Zach Weinersmith

Steve Thomas: Zach, welcome to the podcast.

Zach Weinersmith: Thanks for having me. 

Steve Thomas: So you’ve written web comics for a long time. You’ve written a number of books, graphic novels, nonfiction science, another kids book. Do you feel like you write the same thing in different formats, or do you look for something different when you’re writing in a different format?

Zach Weinersmith: Oh, wow that’s a deep one. My wife and I joke about this, ’cause we write books together and separately, and it’s like, what I should do is write the same thing ’cause that seems to be where the money is. But, no, I have a lot of pleasure in just, for three years I get to be like someone doing research and analysis on space settlement. That was one we did. And then I get to spend a year like doing economics research and then I get to, I do a lot of researching for kids books. I’m reading like all of P. G. Wodehouse and Edwardian farce generally. The pleasure of my existence is I get to be something different regularly.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, I don’t even know how you describe Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, ’cause it’s like, it’s a web comic that’s funny, that’s about everything. 

Zach Weinersmith: I think I could have a much more lucrative career if it were about something instead of everything, but you try to have fun. 

Steve Thomas: What is your background in, like your degree or what you were interested in when you were younger? A lot of your stuff seems to be science-based, but I don’t know if that’s being married to a scientist that pulls you that way?

Zach Weinersmith: I’m a little bit weird. I’ve got a Bachelor of the Arts in literature. I’m a big literature nerd. And it’s like a dark secret in science circles, but I’m enthusiastic about literary criticism and twee poetry and that sort of thing, but very long story short I got a degree in English literature and I went to work in the film business and found it to be just nightmarish. No offense to those who dwell therein. So I left to get a science degree and ended up in physics just ’cause it was fascinating and at some point in there my comics started doing well and I realized I could drop out. Very few people have a college degree and then go back and then drop out, but I did it. And I’ve been a writer ever since. I was actually, I felt equivocal about dropping out ’cause I was really enjoying learning stuff, but I had to pick something and one thing made money and so I still get to learn on my own time.

But I do miss spending all my time holed up in a library basement reading obscure stuff, but I’m working to get myself back to it.

Steve Thomas: And it seems like the hard-selling science stuff, those are the ones that you generally are working with your wife on those books, like the Mars books, and I think Stoonish, was that with her as well?

Zach Weinersmith: That was with her as well. Yeah we’ve written two pop sci books together. 

Steve Thomas: Yeah I enjoyed Soonish and I recommend that a lot at the library, that came out around the same time as Randall Munroe’s What If and all that kind of stuff, of cartoonists explaining science stuff in real terms, but not really in real terms…?

Zach Weinersmith: We felt lucky ’cause there’s been, there was a kind of splash for “cartoonists do science stuff” that I feel is now crested and is in diminuendo. But our last book, A City on Mars, is easily the best selling we’ve ever had. We got lucky it was in the zeitgeist, I think.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, there’s a difference between getting to Mars and putting your foot on it, and then having a functioning society there, much different things. 

Zach Weinersmith: Yeah, we think so. Not all agree. 

Steve Thomas: So for this book, Sawyer Lee and the Quest to Just Stay Home, where did the original idea for that one come from? Did it come from your great dedication to education, like your college days?

Zach Weinersmith: No. Thank God. I will say, let me say in defense of this book, it has no lessons in it. There are actually four or five quotes from literature like snooty English major literature are snuck in so there is some accidental education happening.

But no, it actually it’s funny. So I did this book called Beawolf which is a kind of we say retelling of Beowulf, by which I mean you can’t cheat your homework with it, but hopefully it kind of captures the spirit, but it’s a kids book. It’s a kids rendition. And it did better than expected. If you pitched that idea, I think you wouldn’t expect it to do so well but it found its people. And so I got the chance to pitch more books, and I was like, “Oh God.” ‘Cause I was like knee-deep in writing A City on Mars or promoting it, and I had no time. I won’t get too much into the inside baseball, but the original pitch was what if I did a sort of P. G. Wodehouse style Edwardian farce for kids about a kid who just doesn’t wanna be, involved but gets entangled in all sorts of stuff and the joke is he just kinda gets nudged around and always ultimately lands back in like the bathtub or lounging on his couch or something.

