Lost and Found

March 15, 2023
Sixth graders find more occasions for stress and laughter in this second collection of the "Heart of the City" comics. Drama queen Heart Lamarr (who is White) still takes center stage (except in the school play: "UNDERSTUDY?!"), but some of her friends step into the limelight now and again. Kat, who is biracial, discovers that eyeglasses aren't the social stigma she expects and becomes smitten by brown-skinned hijab-wearing classmate Lee. Dean, who is White, stands up to a cousin who accuses him of being "soft" because of his friendships with girls, and Charlotte, who is Black, does a bit of friendship "matchmaking" at a family barbecue. Meanwhile, Heart endures an uncomfortable Christmas visit from her clueless remarried dad ("So you're 10 now! Huh?" "I'm 11"), is startled to overhear herself referred to as Charlotte's "white friend" ("I don't think about my race!" Charlotte: "Lucky you!"), and, after leading an inquiry into who's selling items from the school's lost-and-found, pressures the culprits into cutting it out. A character list would have been helpful for new readers, particularly as a number of peripheral classmates and relatives drift in and out of view, and adults are often hard to distinguish from the kids in the art. Still, each episode flows seamlessly into the next, and the banter is light and clever. More minicrises and breezy doses of growing up. (Graphic fiction. 10-13)

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