While out playing one day, Zita and her close friend Joseph are
shocked when they discover a mysterious button that, upon being pressed, opens
a portal. Joseph is snatched by a tentacled creature and abducted through the
portal, and Zita jumps after him, taking her to an alien world threatened by imminent
collision with an asteroid. She makes friends and has adventures as she works
towards rescuing Joseph, but will they be able to return home before the
asteroid hits?
Ben Hatke’s beautifully expressive artistic style and clever
writing make Zita a delightfully layered protagonist. Like a good action hero,
she makes sacrifices as she courageously saves the day, but she also kindly helps
strangers, runs in fear from too-scary monsters, and breaks down from the
stress, overwhelmed by this brave new world. Plenty of twists and turns mean
that the reader is gripped the whole way through.
One rather unpleasant detail that stood out was a certain
character, a nasty moneygrubbing merchant named Topper, who was drawn in a way
that resembles an anti-Semitic caricature. Surely this was unintentional (Hatke
often draws characters with cartoonishly large noses and beards), but more care
needs to be taken to avoid such harmful tropes (Watto in the Star Wars prequels
is another example).
Generally speaking, though, this is a very nice graphic novel, and a
good read for any child who loves science fiction adventures.
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