Zita the Spacegirl

Today is my oldest child's fourth birthday, and we just read this book, so it's appropriate that I post its review now. Zita the Spacegirl is a fun, exciting, suspenseful, and inventive adventure story. It starts when she and her friend Joseph find a crater while playing outside. In it is an old, strange remote device with a big red button.

Of course, Zita presses the button and a portal to another dimension pops open. Tentacles grab Joseph and he disappears as the portal closes. Zita is intrepid, presses the button again and leaps in to follow and rescue her friend.

What follows involves a lot of twists and turns. There are aliens of all sorts, a real menagerie of sizes, shapes, forms, and roles. Also, there are shifty characters who seek to exploit others, and some who seem to be more friendly. Zita falls in with a battle robot named 1, a giant mouse named Mouse, a large alien named Strong Strong, a shady, apparently human guy named Piper, and an old bucket of bolts named Randy.

Together, this ragtag band seeks to locate and rescue Joseph, who by the way has been taken by a doomsday cult who sees him as their savior. Because, oh yeah, an asteroid is on a collision course with this planet.

There is a lot going on here, clearly, but the storytelling is clear and bold. The characters are strongly defined and easy to know. And the action is fast and furious. This book is a lot of fun to read, even the scary bits, which come in the form of creepy aliens and dire situations. My son and I have read it and re-read it a few times already.

Ben Hatke is the author/creator of this book. He has quite a few other graphic novels and picture books under his belt, including more entries in the Zita series, the Mighty Jack series, Little Robot, and Julia's House for Lost Creatures. His artwork is deceivingly simple looking yet dynamic. He draws great facial expression, and he clearly loves designing some way-out looking aliens. He speaks about his work on this book in this interview (it's a few years old, but hey, no spoilers about the later books).

Zita the Spacegirl is a much celebrated book with lots of great reviews. Elizabeth Bird wrote that "what author/artist Ben Hatke does well is dip into a wellspring of familiar ideas to bring us a new world that truly is its own beast." Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review that concluded, "this debut is truly out of this world." April Spisak opined, "The amount of background detail fills out the story, inviting examination of the endless number of monster, alien, and robot inhabitants, even while the pace of the text itself is as fast as Zita has to be to save her friend before the world explodes."

Zita the Spacegirl was published by First Second, and they offer more info about it (including the whole slew of awards and accolades it has earned) here. This book is the first in a series, so fans have more to look forward to!