Great Graphic Novels (#GGN2020) Nominees Round Up, November 28 Edition

Click here to see all of the current Great Graphic Novels nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

Making Friends: Back to the Drawing Board by Kristen Gudsnuk
Scholastic/Graphix
Publication Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 9781338139266

In 2018’s Making Friends, seventh-grader Dany discovers a magical notebook among her late aunt’s things that brings whatever is drawn in them to life, including friends, magical rings, and an evil (but good-looking) disembodied head. Making Friends: Back to the Drawing Board takes place soon after the events of the first one, with the gym at Melton Middle School, the location of the final showdown, still a hazard zone. And Dany still struggles with friendships, particularly with Cara, who she describes as “Madison and Aleesha’s friend (not mine).” When Cara tells Dany she’s annoying, Dany actually pays her to pretend to be her friend, but it doesn’t really help. Agonizing over going back to school, Dany decides to create a clone to do it for her. Cloney lives inside of a “pikkiball” (essentially a pokeball) in an amazing room that recalls I Dream of Jeannie, and Dany can stay inside the pikkiball, playing video games and watching Cloney live her life for her. Things become even more complicated when Cloney and Dany break a bottle in the basement while digging out her sister’s old math tests and unleash a magic dog on the town.

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#QP2019 Nominees Round Up, October 23 Edition

Attucks!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City by Phillip Hoose
Macmillan / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: October 23, 2018
ISBN: 9780374306120

This book tells the true story of a high school basketball team from a racially segregated school who became the first all-black team in the history of the United States to win a racially integrated state sports championship in 1955. Crispus Attucks Tigers team member Oscar Robertson would go on to be a star in college basketball and then the NBA.

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#GGN2019 Nominees Round Up, May 24 Edition

Last Pick by Jason Walz
First Second
Publication Date: October 9, 2018
ISBN: 9781626728912

Twin teens Sam and Wyatt try to survive on Earth after all able-bodied people ages 16-65 are captured and taken by aliens. The twins’ mission – find their abducted parents by obtaining alien communication hardware they can use to track their parents’ off-world location. When their parents’ location appears to be near their hometown, at Fort Knox, Sam smells a trap. She sacrifices herself to the alien “scoopers” to save her brother, Wyatt. Wyatt then connects with a rebel human group before this first volume
ends.

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