But it evolved a lot. The very original version was much more like Bertie Wooster. So if, I don’t know if everyone’s read Jeeves and Wooster, but essentially the plot is there’s a guy who has this omnipotent valet, and as a result, the guy, who’s named Bertie Wooster is as they say in the book, mentally negligible. And so they just have these like wild entanglements. There are no books in the comedy genre that have such complex and intricate plot work. Only in Agatha Christie do you find this level of plotting, technical complexity. And they’re just the joy of my life. And I think the best comedy books in English, if you’re gonna find a competitor, it has to be, like, someone like Mark Twain, or Jerome K. Jerome. It’s very tough competition.

And they’re just wonderful, and I love them, and I wanted to write one, and the very original version though was, like, about a a rich kid who just, that’s why he doesn’t care. And the first person I pitched it to was Calista Brill. We ended up not being able to work together on it but she was like, “This is like… For some reason it’s funny that Bertie Wooster is a useless aristocrat, but somehow it’s off-putting to do a book just about a kid who’s blithe because he’s too rich.” So I ended up changing it to he’s just philosophical in his idiotic way, that he just sees through all the ambition of the world and just wants to check out.

And that ended up being a much more interesting character. For me, that kind of cracked it all open. Then it was much more fun to write suddenly, ’cause it was just this kid who’s much more differentiated from a character like a Bertie Wooster. Which is to say he’s not, he didn’t accidentally become someone who is devoid of ambition. He realized early in life that it was all a sham and is just enjoying himself now. He’s an epicurean perhaps. And that was a delightful character to write for. 

Steve Thomas: And there’s a little bit I think of ’cause his entire world around him or his family is all to the point of extreme, there’s astronauts and wizards and athletes and adventurers and whatever all in his family, and they’re all pushing him for, “Oh, you’re the one, the chosen one, and you must do this.” And he always turns it away. This may be a little deeper than we’re going, but is there a little bit in there about rejecting the expectations of others put on you kind of thing in there, too? 

Zach Weinersmith: I think if a kid wants to read it that way, I would be delighted. For me it was… what actually happened is that opening you’re describing was added quite late. The original version was just that he had this family of people who wanted him to do stuff and he refused. And I was talking to my original editor, Wes Adams, and this was our first time chatting after the book had been bought, and he said, “You know what I love about this book is almost every middle grade hero is a real go-getter, is someone who’s trying to accomplish something. And this character’s just not.” And that was totally unintentional. I was just essentially writing what in the year 1905 was called a Canute, which is a term we just don’t have anymore, which is essentially the second son of a rich guy, the person whose only job in life is to carry the germ plasm, in case the first son doesn’t make it. And so he’s just a useless but well-dressed and rich and clueless stage character. This used to be a very common character. And we just don’t have it anymore I think ’cause we don’t have that kind of that kind of rigid class structure anymore post-World War I, but Wodehouse was writing it till the 1970s ’cause he couldn’t help himself.

But I just wanted to write that. But then when I was talking to Wes, he crystallized it. He was like, “Oh, this is really an inversion.” ‘Cause it is the case, you pick up a middle grade reader and they’re always fighting for something. And I’m not saying that’s bad, I’m just saying that’s the sort of the standard character. And it was like, oh, maybe I could lean into this a little more. I was actually talking to my daughter, who’s a huge reader of fantasy novels and stuff like this, and I was like “what else is the main character in the books you read always trying to do?” And so there’s a list of stuff Sawyer won’t do, and a lot of that is from talking to my daughter about ” what are characters trying to accomplish when they’re good characters?” And she was like, “Oh, yeah, it’s trying to tame all these animals and it’s talking to dragons and all this stuff he won’t do.”

