Jacks teaches Snap some magic and tells her about a past where Jacks knew Snapdragon’s grandmother. Snap agrees and friendship is born between witch and apprentice. The witch, Jacks, offers to teach Snapdragon how to care for the opossums if she agrees to help her with some work. When Snapdragon finds abandoned baby opossums the next day, she brings them back to the witches house for help. Only the witch didn’t hurt Snap’s dog, she helped him after he got hit by car. This endearingly offbeat story emphasizes found community, the importance of love and friendship, and a fierce commitment to individuality-all powerful themes for middle-grade readers.Snapdragon enters the house of the town witch to save her dog Good Boy.

Beyond the magic, creepy undertones, and captivating artwork, themes of acceptance, particularly regarding gender and sexuality, permeate the story and are handled in a refreshing, matter-of-fact manner. Leyh’s dynamic artwork, full of active motion, shifting perspectives, and varying panel shapes and sizes, matches the complexity of the plot, and her figure designs, which show a wide variety of gender presentations, body shapes, skin tones, and hair types, nicely complement her characters’ personalities. The slow reveal of those connections makes up the dense but heartening plot of Leyh’s graphic novel, which is bolstered by some affirming, character-revealing side-plots, such as Snap’s growing friendship with transgender, dark-skinned Lulu her fantastic relationship with her tough yet deeply compassionate Black mother and her impatience to become more powerful herself.

Beyond their shared obsession with animals, though, Snap and Jacks have a much deeper connection based on family secrets, ghosts, and a touch of magic.

There’s something creepy about Jacks, the odd, gangly, one-eyed old white woman living in Snapdragon’s town, but Snap’s not afraid, especially after Jacks shows her how to take care of a litter of orphaned possums and what she’s up to early in the morning with a wheelbarrow full of roadkill (it involves a very lucrative internet business for skeleton enthusiasts).

Snapdragon by kat leyh