Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Vol. 1: BFF

Gr 3–8—A fun, all-ages comic series with an unlikely heroine and her larger-than-life sidekick. Luna Lafayette is an eight-year-old supergenius who is frustrated with the adults in her life, her dull and unchallenging school and classmates, and by the knowledge that she carries the "inhuman" gene, which will cause a mutation if she becomes exposed to the alien-origin Terrigen Cloud. In BFF (which collects issues one through six), she and Devil Dinosaur haphazardly team up to fight Neanderthals after the T. rex and the prehistoric men are teleported to the present day. In Cosmic Cooties (which collects issues seven through 12), Luna discovers that the Terrigen Cloud gave her the ability to switch bodies with Devil Dinosaur, a power that proves extremely problematic to her science project with a new boy at school and her archnemesis, Kid Kree. The prickly African American fourth grader makes for a unique and inspiring STEM-focused superheroine, and kids will cheer for and laugh at her partnership with the loving but disaster-prone Devil Dinosaur. The action-packed scenes, cameos by the Hulk and Ms. Marvel, and hilarious dialogue make up for the wooden adult characters and uneven pacing of the first few issues. The colorful, slick, and expressive art will have young readers flipping through the pages quickly.