But yeah, so that, that was added late. It was in there, but I leaned into it after talking to Wes and my 12-year-old. 

Steve Thomas: Yeah, it was… I don’t remember which one it was, but there was one that was particularly funny I think of, they came and “you’re the only person that can save the world.”

And then all the people just stand around staring at him for a little bit, and he does this thing of just disappearing underneath the beanbag chair, till they get tired and walk away and try to find the second one, not the first one, it was very funny. And I could definitely see how you could get that from your daughter, especially if she’s a good reader of those genres. That you’re hitting a lot of the genre stereotypes there. 

Zach Weinersmith: Yeah. And it, again, like I’ve no opposition to this stuff. This is the stuff I buy for my daughter. I’m not trying to spit in the eye of literature. It’s just really funny to be like, just to do the exact opposite.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and in your book, it’s almost Angela would be the main character in another middle-grade book because she’s the one that actually wants to do things and has drive and everything. 

Zach Weinersmith: Yeah. And what’s funny about that is that evolved, too, because I think what happens is if you have a character and they have some missing part, other characters tend to grow to fill it in. So she was originally just this sort of goody-goody two-shoes character, and then over time had to become more monstrously ambitious just to have the plot keep moving along. And so she ends up being this much more funny character who’s morally questionable in trying to be the lead of a middle-grade novel.

Steve Thomas: And more so as it goes along I think. 

Zach Weinersmith: Yes. 

Steve Thomas: We won’t give any spoilers there, and then you also, I don’t know at the same time, ’cause you do have a goody-goody character in the book, too. I don’t know if that split from Angela too of this character’s overly goody-goody…

Zach Weinersmith: I hadn’t thought about that, but yeah, maybe. Yeah, he is what she originally was supposed to be the character who really is the Horatio Alger little boy, who nothing good happens to him. 

Steve Thomas: And it is nice because Sawyer has no ambitions whatsoever, but the one thing that really gets him finally to go, and it really fits in I think with kids, is that, “Oh, someone stole my best friend. Now it’s time to get into action!” 

Zach Weinersmith: Yeah, that was the one thing. So I was I was originally trying to write it so he really had literally nothing he wanted in life, and that’s funny on paper, but at some point there has to be something. So I tried to make there something just his favorite thing in life really is just to be sitting on the couch in proximity to his friends, and just all is right with the world. That’s what he wants. What I like about that is it’s also a little ambiguous what he wants out of recovering his friend. It’s not that he wants what’s best for his friend. He’s just, he wants this sort of paradisiacal life of contentedness. And also, I could argue if I wanted to, I don’t think he’s this deep, but that he’s also wary of the idea of anyone being ambitious. It’s ultimately got to end in sorrow. So don’t even try. Don’t even start.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, because his best friend when he goes off actually starts to become a more curious person and learns things. 

Zach Weinersmith: Yes. Again, he becomes a good middle-grade character. 

Steve Thomas: And Sawyer is horrified by that. 

Zach Weinersmith: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I was actually, while I was doing this, I was reading P. G. Wodehouse. My other line of research was I was reading old like Epicurus and like Buddhist scripture. Just trying to look for these like philosophies of checking out, that’s not what they actually say. But a kind of enlightened observer status toward the universe and what’s false in it, something like that, and so that’s like the one bit of hopefully a little spine undercurrent of things that’s running along.

Steve Thomas: You are a cartoonist, so there are cartoons in this book as well. Can you talk about how you decided where to put art throughout the book? 

Zach Weinersmith: Yeah, and this was actually true for nonfiction stuff we’ve worked on. And for me, that’s almost always the last step. People tend to read it and think it was all integrated, like I just wrote it from A to Z. But usually it’s more like, for a book like this, I do a extremely detailed outline because it’s like the plot is complicated. You just can’t get around it. And often when you’re doing that, ideas for visuals occur to you and you make a note. But mostly it was like a pacing thing. Like I just wanna have them come at regular intervals, and some of that’s just tactical. Kids especially when they’re like eight to twelve, pictures really help.

