Hereville: How Mirka Met a Meteorite by Barry Deutsch

When we last saw Mirka, an 11-year old Orthodox Jewish girl, she had outsmarted a troll and won a sword.  When the troll sends a meteorite to destroy his enemy, the witch, Mirka runs to warn her, as the meteorite will destroy all of Hereville.  The witch stops the meteorite by transforming it into a girl.  Into someone who looks exactly like Mirka.  Metty (as the meteorite is called) is delighted to be part of Mirka's family, and at first Mirka thinks it's a great idea too.  Metty can go to school for her!  Do her chores!  But as Metty begins to take over more and more of Mirka's life, Mirka comes up with a plan to get rid of her.

As with How Mirka Got Her Sword, this was absolutely delightful and totally adorable as well as being smart, funny, and heartfelt.  If you read the first Hereville, you already knew that Mirka is not the most patient person.  In How Mirka Met a Meteorite, we see that even more.  She wants to be able to do thing.  Right now!  She doesn't want to have stop and think and practice.  She wants action and adventure!  Then she gets it, and not all goes as planned.  But even then, Mirka doesn't immediately learn the error of her ways.  It takes a while for her to figure out that leaping into things is not always the best way to go.

We also get to see more of the relationship between Mirka, her brother and her stepsister and stepmother.  Although Mirka and her brother Zindle still miss their mother very much, they seem to have a good relationship with Rochel, their stepsister and their stepmother who always has good advice to give (even if sometimes Mirka isn't interesting in listening).  Rochel is much calmer, logical, and patient than Mirka is, and even though she's often shaking her head over the foolish things Mirka has done, she is always has her sister's back.

I love Barry Deutsch's artistic style.  He can portray some much emotional of his character's faces, even though they're not incredibly detailed.  The art has a sense of fun.  Beutsch uses traditional comic strip format, but regularly breaks out of the panels with double paged spreads and layering.