SUPER GOAT GIRL

In a class of superheroes, the pressure to shine runs high.

On Super Goat Girl’s first day of school, her teacher Miss Damsel (a brown-skinned woman who is indeed often in distress) introduces her to the class. Though the students include an alien and a robot, they quickly decide that Super Goat Girl doesn’t fit in. Brown-skinned Laserbeam Lass can write her name in the air with her eyes, pale-skinned Noodle Boy can stretch his neck and appendages “in every direction,” and Robo Kid’s mathematical prowess can’t be beat. “WHAT CAN YOU DO?” Super Goat Girl’s classmates ask. None of this. But when evil aliens lasso Miss Damsel, Goat Girl’s teeth chomp through a rope made from impossibilium (the strongest substance on the extraterrestrials’ planet), rescuing the teacher when the other students can’t. Is chewing a superpower, her classmates wonder? Using other talents such as her intense bleat, Goat Girl repeatedly saves her teacher, who always assures the kid that the next school activity will be better than the current one, though she never chastises the other students for ostracizing Goat Girl. Only teamwork, in the end, convinces the classmates of Super Goat Girl’s value. Divided into graphic novel–esque panels, Adeola’s zany cartoon illustrations, with their cheerfully discordant color scheme, give distinct personalities to these unusual characters and offer an empathetic view of the shy protagonist, whose confidence grows as she helps.

A worthy tale in which the seemingly ordinary becomes extraordinary.