I have a daughter who will read a book without pictures, but if it would have pictures I think that would be the preference, and especially for a book like this, which I hope is a good book for reluctant readers, as we say. I think that thing just really helps to get someone who’s flipping through a book say “maybe I’ll read it.”

But also, what I try to do too is the images are not like just to have illustrations. They’re in the text reacting to the text. They might give the lie to what’s said in the text. Or they might understate or overstate the thing, so I’m trying to have them not simply be “here’s what it looked like” type of stuff. It’s much more like comics with words surrounding them. And so hopefully my experience in comics helped a little bit with that. I don’t know. The vibe I was going for is the whole book is a kind of like trying to undercut a lot of things kids are told all the time. And so I hope the comics are in the same spirit as the text. 

Steve Thomas: And you’re adding them then in at the end, I guess so since you’re adding them toward the end, you’re editing the text at the same time as the comics ’cause you might say, ” that line there would be better as a comic instead.”

Zach Weinersmith: Absolutely. And often, ’cause you also have to watch word count. You can’t write a 100,000 word book for eight-year-olds, and certain eight-year-olds would be all over it but most would be a little intimidated by the cube-shaped book. And so no, yeah, so you have to keep a word count down. And sometimes it really was a case, like a whole page of stuff, you’re like, “this would just be funnier if I drew it.” I could have gone through a whole elaborate description about how the person felt, but instead if you just like the part where they discover the ice cream man is cheating and he just starts throwing popsicles at children and having a meltdown. It’s obviously better to just draw it. And it also buys you back a lot of text. 

Steve Thomas: It’s very funny. Yeah, no, sorry, I was just thinking about the ice cream man again. And you have a couple characters in there that are like mascot-ish characters of like, there’s the gourd Gordon. Oh, and speaking of that, is there any reason in particular for gourds, or is it just, “Why not gourds?” 

Zach Weinersmith: It’s a couple things. I don’t wanna get started too hard on this ’cause it could get embarrassing. But I actually grow gourds. I’m a gourd enthusiast. I can quote species nomenclature. I started joking about it with my daughter. She just hates gourds now. She doesn’t wanna hear about them, doesn’t wanna see them, doesn’t care. And so it became a kind of joke but also what’s nice about it is like the kind of like overarching theme is that all these adults are just endlessly fussing over pointless stuff, and what’s more pointless than your decorative gourd that you’re becoming like obscenely ambitious about?

But the other thing, so it’s called The Gourd Thump, which is actually the little town I come from. So I’m from Texas. Every little town in Texas has some festival for some kind of produce. My town was watermelons, so there’s a festival called The Watermelon Thump. I’m actually narrowly avoiding going to it this year, thank God. But I loved it when I was a kid. There are contests to see who has the best watermelon based on whatever criteria have been chosen. So it was a little bit of a kind of like joke about small town stuff.

If you wanna have a character who really wants to do nothing, you have to have a very ambitious world to move them along. And so it evolved into this sort of like obsession based on a joke.

Steve Thomas: And then just what’s the most inconsequential thing that I can think of?

Zach Weinersmith: Exactly, that nobody cares about but me.

Steve Thomas: Since you have that level of knowledge, I’m going to assume, I was gonna ask you if it was true, I’m gonna assume that it is true that if you put them in a kind of container, they will grow into that shape of that container.

Zach Weinersmith: Yeah. And that is true. Actually, that’s true of most… I hate to disappoint. If you’ve ever heard of like in Japan, they have cube-shaped watermelons. It’s not because they bred for cube-shaped watermelons. That would be difficult. They have containers, and actually if you wanna be really boring I actually got the idea, if you can go online, just like Google I forget the keyword, like fruit mold, that’s not it. But like if you get a solid plastic, like plexiglass container in the shape of like Frankenstein’s head, you can grow a pumpkin in it, and it will really be in the shape of Frankenstein. This is a very high effort adult activity that is not worth it, but it is true.

