(3) 4-6 As a middle schooler, fourteen-year-old Doreen Green fumbles through friendships and schoolwork. As her alter ego, Squirrel Girl, she battles a sinister force causing two towns to fight over a new mall's mascot. The narrative is told from varying perspectives; text messages, "Friendbook" comments, email exchanges, and Doreen's first-person footnotes inject humor into the tightly paced, action-packed story.

Reviewer: Lana Barnes

(3) 4-6 In this origin story, future Black Panther T'Challa is twelve and attending middle school in Chicago while his father the king deals with a hostile invasion of Wakanda. From this unlikely premise Smith weaves a taut and nuanced tale as T'Challa must keep his identity secret, negotiate a new culture, make friends, and uncover and foil the scheme of a dangerous dark-magic cult.

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano

(3) 4-6 With their spaceship low on fuel, Rocket and Groot make an emergency landing on Planet Happyhappyfunfun. They encounter self-driving minivans, killer trucks, and a bookmobile; and they are tasked with finding President Dina the Wonder Lizard's missing daughter. This second absurdist-silly Guardians of the Galaxy romp, told almost entirely in dialogue and heavily illustrated with wacky cartoons, successfully tones down the franchise characters for a younger audience.

Reviewer: David Elzey

(4) PS Illustrated by Cale Atkinson. Rocket Raccoon postpones tree-like alien Groot's bedtime for more space adventures alongside fellow Marvel superheroes. A tranquil rhyming text faces the action-packed, cartoonish illustrations. Including cameos for Marvel enthusiasts while presenting the violence in a kid-friendly manner (e.g., a high-tech slingshot stands in for Rocket's signature firearms), this energetic if gimmicky book should charm young superhero fans.

Reviewer: Russell Perry

(4) 4-6 Fourteen-year-old Doreen Green, half-girl, half-squirrel, uses her squirrel powers to save her New Jersey neighborhood from her arch-nemesis in this origin story to the comic books. The focus shifts among Doreen, squirrel Tippy-Toe, and Doreen's deaf bestie Ana Sofía; throughout, Doreen adds first-person footnotes that are humorous but also interrupt the story's flow. Comical text-message interludes with other Marvel characters are a welcome bonus.

Reviewer: Lana Barnes

(2) YA Based on a 2011 Marvel comic, sixteen-year-old Black and Puerto Rican Miles Morales is Spider-Man. He discovers that the history teacher at his prestigious Brooklyn academy is part of a white supremacist organization led by a centuries-old villain. The novel has its fair share of action adventure, but it's also an expertly spun tale of identity as Miles finds purpose and resolve.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2017

(3) 4-6 Rocket and Groot (from the Guardians of the Galaxy comic and movie franchises) crash-land on a planet full of killer strip malls and must escape with the aid of their intelligent tape dispenser, Veronica. Told through Captain's Log transcripted dialogue (each character's in a different typeface) and illustrated with wacky rudimentary cartoons, the story tones down the original (foul-mouthed in Rocket's case) characters for a silly romp.

Reviewer: David Elzey

(4) 4-6 On his way to a publicity party as Iron Man, Tony Stark discovers something amiss on an Irish island that brings him face-to-face with his nemesis, the Mandarin. Though Colfer captures Tony's verbose diction--to the brink of meandering off-plot at times--his characterization is disappointingly inconsistent with the Iron Man of the comics.

Reviewer: David Elzey

(4) YA Black Widow, along with her sidekick "sister" Ana (whom she met in Black Widow: Forever Red), returns to protect S.H.I.E.L.D. while battling the evil Red Room and the mind-control drug it has created. There is plenty of action, seemingly to get readers quickly to the next installment. Marvel superfans may be irked by deviations from the Marvel universe; casual readers should be entertained.

Reviewer: David Elzey

(3) YA When former assassin Natasha Romanoff--a.k.a. Black Widow, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.--learns of a rash of international missing children, she suspects her former teacher and tormentor, Ivan Somodorov, is involved. But in order to catch Ivan, she must delve into a past she's tried to forget. The high-octane plot is fueled by the snappy dialogue typical of comic-book-based characters.

Reviewer: David Elzey