Hilary Sycamore

Three years ago, an unexplained catastrophic event completely annihilated the small city of Poughkeepsie, leaving behind a heavily quarantined area known as the Spill Zone. Inside the borders, the laws of physics are broken, the wildlife is mutated, and lethal dangers wait around every corner. Addison lost her parents to the disaster and now serves as the sole provider for her traumatized, mute younger sister. To make ends meet, she takes illicit midnight motorcycle rides into the forbidden territory, capturing photographs of the twisted, neon colored anomalies to sell to wealthy art collectors. When an eccentric buyer makes a staggering million dollar offer for an unprecedentedly dangerous assignment, Addison breaks all her own survival rules. Venturing deeper into the zone than ever before, she discovers that the terrifying entities within the spill might actually be waiting specifically for her.

Jack might be the only kid in the world who's dreading summer. But he's got a good reason: summer is when his single mom takes a second job and leaves him at home to watch his autistic kid sister, Maddy. It's a lot of responsibility, and it's boring, too, because Maddy doesn't talk. Ever. But then, one day at the flea market, Maddy does talk—to tell Jack to trade their mom's car for a box of mysterious seeds. It's the best mistake Jack has ever made.

In Mighty Jack, what starts as a normal little garden out back behind the house quickly grows up into a wild, magical jungle with tiny onion babies running amok, huge, pink pumpkins that bite, and, on one moonlit night that changes everything...a dragon.

--- Added from Google Books ---

Ben Hatke, the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Zita the Spacegirl, returns to middle-grade fantasy-adventure with the first of two graphic novels retelling Jack and the Beanstalk.