Steve Thomas: Can I ask if you’ve done it yourself? 

Zach Weinersmith: No I I have not yet. I was actually trying to get my brother. My brother’s an engineer, and I think he has the technology to like 3D print my own head and shape a gourd like it, yeah. That would be the dream. But I have not yet achieved that level of gourd enthusiasm.

Steve Thomas: Is there anything, you talked about reluctant readers and that’s a good reason to include cartoons, but being a cartoonist for a living, is there something about that visual image that prose alone can’t do that you like? ‘Cause obviously you have a literature degree. You make comics. What’s something that they can do that prose alone can’t do? 

Zach Weinersmith: Yeah. The way I think about it is if you’re an artist, you have so you may have talents, but in a sense you have your choice of media. You could’ve been a filmmaker or something, you could’ve been a painter, you could’ve been a poet, you could’ve been whatever.

And it’s kinda each genre has certain valances, certain benefits. And one thing that’s really nice about comics is that visuals can handle parallelism a lot. I know that sounds really dorky, but it’s like, with Beawulf II, which will eventually come out, we’re working on it like I’m writing all these fight scenes ’cause it’s like an epic and so they have battles. It’s really hard to write battles in prose or even poetry because you consume text linearly. You consume it a word at a time. And real fights are both repetitive and parallel, right? So if you were trying to describe a wrestling match, like any time two guys or gals are, like, locked in wrestling, they’re actually doing four things at once, and it’s very hard to convey that well. You really can’t quite capture it as well. Whereas images, it’s very natural to have multiple things happening in a single image and you’re just trained visually to observe multiple things at once. And so for certain contexts that’s really useful.

There’s other stuff like you can do so much with a couple lines of expression in an image that you can do with prose, but just it’s just not as natural. And it goes the other way. There’s some stuff, like subtlety, prose is very good. For like garden path sentences where you think it’s gonna go one way and it cuts the other way at the end, that’s much easier to do with a sentence because it’s linear.

So the nice thing about comics, which I think of as in terms of valance it’s halfway between film and prose. You don’t have the massive strengths of both. You have the interiority of prose, which is really powerful, but you also have the ability of being a voyeur of like being outside looking in that film provides. And the mix costs you some stuff on both ends but having both is also really magical because you can play one against the other in a way that, that just doesn’t work.

And you can do stuff that, that is really powerful. One thing film is really bad at, for whatever reason, I don’t know why this is, it just always feels dorky to have someone narrating what’s happening. So like if you love P.G. Wodehouse like I do, a huge amount of why those books are great is the narrator, first person narrator undercutting the action. And it’s just, film just doesn’t handle that well. So the adaptations tend to have to do other stuff to get around it, but for me it’s missing the beating heart of it. Getting to do both is like getting access to like a high-speed vehicle. It’s hard to handle and you can go wrong easily but when it comes off right it just feels great.

The deepest strength of prose is it occupies your internal monologue while you’re reading. And so it becomes you or you become the book. And so when it’s great it’s just absolutely amazing. And whereas film is you’re outside looking in. It’s very hard to get around that. There are movies that kind of manage to, but mostly you’re outside looking in. And that’s a strength too when used right. For me, the book is the pinnacle of artistic creation because of that monologue-occupying power it has.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And in the comics realm, I know you can go the other direction too far of personally loving Chris Claremont X-Men, then Colossus is fighting Magneto, but in the same time he’s having a long monologue in his head about, “Oh, what am I gonna do? Kitty likes me and, but she’s so…” And it’s like this wall of text. Shouldn’t be concentrating on fighting Magneto?

