It's Owl Good

January 1, 2022
In the wake of her black-and-white Sherlock Bones series, Treml introduces a new set of graphic books for the early reader crowd, this time in full color. Ollie, a young owl, is intent on being a superhero. There is only one problem--Ollie doesn't know what their superpower is. As other animals point out, owls are supposed to have extraordinary eyesight; but Ollie wears glasses, which makes for a lot of self-consciousness. Then Ollie meets Bea, a white bunny, who insists that Ollie has "super-vision" despite the glasses. Bea wants a superpower too, so Ollie suggests a range of possibilities, including having big feet and being "supernice," but none of them satisfy Bea. More animals show up for a game of superheroes; readers learn that Simon the squirrel is superspeedy, muskrat Ceecee is a superswimmer, and Pedro the chameleon can change color. When Ollie self-deprecatingly lets slip that he can see in the dark and Bea unwittingly hops very high, the other animals help them to appreciate the special personal gifts they have overlooked. This amusing early reader offers a set of pun-tastic conundrums presented in a simple comic-book format. Treml's unsaturated digital illustrations are rendered using a minimalist palette of blue, green, gray, and white. The only indication of the characters' genders is their names since no gendered pronouns appear in the text. Young readers unsure about their own superpowers will join Ollie in cheering at the story's "hoppy ending." A winsome round of wordplay and self-esteem-building. (Graphic fiction. 7-10)

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