Crumble

At Om Nom, a magical family-owned bakery, tween Emily and her aunt Gina, who read as white, bake emotions like confidence and relief into steamed cheesecakes and lightly sugared cookies. Emily’s mother travels globally as a magic baking lecturer, leaving Aunt Gina to ensure that Emily—along with her Korean-cued best friend Dae—gets to school on time. When Aunt Gina suddenly dies, grief deflates everything. Bell (The Leak) mirrors the emptiness Emily and her mom experience following Aunt Gina’s death by utilizing wordless panels and negative space to depict the void left behind in their once-affectionate home. If a baker is having “bad feelings,” then baking is off-limits, squashing Emily’s only outlet; nothing else she tries seems to help, even with Dae’s steadfast efforts to cheer her up. After an argument with Dae, followed by a disastrous school bake sale, Emily must reckon with her coping mechanisms—with Mom’s help. This thoughtful graphic novel by McClaren (the Hinges series) affirms that while life changes after loss, it can still be sweet. Recipes for the girls’ bakes are included throughout, depicted as annotated pages of Emily’s spiral-bound cookbook. Ages 8–12. (Feb.)