Zach Weinersmith: It’s funny, it was a weird thing with Beawolf, and I didn’t even know this ’cause I actually don’t have a lot of experience writing graphic novels. I’ve picked up some and I’m planning to do more. But one of the rules that I broke, without realizing, was you’re really supposed to have mostly dialogue. If you go to an editor and you’re like, “Here’s my graphic novel” and it is like a lot of interiority, they get nervous for the reason you described.

Steve Thomas: I was gonna toward the end ask if there’s gonna be another Sawyer Lee book. I feel like Sawyer would be upset with me if I asked that ’cause I don’t think he’d want another adventure, but would you want to write another one? 

Zach Weinersmith: I’m already working on the second one. When I get famous after being on this podcast and I sell a million copies, I’m sure I’ll get to do many more, but I’m at least on the hook for one more. And it’s really hard. And I try to, whenever I write, something in addition, I try to be more ambitious than the last one. So I’m trying to really have a worthy Edwardian level of farcical complexity, and it’s remarkably difficult. I was talking to a guy who writes plot for video games about “Does anyone else write structure like P.G. Wodehouse?” And he was like, “Basically, no.” And now I understand why, ’cause it’s horrible. I hate it. … Except it’s a delight to have done it when it works. So I am working on another adventure that’s hopefully, 14% more ridiculous than this one. 

Steve Thomas: So the last thing I wanted to ask is when you were Sawyer’s age, what kind of stuff were you reading or doing, or were you like Sawyer at his age? 

Zach Weinersmith: I was like Sawyer. I was not a big reader as a kid. My parents are very smart people, but not bookish people. There were books around the house, but it wasn’t like it wasn’t that kind of thing I think Nabokov said every writer has a story where they were a sickly child and the only thing was books. And, now of course every sickly child has an iPad, so we won’t get any more Nabokovs. Alas. But no. Actually, the only books I really remember being into when I was a teenager were, like, word books, etymology books, and like weird dictionaries and stuff. I always liked words, but I was not a big fantasy enthusiast or whatever. I only came to that later. I just like words, and that’s how I ended up in literature. And then maybe some time later I became a big reader, when it just became a big part of my life, and now it’s obviously you can’t write unless you’re reading all the time. But yeah, I’m very in tune with the idea of a character who’s not trying to please anyone.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. My son, he’s 15, and I came home when my advance copy of this book came in I showed it to him. I said, “Look, this guy wrote a book about you!” He just gave me the perfect 15-year-old boy look to his dad. 

Zach Weinersmith: Yes. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Yes. 

Steve Thomas: All right. Zach, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I’ve enjoyed the comics for… we both probably don’t wanna think about how long you’ve been doing it and I’ve been reading it, a couple decades, I think, but this book is great, and I will definitely share it with kids at my library and I’m gonna put it in front of my son now that I’ve finished it and talked to you. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for writing such a delightful book.

Zach Weinersmith: Thank you. It’s been lovely to talk about it. 

*****

Suzanne Temple: Hello, and welcome back to The Circ Desk. I’m Suzanne Temple, and I’m a NoveList librarian. I mostly catalog juvenile materials and graphic novels for our NoveList databases. I also write audiobook and graphic novel reviews for Booklist.

Brierley Ray: And I’m Brierley Ray, a NoveList librarian and former school librarian. I also work on cataloging juvenile materials for our databases, and I recently edited the latest edition of the Sears List for Subject Headings for Gray House Publishing. 

Suzanne Temple: We’ve just finished listening to Steve talk with author Zach Weinersmith, so we want to share some readalike options for Sawyer Lee and the Quest to Just Stay Home. Brierley, would you like to kick us off? 

Brierley Ray: Absolutely. My first recommendation is Klawde: Evil Alien Warlord Cat, the first book in a series of the same name by Johnny Marciano from 2019. This is a heavily illustrated, fast-paced story told through multiple first-person perspectives between Raj, a kid adjusting to an unwanted move from New York to Oregon, and Klawde, an exiled alien warlord who also happens to be a cat.

