Saturday Morning Cartoons- Flat Stanley and Agent Cupcake

Brown, Jeff, Wilson, SB, and Egbert, Corey (illus.) 

Flat Stanley: The Graphic Novel
September 2, 2025 by HarperAlley

E ARC provided by Netgalley

Stanley Lambchop lives with his parents and younger brother Arthur in New York City. Life is uneventful until he wakes up one morning and has been flattened by a bulletin board that has fallen off the wall onto his bed. Since he doesn't seem to be in any distress, everyone has breakfast before taking him to the doctor. Again, nothing is wrong, so his mother's major concern is that all of Stanley's clothes will need to be altered! He has several adventures, like getting his mother's ring back from the sewer, being flown around the park like a kite, being used to help the policemen catch a sneak thief from stealing paintings, and being mailed in a large envelope (with a cheese sandwich!) to visit a friend in California. Eventually, he gets tired of being flat, and his brother manages to restore him to his normal girth by inserting a bicycle pump in his mouth until he is fully inflated. 

Strengths: I was a little surprised to find that Flat Stanley was first published in 1964; the series had a resurgence of interest in the 1990s when my children were in elementary school, and I seem to remember at least one Flat Stanley project. Egbert's illustrations capture some of the feel of the original while updating some details; Stanley's friend in California is Black, the father seems to do all of the cooking, and the crowds in the city are more diverse. The text is a nice large size, and this will be a huge hit with elementary readers and even some struggling middle school ones. There are six books in the series written by Brown, and a later set of four I Can Read Books, so meeting Stanley will encourage readers to look for other books about this character. 
Weaknesses: Since I'm a fan of anything vintage, redoing the illustrations always takes some of the original charm away for me, but readers who are vastly younger than some of my clothing are not going to care about vintage charm. 
What I really think: If you can suspend disbelief long enough to believe that Stanley is flattened by a bulletin board and has no further problems, you'll enjoy this reimagining of Brown's classic tale. The goofiness will appeal to fans of Greenburg's The Zach Files, Trine's Melvin Beederman series, and the various permutations of Thaler's Black Lagoon books. 

Hilario, Mel and Davis, Lauren. Agent Cupcake

November 4, 2025 by Oni Press

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Miguel Mangayayam gets hired by the Magical Beast Bureau since he is very interested in learning all he can about supernatural creatures, and because his mother works there. He is paired with Agent Cupcake, a unicorn who has lost his magical powers. Right away, Miguel learns a lot about unicorns (their horns DON'T purify water, and dragons are allergic to unicorns), and gets started on missions right away. A fashion store, Paleontolgie, is selling outfits with pilfered phoenix feathers, and investigating this leads to deeper problems. The unicorns sell their crafts on the Betsy website, but those whose work sells the best are losing their magic! What does this have to do with HOARD, a massive online retailer? The unicorn Ganache is some help, and contact one of his online friends, Polly, who works at HOARD to find a way to get into their headquarters. Miguel and Cupcake manage to infiltrate the building, but will they be able to get the unicorns magic back? There is a glossary at the back of some of the technology terms used in the book. 

This was a rather goofy satire of online commerce; since Anthropologie jeans retail for over $200, I'm not sure that tweens are really their demographic. (I was glad to see that high rise jeans and sweaters with embroidered motifs seem to be back, however!) Miguel has a lot of anxiety, so goes back and forth between the manga star eyes and weeping, so that would be appealing to young graphic novel readers. If Graley's Donut the Destroyer or Simpson's Phoebe and Her Unicorn are popular in your library, I'd take a look at this title. Wow. The first Phoebe came out in 2014. Seems like just yesterday.