Saturday Morning Cartoons

Agyemang, Elizabeth . A Beginner's Guide to Leveling Up: A Graphic Novel
September 8, 2026 by Razorbill
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Lexie is struggling after the death of her grandfather, who designed video games and was a tween in the mid 1970s, making him about my age. Her sister Eunice goes along with their parents' desire to sell the grandfather's things at a garage sale, but this just upsets Lexie more. Her friend Kwabena is often at odds with his brother, Marley, but she and Eunice have been close. When 6th grade begins, Lexie, along with Kwabena and her friend Leah, try to decide what clubs to join. They all like video games, but with older siblings involved, they want to try something new. Things get complicated when Lexie finds her grandfather's final video game, Warrior's Quest, and takes it to school on a floppy disk to play. The game is about surviving middle school, and has some cheat codes to help. The characters are based on her grandfather and his friends when they were in middle school in the mid 1970s, and Lexie finds comfort in wearing his Jackson Five inspired cap and fringed vest to school. She is dealing with Jenna, who is very mean, but lets Jenna borrow the vest when pressured. Jenna, of course, loses it. When Lexie gets sucked into the game, will she be able to solve the glitches and return everyone around her to their new normal?

Strengths: Lexie and her friends are starting sixth grade with generally good attitudes, and it's great to see that they get along well, despite their differences. Even the sibling are usually helpful, although Eunice is struggling with her grandfather's death in a different way from Lexie. The video game, and its link to their grandfather, is interesting and rather sweet. There is a bully in Jenna, and plenty of obstacles to overcome. The illustration style is fresh and unlike the standard middle grade, Telgemeier inspired format we usually see. Had to love the grandfather's groovy seventies outfit! 

Weaknesses: It seems unlikely that there are schools with computers with operational floppy drives. We have newer computers that lack them, but any computer old enough to to still have the drive would no doubt be partially broken! Younger readers won't even recognize how the students are uploading the game.
What I really think: This is a good choice for readers who like immersive video game books like Anderson's Insert Coin to Continue or Hansen's My Video Game Ate My Homework. It has a bit broader appeal than the author's first book, Fibbed, which is a graphic novel based on the Ghanaian legend of Ananse.

Milne, A.A., Chandler, Kevan (Adapter), and Sutphin, Joe (Adapter).
Winnie-the-Pooh: The Graphic Novel

October 13, 2026 by Ten Speed Young Readers
E ARC provided by Netgalley

Since the copyright for Milne's original book has expired, there have been a variety of rereleases and reimaginings. This graphic novel is very close to the original, from incorporating the text into the speech bubbles to having a vintage vibe that closely aligns with Ernest H. Shepard's original illustrations. Parents and grandparents who grew up after Disney released the cartoon version narrated by Sebastian Cabot in the 1960s and had many books with those illustrations will find this a bit of a change; the Shepard illustrations do a much better job at capturing the feel of the 1920s English countryside, and show more of the woods and trees than the versions I remember, which focused more on the characters. 

This was beautifully done and quite charming, rather like the graphic novel adaptation of Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting. My only question is about the intended audience. Is this meant to be read aloud to very young children, like the original? Do six-year-olds who might be able to read this themselves care about the adventures of a stuffed bear? While older people like myself consider this a classic, it's hard for me to gauge the appeal to younger readers.