Fish Girl

Fish Girl, a middlegrade graphic novel written by Donna Jo Napoli and illustrated by David Wiesner (I'm really fond of his Tuesday, the picture book with the flying frogs). I found something about the voice and pacing a little weird in a way I can't quite put my finger on - I think maybe that we're in the main character's internal monologue, but the language is pretty formal (and in complete sentences) - but some compelling story beats. Some really pretty pages, and some kind of boring panels that do what they need to do but not anything more than that. This is both Napoli and Wiesner's first work of comics and I'm not convinced that either of them is particularly immersed in thoughts of how comics as comics might be different than "illustrated prose" or "picture books with lots of smaller pictures, and more words". It's still worthwhile, though! Some nice handling of the self-rescuing princess concept (it's not enough just to decide, you have to practice and do things that build your strength/ability) and there's a magical octopus, who doesn't love a magical octopus. Also it earned an 8yo thumbs up. Content notes: themes of child abduction and exploitation.