day job as a teacher and spends her spare time with her sweet family watching reruns of Friends.

Talking With: Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
by Angela Carstensen

​Steve Sheinkin and Ruta Sepetys are known for suspenseful storytelling that seamlessly integrates rigorous historical research. Together, they are at the top of their game in The Bletchley Riddle, a middle-grade novel set in WWII England.

Writers & Readers: Writing and Silence
by Sara Paretsky

Mammoths still roamed the tundra when Sumerian tax collectors and poets figured out how to make the spoken word visible. This visible word has enlightened and encouraged our spirits but also enflamed them ever since, leading to stonings, knifings, and immolations, both of the books and of their writers.​