Sandra and Woo: a Webcomic by Powree and Oliver Knorzer

Sandra is a twelve year old with a pet raccoon named Woo. He happens to have the ability to speak to her and they must make sure that this remains a secret from her father, friends, and the world. While the must work together to make sure that their friendship remains a secret, they must also face their separate lives in the wild and school and their relationships with animals, boys, and friends.

This webcomic is ridiculously cute and hilarious. I'm not sure if you understand how much I liked it. Sandra is a quirky kid who not only has a talking raccoon but also a fixation on and a love of video games and fantasy. She dates a boy named Cloud, named after a Final Fantasy character, who learns sword fighting and is generally a stereotypical nice guy. Her best friend Larissa is a pretty pyromaniac with a penchant for manipulation. These three are all quirky, funny, and endearing. Hipsters in training.

Woo is full of hijinks.... which sounds corny but is really the only way I can think of describing him. Adorable, sarcastic, and hungry for anything, Woo must balance the fact that he is a pet with his feral nature.

I read through this in essentially one night and have been checking back in with it regularly. I strongly recommend it. I think you'll all like it too. The art is clean and suits the storyline perfectly, the characters and secondary characters are all memorable and engaging, and the storyline is super engaging.

Sandra and Woo updates Mondays and Thursdays.

Agnes Quill an Anthology of Mystery by Dave Roman

Agnes Quill is a teenager who is just trying to make a buck. Having taken over the family business, she uses her special abilities to help the strange inhabitants in her steampunk city Legerdemain find what they're looking for. Whether you need to get rid of some ex-girlfriend zombies, keep your underground community connected to electricity, or find an expensive heirloom in a corpse's head, Agnes is the girl to solve your mystery. (It helps that she can see ghosts since most of her clients are dead.)

I liked this book quite a bit. It seemed very fresh even though it was published five years ago, I loved the steampunk traits mixed in with the mystery and Agnes was just so wonderful and funny. There were four stories with a different artist for each: Jason Ho, Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier, and Jeff Zornow. I actually didn't really catch on until about 3/4 of the way through that the main character in each story was supposed to be the same girl, but it was still wonderfully done. I especially liked Ho's and Zornow's artwork, it seemed to really fit the setting of the stories. The others were good, but perhaps a little too simplistic. Regardless, awesome. Pick it up and give it a go. You won't regret it.

New Orleans 2011!

Here we come Louisiana! It's official, the wandering librarians (plus one) are headed to New Orleans in June. Once again we're headed to the annual ALA conference, this time in steamy New Orleans. See you there, just 304,504 minutes until we touchdown. Awesome.

Scumble by Ingrid Law

To say that Ledge's family is different would be an understatement. Once every child hits their thirteenth birthday, they don't just join the ranks of the pubescent adolescence they also develop their savvy. A savvy is a secret magical ability, it can range from controlling minds to being invisible, and Ledge has just gotten his. This isn't a seemingly cool ability like his mom's ability to control people's actions with a smile and comment or the much hoped for ability like running at incredible speeds, no this savvy seems to be literally destructive. As Ledge scrambles to scumble his savvy, try and break out from under his mother's controlling thumb, readjust his father's hopes and dreams for Ledge's running future, he breaks the family's cardinal rule and reveals the family's abilities to nosy thirteen year old Sarah Jane aka SJ Cabot; the same SJ whose father is trying to take over the family's safe haven. Now Ledge is trying to not only control his destructive powers but also try and figure out SJ and have her help him stop her dad. Turning thirteen just got a little more complicated.