Klawde is an exaggerated, over-the-top character, and this book has laugh-out-loud humor and lots of cartoony illustrations that keep things moving. When I was looking for readalikes for Sawyer Lee, I started by thinking about what really stood out to me, that funny tone, the exaggerated characters, and the way the book plays with the idea of an adventure through a main character who doesn’t really want one.

Klawde really jumped out because it hits so many of those same appeals. It has a similarly heightened, almost ridiculously funny tone. Klawde’s narration is so dramatic and self-important, which pairs nicely with Sawyer Lee’s resistance to doing anything at all. Both books are kind of playing with epic storytelling conventions, but in a funny, subversive way. Klawde also brings the theme of an unlikely friendship at the center. It’s a great fit for readers who like humor that’s a little sharp, a little chaotic, but still grounded in friendships.

And my second pick is The Tyrell Show by Miles Groes from 2024. This is another illustrated first-person series starter, but this one follows Tyrell, an 11-year-old who copes with everything going on in his life by imagining he’s hosting his own podcast. It has a conversational style, a funny tone, and a coming-of-age theme as Tyrell navigates friendships, school pressure, and growing up.

For this recommendation, I shifted my approach a little bit. Instead of focusing on the exaggerated characters, I honed in on the conversational style of Sawyer Lee. If you liked being inside Sawyer Lee’s head with that slightly rambling, very honest perspective, Tyrell offers a similar experience. Both books center kid narration that feels immediate and personal. So I looked for titles with first-person narratives and a conversational style, and then I paired that with humor appeals and illustrated genres. The Tyrell Show stood out because it captures that same kind of intimate, kid-centered perspective, just in a slightly different way since Tyrell processes things through his imagined podcast.

I also used our appeal storyline terms to find an “own voices” title. Tyrell’s experience as a Black preteen boy reflects a perspective shaped by the author’s own identity. It’s also a nice readalike for readers who want humor with a bit more emotional grounding. The coming of age theme adds more depth while keeping those light, humorous moments. Tyrell is a more sympathetic character compared to Sawyer’s exaggerated reluctance, but they both deal with everyday challenges in funny, creative ways.

So those are my two suggestions. Suzanne, what are yours? 

Suzanne Temple: Thanks, Brierley. I’m always down for an evil cat.

My first recommendation is Black are the Stars, the first volume in the Ralph Azham graphic novel series by Lewis Trondheim from 2022. Ralph is a duck who failed the test of the Chosen One when he was younger and, as a result, has become the village outcast. Trouble seems to find Ralph, as well as spirits only he can see. When Ralph’s village is attacked, he leaves on a journey to find the answers to the secrets of his past.

The biggest thing that struck me about Sawyer Lee in the Quest to Just Stay Home was the offbeat humor, so I knew I wanted a book with that quirky feel to it. I also wanted to find another lazy character who wasn’t unlikable. The use of the appeal term suspenseful fits right in with the mystery of the cheating scandal in Sawyer Lee. And although not a graphic novel, the illustrations in Sawyer Lee play a big part in the story, so a graphic novel seems an ideal pick for an illustrated book. While at first glance, a fantasy about an anthropomorphic duck on a quest may not seem like the ideal readalike for a humorous story about a human boy, the main characters are both likable misfits.

My second recommendation is the 2025 graphic novel, The Many Misfortunes of Eugenia Wang, by Stan Yan. 12-year-old Chinese American Eugenia’s mom is strict and superstitious, but Eugenia is tired of hearing about it. When she gets hit on the head and begins having visions about impending doom, she starts to believe her mom’s beliefs may actually be legitimate.

This time, I knew I didn’t want any anthropomorphic characters. Both titles share a humorous genre, and this is reinforced in Eugenia Wang’s reviews, which describe it as slapstick, weirdly funny, off-kilter, et cetera. All words we at Novelist would interpret as the appeal offbeat. I also took into consideration the illustrations, which are both described as cartoony, adding to the story’s levity.

Well, that’s it from us today at the Circ Desk. We’ll check you out next time.